Hacker News Reader

Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to take this opportunity to share with you all that Wero is called Wero because Euro is pronounced "you-ro" and when you share your you-ro it becomes a we-ro.

View on HN

And when anything goes wrong, that's a ruh-ro.

Internet comment of the day awarded to CharlesW.

What's wrong with good old uh-oh??

That's good too, my brain just likes the way Scooby-Doo says it.

> Euro is pronounced "you-ro"

This in not true for everywhere that uses the Euro, unsurprisingly because that encompasses a large linguistic area. I know for a fact France doesn't pronounce it that way.

In France it's pronounced "uh row"

interestingly, french speakers just have to pronounce "wero" as "nouro" for the same pun to work ("eux-ro" vs "nous-ro")

How does France pronounce it?

wéro (é like elephant)

I've racked my brain trying to write it in a good enough approximation, but honestly the "eu" sound doesn't have a match in most English accents, and neither does the "r", so it wouldn't make much sense trying to write it down in English. Youtube will give you hundreds of videos pronouncing it correctly if you want to check!

Merci, the hint about youtube set me on the right path.

There's supposedly also an Italian pun based on "vero" in there.

I've heard pretty much every European English-as-a-second-language speaker pronounced the W differently, though, and pronunciation of the E isn't even consistent within native English populations. I can't wait for the "vee-ro? oh, you mean whay-ro" discussions between tourists and stores.

It will for sure be pronounced Véro in French :)

Ouiro does sound pretty ridiculous to be honest

I hear it pronounced "Wéro"

Like Ouais-ro?

No, that would be Wèro.

Unless you're in Germany, when it's more like "oy-ro"... and Wero would be pronounced "ve-ro"... I don't think there's a German pun hiding here!

Never realized this, mind blown :-)

Having associations with Aotearoa/NZ, I read it as w-eh-roh, which is part of the traditional Maori greeting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(M%C4%81ori)

Hmm Euro is actually pronounced roughly like yeuroh (like voyeur); not you-roh, and by the normal heuristics of English at least Wero would likely be pronounced more like weir-oh than wee-ro.

I guess it doesn't have to be perfect to make a funny name though.

When I give someone money I don't feel like I'm sharing it at all. Sounds like it goes from a "my-oh" to a "your-oh" and is aptly named from the jump.

Funny because euro is Greek ευρώ, which is pronounced ev-ro. The Cyrillic евро on notes is also pronounced the same.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com