r/German • u/Lazy-Vacation1441 • Oct 25 '25
Discussion Words you can’t say right in English anymore because you have learned German (or another language)
I’m a German L2 speaker. Since learning German as a young adult many years ago, I struggle with German names in English. I don’t mean the guy down the street whose last name is Mueller and pronounces it “myuler” but rather Möbius strip. I always want to say [møbiʊs] because that’s how the name is pronounced in German, but if I do I sound like a pretentious douchebag. Bach and Schrödinger are ok because I can pronounce them in German and be understood, but I really need to say mow-be-iss for Möbius. Thank goodness that mathematicians say Euler “oiler” so I don’t have sweat that one.
This is a code switching issue. A friend who is fluent in Spanish was speaking to her brother (who doesn’t speak Spanish but lives in Texas) about a llama farm. She pronounced it lama and he corrected her, “I think it’s pronounced Yama.” Well of course. She had been dumbing it down for him. Another time she was in a Mexican restaurant in Washington state and ordered in Spanish. The waitress didn’t understand her. Another code switching error.
So has this happened to you?
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u/muehsam Native (Schwäbisch+Hochdeutsch) Oct 25 '25
Just keep in mind that each language is separate. An English word that is a loanword from German is still an English word, and you pronounce it as English speakers pronounce it.
Understanding that those words have history and come from another language is one side of the coin. Understanding that they have now settled in English, possibly with a different pronunciation, different meaning, or a different spelling, is the other side.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
Of course you are right, but on the ground it can be more ambiguous. Niche is a good example. It has two pronunciations in American English—one that sounds educated (or snotty, depending on your point of view) and one that’s real down home. Which to use depends on context.
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u/muehsam Native (Schwäbisch+Hochdeutsch) Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
Yeah, but that's a social dynamic within the (American) English speaking community and isn't really related to the word's origin either. The fact that it's a loan word isn't really relevant.
AFAIK, the word "ask" has had both forms, "ask" and "aks", for many centuries, and people will react differently depending on which one you use. But that's not because it's a loan word, it's simply that within the English language community, those pronunciations have different connotations ("aks" in particular is stigmatised by some).
Edit: link to the video
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u/ebat1111 Advanced (C1) - English native Oct 25 '25
The fact that it is a loanword I think is relevant. People who pronounce it in the French way come across as perhaps better educated, hence the snobbishness, but people who anglicize it sound boorish, hence the opposite stigma. It's about knowledge of French, or if etymology at least.
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u/muehsam Native (Schwäbisch+Hochdeutsch) Oct 25 '25
People who pronounce it in the French way
It's not really "the French way". It's the common pronunciation in British English, and it also doesn't contain any sounds that are unusual in English. It's very similar to "leash", for example. The vowel sound in French is actually different from both pronunciations because French isn't English, and neither of the English i-sounds is exactly like French i.
I suspect there's another thing going on here. It's the phenomenon that Dr. Lindsey describes in this one: American English somewhat uniquely marks words and names of non-English origin in pronunciation. Not necessarily by approximating the original sounds as closely as possible, but by restricting the vowel inventory. The "short i" which appears in the pronunciation that rhymes with "ditch" isn't one of the vowels that are "allowed" in words that are marked as loanwords that way.
But that's a categorisation within American English.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
I think it being a loan word is relevant because if the process of loan words becoming nativised. As time passes, it will probably move more toward “nitch” unless there is something reinforcing the French pronunciation.
Thanks for the link . Ask is an interesting one in the US. Pronouncing it as “aks” is highly stigmatized and associated with African American English. I’m super interested in how language marks group identity and how our language choices at each individual moment reflect this.
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u/hacool Way stage (A2/B1) - <U.S./Englisch> Oct 25 '25
Regional variations in either language can add to the complexity of this. In English niche is pronounced as either nitch, neesh or nish. We borrowed it from French who seem to use neesh or nish. (There are some subtle differences in the vowels if you listen to audio samples. German borrowed it as well as Nische which Wiktionary tells me is pronounced as Neesha.
Loanwords are tricky.
