Sometimes it tickles me when I hear the Swiss pronunciation of words that I thought were American. Often the words mean the same in both languages and just sound funny. Other times they can mean something completely different.
Different Pronunciation Different Meanings
Umlauts are difficult for English speakers because they are foreign in their Language. For example, the difference between ‘ü’ and ‘u’ is small but oh-ho. Depending on how you pronounce ‘schwul’ you might end up mixing the weather with sexual orientation.
Schwül means humid
schwul means gay
On the other hand, for German speakers there are some difficult English sounds. ‘Th’ seems to top the difficult-list. I talked about someone trying to say ‘If then’ and having it turn into ‘if ten’ in another post. Still, the German ‘th’ could be difficult for an English speaker, too. There is a place in the Canton of Berne named ‘Thun’. I doubt that an English speaking person who had never heard it pronounced in German would say it correctly: ‘tune’. It would probably come out something like ‘thoon’.
The English ‘g’ can be tricky for a German speaker. I had to look twice when someone I was talking to pointed behind me and said ‘duck!’ Was a flying object heading my way, was I supposed to duck or dodge? Was a duck going to quack madly at me? Neither. They were talking about a person named Doug [duhg] who was walking behind me and not a duck [duhk].
A better known example of different meanings is the restaurant chain ‘Pizza Hut’. A hut in English is a cottage or a shack. It would make sense to eat something in there. The company kept their English name when they expanded to Europe. In German a cottage would be a ‘Hütte’ a ‘Hut’ in German is a hat. When a German speaking person talks about Pizza Hut they pronounce it like the German ‘hat’. So, in essence, they are talking about ‘Pizza Hat’ which makes no sense at all.
Which Language?
I suppose if a word stems from another language your pronunciation should lean on the original language. If that were the case, then ‘hut’ should be pronounced like ‘nut’ with a ‘h’ [huht] and not like ‘hoot’.
A lot of names of places and things would be pronounced much differently. Americans don’t pronounce Des Moins [duh-MOINS], Havre de Grace [HAV-er-dee-greys], places in America, with a French accent of any sort. But following this train of thought would bring us back to Pizza Hut [PEET-suh-hoot] in German.
I was buying jeans once in Berne and the saleslady asked if I wanted to try some Levi’s. The lady pronounced Levi like ‘heavy’ with an ‘L’ at the beginning [LEV-ee]. I had never heard it pronounced that way, it was always Levi’s [LEE-vahyz]. I smiled thinking ‘Boy, she got that wrong.’ Then I thought again, Levi Strauss was a German immigrant, he probably did pronounce it that way. My mistake. But for me, they are, and always will be Levi’s [LEE-vahyz].
Another time I was at the cheese counter at the supermarket. I saw that they were selling cheddar cheese, which I hadn’t seen in Switzerland before. I said I would like some ‘cheddar’ [CHED-er]. She didn’t understand me, so I repeated ‘cheddar’ and pointed. She smiled and said, ‘Oh, you mean cheddar [KED-are]!’ Instead of saying the CH like ‘chip’ she said it with a guttural ‘K’. My reaction was, yes, I suppose you could say it that way, too.
The nice thing about the Levi’s and cheddar is the jeans look, and the cheese tastes the same no matter how you pronounce them.
Word Roots
Some people can get somewhat overbearing about how you should pronounce a word. Take the sports manufacturer Nike. I’ve always heard it pronounced Nike [NAHY-kee]. I’ve heard German speakers say both ‘NAHY-kee’ and ‘nahyk’. Once I asked someone why they said ‘nahyk’ and not ‘NAHY-kee’. Reproachfully he said “Well, it’s American, how do you pronounce the word ‘bike’ ‘bahyk’ or ‘BAHY-kee’?” Ah, but Nike is derived from the Greek goddess who personified victory. The Greeks pronounce the ‘e’. Again, to be fair, I don’t suppose the Greek would pronounce it exactly the same way as an American. He also had a point about ‘bike’ but is it really worth fighting about?
Abbreviations
What is fairly certain is the pronunciation of abbreviations. You spell with the letters of whichever language you are speaking.
BMW [bay-em-vey] just rolls off your tongue in German. Saying it in English takes longer [BEE-em-DUHB-uhl-yoo]. There are 5 syllables in English and only 3 in German. Similar to VW, English has 4 [VEE-DUHB-uhl-yoo] to German’s 2 [voe-vey]. When I first moved to Switzerland I found it a bit strange to say BMW in German, after all, I had only heard it in English before. But you can get used to most anything.
As to taking longer to say, sometimes English speakers are a bit lazy. I’ve talked about the case of Charles William’s nickname ‘CW’ [see-DUHB-uhl-yoo] shortened to ‘SEE-Duhb’. Still, I’ve never heard BMW referred to as ‘BEE-em-dub’ or VW as ‘VEE-dub’ before.
So, I guess there is not much left to do except to roll with the flow. Ride my bike [BAHY-kee] to the store and buy some cheddar [KED-are] while wearing Levi’s [LEV-ees] and my pizza hat, wondering where Duck is.
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