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Comment by titzer | Hacker News Reader

Does it bother you when Germans say "zis"? German has no "th" sound, so "zis" is what they start with before they practice. It's similarly grating to Germans to hear their language mispronounced by others.

And yet, English has an "f" sound. German has an extremely consistent spelling and essentially all "v"s are pronounced as "f". We share (the latin) alphabet, and English has absolutely no authority, given how inconsistent it is.

Given that, I will say the voiced "V" when speaking English and the unvoiced, as necessary, speaking German.

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> It's similarly grating to Germans to hear their language mispronounced by others.

Americans are generally very tolerant and patient with non-native speakers butchering proper english. So no, it's not nearly as grating to an American to hear people mispronounce english words than it might be for Germans.

No one cares what Germans think about people abusing their language. I personally have zero issues with accents or mispronunciations here and there by non-native speakers. That smells of "fear of the other" to me and taking easy potshots at people I consider my full equal isn't cool. If I feel a little "anger" then that's a fallacy in me not in their pronunciation. As long as I can understand we're good otherwise we'll work it out someway or other.

No, I am not bothered by someone having an accent when speaking a second language. It's just a thing, not a good or bad thing.

> Does it bother you when Germans say "zis"?

It just bothers the historical linguistics nerd in me that all the other Germanic languages (other than Icelandic) lost the beautiful Thorn and Edh sounds consonants :-)

I've always found it interesting that the German approximation is "z" here when it could be "t" or "d", since that is what "th" sounds turned into in Old Franconian.

'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.

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.

> 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.

It's not just a word, it's a name. Names have a single correct pronunciation, they're not supposed to be translated.

Americans are pronouncing the English word Volkswagen perfectly correctly yes. BECAUSE THEY ARE SPEAKING ENGLISH

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.

It's not just a word, it's a name. Names have a single correct pronunciation, they're not supposed to be translated.

Accent is an inevitable part of second language speakers. I've lived in US most of my life, but English is not my native language and I started learning it around the age of 5 and at the age of 25 after living here more than 20 years, I still have a distinct accent I can't get rid of. It's just the way things are, human brain seems to learn pronunciation differently when we're a child.

This same goes for English speakers too. I know how Volkswagen is supposed to be pronounced (I know some German) but that's not the way English speakers would say it.

I don't think there is anything to be bothered by any of this. This just adds to our diversity.

Vice versa, it's interesting to me why German speakers tend to approximate the pronunciation of e.g. "think" as "sink", rather than "fink" or "vink". There's even some British accents where it sounds more like "fink". English is hard :D

> Does it bother you when Germans say "zis"?

Nope.

Sorry, but just noticed you were using an English-only term to describe the homeland of someone who doesn't live in your country. The correct term is Deutschland.

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