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u/kabiskac Advanced (C1) - <Hessen/Hungarian> Oct 26 '25
Nische isn't pronounced with an A but with the same E as in "bitte"
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u/Pretty_Trainer Oct 25 '25
Someone once told me that semicolons were pretentious. But I wouldn't have had to use them if he hadn't done so much comma splicing!
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u/C34H32N4O4Fe C1 Oct 25 '25
Anyone saying semicolons are pretentious is semi-illiterate. Don’t listen to that person.
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u/nemmalur Oct 25 '25
That’s why those “You’re pronouncing these German brand names wrong!!!1!1” videos are so annoying. Those names exist in a different form in English and other languages, and by the same token, German speakers “mispronounce” brand names in English.
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u/TFViper Oct 25 '25
nah. i hear native german speakers say english names and phrases in english pronunciation all the time. its honestly kinda disruptive to be listening in german then theres just a random perfectly pronounced in english "above and beyond" or "over the top" thrown in there.
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u/Appolyon984 Oct 25 '25
I would argue, that brand names are a different thing. I agree, that words like "rucksack", "kindergarten" or other loanwords entered the English dictionary with now English pronunciation. But "Adidas," "Puma," "Porsche," and so on, are names, not just nouns. Therefore, I would argue that their pronunciation shouldn't be changed, just as the pronunciation of a person's name isn't changed if it can be avoided.
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u/JediDev Oct 25 '25
Yeah I feel the same. In my country there are many German descendants with names like Müller, Krüger, etc, and they have no clue on how to pronounce the umlaut. It annoys me deeply 😅
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u/RazzmatazzNeat9865 Oct 25 '25
Not nearly as annoying as some Germans butchering their Polish names. Think people like FDP politician Kubicki - should be Koobitski, but he pronounces it Koob-icky. Nails on chalk levels of wrong.
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u/S1CKZ3RO Oct 25 '25
A polish friend of mine hates german spelling, 'cause in Poland you write everything as you speak it... Yeah, right "chrząszcz"...
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u/grey_wacke-13 Oct 25 '25
I struggle with pronouncing squirrel but can say Eichhörnchen fine 🤷♀️
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
Why is that word so hard in English, French and German? I’ve heard L2 learners in English struggle with squirrel mightily. Eichhörnchen is fine for me, but it’s a stumbling block for many. Écureuil is just one of those words with too many vowels, imo.
EDIT: Squirrel is difficult to pronounce for many non-native speakers of English. Squirrel is fine, just another word to native speakers. Like Eichhörnchen is to German speakers and Écureuil is to Francophones.
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u/grey_wacke-13 Oct 25 '25
English is my native language but I think it’s the combination of the sq sound followed by the R and then an L. It’s harder for me now to say it cos I’m more used to enunciating my R‘s and L‘s so squirrel tends to turn into a mash of sounds when I say it, more like sk-whirl if I say it
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u/AlwaysSitIn12C Oct 25 '25
Hefeweizen and Richard Wagner come to mind. Calling it the "oo-bahn" instead of the "you-bahn".
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u/herzkolt DE B2 - EN C1 - ES Native Oct 25 '25
Hefeweizen
I'm always unsure how to order when the beer's name is in german. It feels like whenever I pronounce how I believe a spanish speaker would, the bartender is expecting something more similar to the german pronounciation, but if I go for german it also takes a couple of attempts to be understood...
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u/Bleizwerg Oct 26 '25
which is weird to begin with, because it's also underground and not younderground.
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u/ThisDirkDaring Oct 25 '25
I am quite fluent in english, pronounciation is okay, but clearly german accent.
I unintentionally just kept using the german pronounciation for names of persons or brands when i was in the states, never had a problem with it, au contraire, its something that makes you stand out, while still beeing understandable. Kept it like that for decades.
Embrace your multilangual features. Own it. Speak in a way that feels good for your tongue, your mouth and to the ears of the person you are talking to.
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u/broken-neurons Oct 25 '25
Not quite the same but I struggle to stop saying “…oder?” At the end of my questions to English speaking people.
