Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeromenerf | Hacker News Reader

Pronunciation is no longer “folks wagen” but “faults wagen”. The classic German ironic sense of humor.

"V" can be randomly soft or hard, "Volk" is pronounced like "Folk" but "Volt" like "Wolt". THere's no real equivalent sound in English, I think.

But, yeah, I've owned several VWs and electrical wiring is usually faulty so I'll go with Faultswagen as well.

woltswagon?

Is that the correction pronunciation now?

Yeah, that's very close. The German pronunciation would be halfway between the English F and W sound.

No. Since this is for the US division, the pronunciation would be "Voltswagen".

> but "Volt" like "Wolt".

Not really, it would be pronounced like the v in Vincent, not Wincent.

Yes, that's it

Volt uses "W" sound instead of F, because Volt comes from the name of Italian physicist Allessandro Volta. Italian sound for V is W or english V.

Are there proper German words that don't read V as F? I've been lead to believe German is strict with phonem/letter combination.

Excellent question, running through a few options in my mind "Version and Variation" come to mind. I'm not sure those qualify as a proper German words, probably not.

Is my understanding correct that loan words are usually pronounced according to the donor language? (e.g. "das Handy") I seem to remember V is special somehow too, for historical reasons.

If I am reading Duden right, Version is directly a French loanword:

https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Version

while Variation is "influenced" by French:

https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Variation

Not really. Volt is pronounced like a soft w, not like an F.

But they must have known that people won't know that, so you still have a valid point.

I always thought the NA pronunciation was "Walks Wegon". xD.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com