News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Voltswagen of America by sillyquiet on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @12:06PM (#26636312)
'bother' me? No, not at all, the sounds are close enough I get the meaning, mostly from context.

I am not sure why there should be an emotional factor here, as expecting everybody to conform to some pronunciation ideal they have no experience with is arrogant, to say the least.

Re:Voltswagen of America by titzer on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @01:44PM (#26637771)
Well you claimed that Americans are pronouncing it "perfectly correctly," and Germans might disagree. It's a German word which has been Americanized. The company mostly doesn't care, but there is a single correct pronunciation in their native language. Insisting you are correct mispronouncing a foreign word because the letters look a certain way is just hubris.
Re:Voltswagen of America by simondw on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @02:58PM (#26638815)
> there is a single correct pronunciation in their native language

But see, that's the point. We're not speaking German when we use a borrowed word in English. It's no longer a purely German word, despite its origins, just as "xylophone" isn't a mispronounced Greek word, nor "Handy" a misused and miscapitalized English word.

That's not hubris, it's just descriptivism.

Re:Voltswagen of America by ric2b on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @03:26PM (#26651870)
It's not just a word, it's a name. Names have a single correct pronunciation, they're not supposed to be translated.
Re:Voltswagen of America by sillyquiet on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @05:19PM (#26640685)
Americans are pronouncing the English word Volkswagen perfectly correctly yes. BECAUSE THEY ARE SPEAKING ENGLISH
Re:Voltswagen of America by chki on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @08:11PM (#26642090)
I would follow your logic if the english pronunciation of the word Volkswagen was actually phonetically consistent. But while "Volks" is pronounced in an english way, isn't the word "wagen" pronounced in a weird German way?

"Wagen" on its own would probably be pronounced like way-gen, if my english intuition is not fooling me. Instead it is pronounced like wuh-gen.

I don't really care about this either way but if you are bothered by something the weird mixture is.. a bit annoying.

Re:Voltswagen of America by ric2b on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @03:26PM (#26651881)
It's not just a word, it's a name. Names have a single correct pronunciation, they're not supposed to be translated.