Tinplate ToddlerOn the serious side, there are vast differences in the way German is spoken. I live in northern Germany, where people are said to speak a rather clean German, without a trace of a strong dialect. I have a hard time to understand people from Bavaria or Switzerland. Sometimes, you get subtitles on TV ...
In high school, where I took German, I went on a short exchange program to the Palatinate/Rhineland. We had to keep asking our hosts to at least speak 'Hoch Deutsch' so we'd have a chance to understand them.
When they wouldn't, we adopted fake Southern accents (we were Yankees), and they got the point.
On the cars of Herr Docktor Porsche, someone once wrote to Car and Driver:
"Is it pronounced porch or porsha?" to which the editor replied "It is pronounced 'it'."
Eric
There are quite a few other company names, which sound funny when pronounced by English or American people. For instance Bayer, which is to be pronounced "buyer" instead of "bear". Volkswagen is pronounced "folcksvuhgen" and Mercedes more like "mare-tsae-daes". And while I am at it - the Swedish furniture chain Ikea is "ee-kay-uh" in Sweden.
Happy times!
Ulrich (aka The Tin Man)
"You´re never too old for a happy childhood!"
I met a Marklin rep at a trade show years back who pointed out it's pronounced "mare-clean" not "mark-linn".
I recall hearing on radio a live recording of a Swedish group doing "The Wreck of the Old 97", singing about how the engineer was "scolded" to death by the steam.
Because there's supposed to be an umlaut on the a in Marklin, of course that doesn't help anyone who never took German. In English, a plain A is most commonly pronouced in the way many peopel sya it - Mark-lin, as the name Mark. But that's not the correct sound for an unlauted A.
Wow, HS German was WAY too long ago, plus most of my realtives that could speak PA Dutch have passed on. Although I had to resist the urge to correct them when I was learning German in school. the PA Dutch form is a LONG way from the Hoch Deutsch taught in school. Biggest thing is the gender pronouns all but dissapear, nearly everything in PA Dutch is 'das'.
At least the train manufacturer Bing was straightforward.
Just saw a good example of German in a joke today: The other week I was at the track and field meet, and met a guy with a long fiberglass stick. Oh, are you a pole vaulter, I asked? Nein, he replied, I'm German. But how did you know my name was Walter?
Even better, my Grandfather was Walter, and my Uncle was "das Chunior" (Walter, Jr.)
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Tinplate Toddler wjstix He said he had a terrible time there because the Bavarian accent was so different from his that most of the time he couldn't tell what people were saying. It was basically like a foreign language to him. I was not aware that Bavaria is a part of Germany IU always thought Bavaria to be a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire On the serious side, there are vast differences in the way German is spoken. I live in northern Germany, where people are said to speak a rather clean German, without a trace of a strong dialect. I have a hard time to understand people from Bavaria or Switzerland. Sometimes, you get subtitles on TV ...
wjstix He said he had a terrible time there because the Bavarian accent was so different from his that most of the time he couldn't tell what people were saying. It was basically like a foreign language to him.
I was not aware that Bavaria is a part of Germany IU always thought Bavaria to be a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
On the serious side, there are vast differences in the way German is spoken. I live in northern Germany, where people are said to speak a rather clean German, without a trace of a strong dialect. I have a hard time to understand people from Bavaria or Switzerland. Sometimes, you get subtitles on TV ...
LOL. Back in the day...oh about 80 years ago.....some of those purists up near Hamburg didn't think those Bavarians were really Germans. That's all I have to say about that.
- Douglas
selector Upon consideration, it’s pronounced “ee ess you.”
Upon consideration, it’s pronounced “ee ess you.”
Alton Junction
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
My wife and her family moved here from Holland just prior to her seventh birthday. They were from the coastal town that is wedged between The Hague (Den Haag) and the North Sea. When I first met her I decided that it would be both diplomatic and profitable to get interested in things Dutch. Her father informed me that those in the northern part of the country, particularly in the province of Friesland, were (and likely still are) very hard for many in the rest of the country to understand. It was totally a matter of dialect. I was amazed, considering that one can hop in a car and drive the breadth of the country in little more than four or five hours. You'd think that such huge differences in a spoken language would have flattened out significantly over the last couple hundred years, particularly in a county so small.
Then there was the US Coast Guard enlistee that I met on Attu Island, Alaska back in 2000. He was from Dublin. I understood about every fifth word.
John
The pitfalls of accents and dialects.
