Apple CEO Tim Cook Puts the ‘Man’ In Pokémon

By Kim Lachance Shandrow • Jul 27, 2016
Getty Images | Bloomberg

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled Pokémon. How would you like to hear Tim Cook cluck that tricky tongue twister twice fast, in his trademark southern drawl? We sure would, now that the world knows he says Pokémon “like a dad.” As in completely wrong.

Here’s a tip, Cook: Pokémon is pronounced purely phonetically. There is no “man” in Pokémon. I know — I checked with my 15 year old, and, oh, my 13 year old and 11 year old. Repeat after me: Poh-kay-mon, OK, mon?

The 55-year-old Apple chief executive, who incidentally also dances like a dad, butchered the word “Pokémon” (and had the audacity to even pluralize it) during an Apple earnings call yesterday. He made the oops while raving about the global augmented reality sensation.

Related: 5 Things You Don’t Know About Apple CEO Tim Cook

And now everyone and their brother won’t let him forget it, including the newshounds at The Verge, who dutifully posted the “adorable” evidence of Cook’s now-famous faux pas on SoundCloud, because JOURNALISM.

You bet your Jigglypuff we’d be talking up Pokémon Go, too — and maybe even garbling its name because of the sheer excitement of it all — if it could potentially make our company $3 billion richer in a couple of years.

But for now we’ll ignore that we don’t earn $2 million in base salary, plus $8 million in cash incentives. No, we’ll distract ourselves by perusing people’s touching reactions to Cook’s wee verbal slip-up.

Jeez, everything the man does is up for scrutiny, right down to the syllable. Comes with the territory, or does it?

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled Pokémon. How would you like to hear Tim Cook cluck that tricky tongue twister twice fast, in his trademark southern drawl? We sure would, now that the world knows he says Pokémon “like a dad.” As in completely wrong.

Here’s a tip, Cook: Pokémon is pronounced purely phonetically. There is no “man” in Pokémon. I know — I checked with my 15 year old, and, oh, my 13 year old and 11 year old. Repeat after me: Poh-kay-mon, OK, mon?

The 55-year-old Apple chief executive, who incidentally also dances like a dad, butchered the word “Pokémon” (and had the audacity to even pluralize it) during an Apple earnings call yesterday. He made the oops while raving about the global augmented reality sensation.

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Kim Lachance Shandrow

Former West Coast Editor
Kim Lachance Shandrow is the former West Coast editor at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was a commerce columnist at Los Angeles CityBeat, a news producer at MSNBC and KNBC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times. She has also written for Government Technology magazine, LA Yoga magazine, the Lowell Sun newspaper,...

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