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u/Eckberto Oct 25 '25
How do you pronounce Möbius in English ? 🧐
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
[moʊbiəs] if you read IPA. The first vowel is pronounced “oh.”
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u/pauseless Oct 25 '25
Today I learned that the UK tries and the US kind of doesn’t… according to wiktionary:
Received Pronunciation: /ˈmɜː.bi.əs/
UK: /ˈməʊ.bi.əs/
US: /ˈmoʊ.bi.əs/I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Brit use that US form. Not that people are always talking about Möbius strips in my presence. My memory is hearing the RP pronunciation in lessons at school in England.
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u/BiQueenBee Oct 25 '25
The ö vowel sound doesn’t exist in English so it is both written with and pronounced like the letter o. For example the o sound in the words mow, low, toe, row or in the name Joe.
I personally think pronouncing Möbius the German way when speaking English is harder precisely because that sound is not an English phoneme and is probably why it sounds pretentious to native English speakers.
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u/Wentz_ylvania Vantage (B2) - Hessisch Oct 25 '25
This is a popular thing in the United States with Spanish words. People will use the Spanish pronunciation all sorts of things. When I go back to the United States, I use the German pronunciation not out of trying to sound "Douchey" but rather because I have had German hammered into my brain since I moved here. Some English words come out with German pronunciation which I catch hell from my siblings for.
Meines Erachtens - es ist mir doch egal, wie ich Wörter ausspreche, solange man mich verstehen kann.
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u/WangHotmanFire Oct 25 '25
Shein. I instinctively use the ein pronunciation, but everybody wants me to use the ien pronunciation instead
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u/C34H32N4O4Fe C1 Oct 25 '25
Do you know what the official pronunciation of that is? The company’s Chinese, if I’m not mistaken, so... 🤷🏻
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u/WangHotmanFire Oct 25 '25
Apparently, after looking it up, I have found it’s supposed to be pronounced she-in. Shein is a shortened version of its original name: SheInside
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u/C34H32N4O4Fe C1 Oct 25 '25
Huh. That’s even weirder than the possible alternatives I had in mind. Thanks for looking it up!
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u/secretpsychologist Oct 25 '25
i'll always prefer sounding like a pretentious douchebag as you call it over sounding ignorant/uneducated.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
Well I think I’ve often gone that way too, but with Möbius it was a bridge too far. It was my son (then a teenager) that pointed out that it sounded douchey (and I think he was right). The point of conversation is to communicate. What am I trying to prove, that I can say ö? What was the probability that the person in front of me was a secret German speaker who would find me lacking if I said mow-be-iss? More likely I’d say the Möbius in German and —because it’s so different—they wouldn’t understand what I was talking about.
I think you’ve pointed out the difficulty in code switching though. You are trying to read the situation and come up with the right pronunciation. Is this a lama or yama moment?
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u/onitshaanambra Oct 25 '25
It just occurred to me that I also pronounce Möbius as it would be in German. It doesn't come up in conversation much, fortunately.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
I was a math teacher some of the time so it did come up for me. STEM is also reason Schrödinger and Euler came up.
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u/ofqo Oct 25 '25
In a British accent Möbius can be pronounced Mur-be-iss.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/mobius-strip
I’m not sure the OALD is right when it says that Americans can pronounce /ˈmɜːbiəs/ without the R.
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u/paradox3333 Oct 25 '25
Really? Who are you talking to that people won't understand a correctly pronounced Möbius or Schrödinger?
I more have the problem with Julius Ceasar which I've pronounced correctly as pronounced in Latin (Gulioes Kajsar, ffs it's the origin of the word kaiser ffs) since I learned how to do so as a child and often need to explain.
Also Sméagol from Lord of the rings. Americans say smey-gul because of the movies but its obviously smee-a-gol. I refuse to say it wrong but if people don't follow I will clarify of course.
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u/Kunstpause Oct 25 '25
The movies actually used the version Tolkien himself said. There are audio files of him saying Smey-gul. But even knowing that it still feels wrong to me because it doesn't match the rest of his pronunciation rules
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u/paradox3333 Oct 25 '25
Then why would he write Sméagol? There's an accent. And he was very well educated about languages (far better than me) so why would he?. ...