Re German language, we tend to forget that Germany only became a country in the 1870's, unifying a number of separate countries like Bavaria and Prussia (who had their own kings and governments) into one nation. It makes sense then that the 'common' language of German would be very different from one former country to another.
Well, that´s only half correct! Until 1806, there was a kind of federation, which was called the "Holy Roman Empire of German Nation" under the leadership a king, later Emperor, who was elected by an electorate consisting of prince-electors. German was the key language in the territory, spoken in various regional dialects, as well as French, Italian and Latin. The Holy Roman Empire of German Nation ended under the boots of Napoleon´s Grand Army. The Napoleonic wars left Germany divided in a vast number of kingdoms, duchys and principalities, which wetre later (1870) united by Bismarck to form the German Empire - this time without Austria.
German history is quite complicated. People were and are still attached more to their regions and less to a rather artificial nation called Germany, which, in modern times united kingdoms which were quite opposed to a central rule under Prussian leadership. Bismarck was smart enough to recognize that only by growing to an unappetizing size, Prussia could avoid being invaded by either the French or the Russians, who both would have liked to gobble it up. But, alas, he united people too proud of their regional heritage to form a new, nation-wide identy.
That's the way I understand Germany. People tend to see themselves based upon language, culture, and heritage; and those types of things don't necessarily align themselves with modern political borders, which shift from time to time due to other priorities.
I think of the heart of Germany as being defined as the old Prussian Empire, which tended to cut across the northern two thirds of modern-day Germany and spread a bit eastward into Poland along the Baltic Sea.
LokSound is properly pronounced "throatwobbler mangrove."
Disclaimer: This post may contain humor, sarcasm, and/or flatulence.
Michael Mornard
Bringing the North Woods to South Dakota!
My British wife from up north near the border of Scottland can relate to the Scottish elevator skit. We've watched it a bazillion times. It's her life almost every day.
I'm gonna come to whatever desk you are at and go to the electric chair for you.
"please repeat that". Say it with an American accent. Eh levin.
"If you don't understand the lingo, go away back to your ain country."
I think being a Geordie is about the same as being a Scott. It's the worst with young people in shops or fast food restaurants.
The Selkirk Grace:
Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be Thankit!
Me mither....er, I mean...my mother traveled to Scotland in the 70's. She was late in the day when getting to a small town and was unable to find her lodgings at a kirk...church. She stopped an elderly woman and asked, in Canadian English, if she knew the way to the church. The woman feigned to not be able to understand the question...several times. Finally, in exasperation, my mom dragged up her Scottish heritage and asked, "D'ya ken where the kirk is?"
"Och, aye!" beamed the old lady, and took my mom to the church.
All the Scottish dialect I know, I learned by watching Star Trek
"Lockomotiveh" and "Porshay"?
In what alternate Europe do people say that? I know it is highly dangerous to criticize a native speaker 'on his home turf', so to speak ... but neither of those things makes complete sense to me. (Not arguing at all about pronouncing the terminal 'e' properly as stated on either one!)
Perhaps this is some unusual regional German way to pronounce. But I have never heard any German teacher (either secondary-school or college), or actual German railroad person, ever pronounce the word 'Lokomotive' other than with a reasonably round 'O'. (No more a full long 'O' than Latin words spoken by many Brits have a full round 'yew' for their Us, of course - but most definitely not the short vowel sound.) (Not to say that isn't done with a full short vowel by some, but not to say it's right, either.) And surely, knowing how the word is spoken, the abbreviation would follow too.
I'm pretty sure this is a dialect thing, because I've also never heard Volkswagen with a "U" after the W in it; it's always been like 'folks-vah-g'n' with a hard 'g' almost with a trace of 'k' in it. (Then of course there's Fahrvergnügen (for which I actually have a version of IPA phonetics - ˈfaːɐ̯fɛɐ̯ˌɡnyːɡn̩ - if that's not right, what would be? I always get derailed turning the corner between 'fahr' and 'ver' and then again going to the 'gn'! with my nordamerikanische Zunge...)
First thing you know, we'll start hearing that Boxpok is pronounced 'pock'. (Or spelled with an 'x' as the last letter) Don't go there. It is not.
And Ferry would not AT ALL like to hear his family name with an 'ay' on the end of it, which of course was, is, and hopefully will long be much more like "pohr-schuh" almost with a schwa for the 'e' -- come to think of it, very like the same letter on the end of Lokomotive. Wouldn't you have to be aspiring to be French to rhyme it with our American pretentious pronunciation of coupe?
Thanks for the lesson, Herr Oberlehrer! You must be German...
