Helping Motty to tackle Ifejiakwa

The World Cup will test the verbal dexterity of the most seasoned BBC commentators as they grapple with a host of hard-to-pronounce names which could make them trip up as often as the players on the pitch.

But when Nigeria's Emeka Ifejiakwa lines up against England, with Russia's Beschastnykh and the South African Mngomeni aiming for a place in the history books, help will be at hand.

The BBC linguistics unit is creating a commentators' 'bible' with phonetic pronounciations of the names of 800 players and match officials.

This should mean commentators such as John Motson will have the trickiest names on the tip of their tongues.

BBC linguist Russell Travenen Jones said: 'It is very important the BBC gets the names right because we are followed around the world and we are very quickly told when we blunder.'

There were red faces in the past when Turkish club Galatasaray was pronounced incorrectly as Galats-awry.