Ouch! Well, as Overmod said right off the top, "I know it is highly dangerous . . .".
Thanks, Fraulien Arnold (my old junior college German teacher), for enabling me to understand Ulrich at first read.
I have Frau Aschenbach in 8th and 9th grade, and Herr Gumlock in 9-12 to thank for my undertsanding of German. And then various family members - my Mom's maiden name was Kostenbader, after all. And her Mom (my Grandmother) was a Buskirk.
Danke, Herr Ulrich, fur Ihre Bearbeitung. Du bist ein guter Mann.
Porsche is pronounced Poorshuhh
Porsche came out and clarified the pronunciation situation a while ago.
From what I've hear loksound is pronounced everything from Lock sound to louke sound.
Steve
If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough!
Attuvian Danke, Herr Ulrich, fur Ihre Bearbeitung. Du bist ein guter Mann.
Gee - you make me blush
I took German for years in school.
.
If you give me a while to read it, I can usually figure out what a sentence is saying. I can piece together a sentence that maybe a German speaker will understand. I cannot understand one bit of what a German speaker says.
I could never figure out the DER/DIE/DAS thing.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
rrinker All the Scottish dialect I know, I learned by watching Star Trek --Randy
I am still surprised at how many people my wife and I run into that don't know what "daft" means. I'm pretty sure Scotty said it a time or two but for all my having watched the episodes countless times, I can't remember any specific scenes.
Echt? Hast du eine liebens mude? (too lazy to do the umlauts)
I grew up in California but took German in high school and college, but Spanish in California is basically a second language. Go figure.
I am remarried and my first wife, although born long after WWII, has a dim view of anything German (they did bomb her country so I guess British have long memories.)
The gender pronouns are easy - German is fairly easy, until you get to the made up words to describe modern things, made by combining multiple existing words that translate into (often) a literal description of the object. The rules of German grammer are meant to be followed, not broken like English rules (all those silly exceptions to every rule - that's what makes English hard to learn, even for a native speaker).
As to Scotty and 'daft' - I'm SURE he's said that a time or two. Then there's my favorite electronics YouTube channel, done by an Aussie who delights in using Aussie slang. Though someone else on the forum for that channel is the wone who wrote out "sure as Robert's your mother's brother". And one of my favorite performers, Mark Knopfler, a champion of Geordies everywhere, has a song on his last album "Good on You"
Taking an engineering degree, I am fairly immune to accents, I HAD to understand in order to get through various classes. I had professors of all sorts of nationalities and ethnic origins. Though occasionally I will come across outsourced tech support where I can't make out one word in ten.
riogrande5761 rrinker All the Scottish dialect I know, I learned by watching Star Trek --Randy I am still surprised at how many people my wife and I run into that don't know what "daft" means. I'm pretty sure Scotty said it a time or two but for all my having watched the episodes countless times, I can't remember any specific scenes.
Ya I'm pretty sure there's a scene where Spock is in command and gives an order and Scotty says something like "Wot, are you daft, man?" and then quickly adds "Sir"...but I can't think which episode right now.
BTW James Doohan was Irish-Canadian, and did many voices on radio and TV over the years. Oddly, he said the only accent he had trouble doing was Irish!
Most any time Star Trek needed an alien voice dub or a male voice on a computer or a radio message from someone off-screen, it's James Doohan's voice.
Tinplate ToddlerWell, that´s only half correct! Until 1806, there was a kind of federation, which was called the "Holy Roman Empire of German Nation" under the leadership a king, later Emperor, who was elected by an electorate consisting of prince-electors. German was the key language in the territory, spoken in various regional dialects, as well as French, Italian and Latin.
Well...I'd say what I said is more like 95% accurate. Calling the Holy Roman Empire (which as was famously pointed out was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire) or German Confederation a "country" would be kinda like calling the European Union of today a country. Maps tend to show dozens of independent countries / kingdoms with an outline for the HRE or German Confederation. Germany as we understand it today didn't exist until the 1870's (about the same time Italy united into one nation.)
https://www.euratlas.net/history/europe/1800/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_countries_in_Europe_after_1815
If we're gonna discuss unintelligible accents . . .
Back in the stone age (college), there was a Chinese student and a Brazilian student arguing about wrestling (in English). Apparently, the Chinese guy didn't know wrestling was fake. "Oh yeah! Then how come Hulk Hogan was able to body slam Andre the Giant in Wrestle Mania IV? Huh? How 'bout dat? Huh, huh, huh?"
Sorry I couldn't phonetically misspell the garbled word usements he structured.
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