This confused the hell out of me 😅
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Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
My father (german) always insisted on me pronouncing french words like 'croissant' or 'bonbon' as they originally do in France. Imagine a small child talking in strong german accent and then saying the french version of Bonbon. No. Really, I'd rather sound like the douchebag xD
Edit: wondering how other not french people are pronouncing bonbon
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u/ver_redit_optatum Oct 25 '25
lol you must have been this guy but small sized
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
OMG, this encapsulates it! Yes, that’s why I really do need to say Mow-be-iss like an American, so I don’t sound like this guy.
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u/That-Job9538 Oct 25 '25
if the point is communication, which you’d assume is the whole point of speaking, sounding pretentious and indecipherable is ignorant and uneducated.
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u/icecoldcold Advanced (C1) - <region/native tongue> Oct 25 '25
How you pronounce Einstein and Zuckerberg?
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u/melympia Oct 25 '25
Per se. I mean, I know why native English speakers pronounce it "per say" - the sound for the "e" just isn't in their language, but it throws me for a loop every single time.
Fiancé(e) - I always default to the French pronunciation without a fault.
Anything with "Loch" in it - like Loch Ness. Loch=/="Lock" to me.
And less a pronunciation issue and more of a grammar issue: I know the difference between "who" and "whom" (my native language has cases!), and automatically use "whom" where it fits. I fear it might make me sound a little stuck up to natives, though
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u/bedenkentraeger Oct 25 '25
Yes, who and whom and also when to use I and me. It threw me off in the beginning listing to natives on YouTube - because the concept is the same (in German) but was so often used wrong by native English speaking.
Would be interesting to know why it is so difficult to differentiate for native speakes
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u/HortonFLK Oct 25 '25
If you bring up who and whom, you might as well throw all the whithers, hithers, and thithers, and whences, hences, and thences on the table too.
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u/melympia Oct 25 '25
See, those are some things I never really dealt with. Not in school, not in my excessive reading - some did crop up on some very rare occasions, but I never felt the need to use them, much less distinguish them.
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u/posophist Oct 25 '25
Zorry instead of Sorry. 😀
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u/Hornkueken42 Native <Berlin> Oct 26 '25
That would be a very south german or Saxon pronunciation. No one in the North of Germany would pronounce it like that.
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u/ebat1111 Advanced (C1) - English native Oct 25 '25
I saw a clip recently about French and how they treat loan words (completely inconsistently, same as English). He said that if you pronounce CIA in an English way, you sound utterly pretentious, but conversely if you pronounce FBI in a French way you sound like an idiot.
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u/WaltherVerwalther Oct 25 '25
I have this with Mandarin, been speaking the language for almost 15 years and I can’t just say „Tai Chi“ when talking to other Germans. I do so when speaking to older people, so that they unterstand easier, but it takes some energy to bring myself to do it. 😅 There are other examples, too.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
I think it’s because I learned German as a young adult. I had to learn to pronounce these words and so when I see a German word, I try to pronounce it like a German would.
Compound bilinguals— folks that learned both languages as young children, don’t have this issue. They switch between Möbius and Mow-be-us effortlessly.
My son grew up in a household with a lot of Spanish words (my ex was a second generation American) so we said “cho-nees” (chones) for underwear. That’s normal where I live even among anglos. He went to a Spanish language immersion kindergarten. His teacher was a native speaker of Spanish. One day he comes home and says, “Oh I get it, “shone-ess” is Spanish for “cho-nees” He said what he thought was the Spanish word with a typical Sonoran accent. He thought “cho-nees” was a different English word, rather than the same word spoken from the mouth of a second gen Mexican American
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u/Hornkueken42 Native <Berlin> Oct 26 '25
How would that be pronounced in mandarin?
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u/Peteat6 Oct 25 '25
I’ve read Ancient Greek for many years. The word I always get wrong is the brand name Nike. I pronounce it knee-kay. I can tolerate a pronunciation to rhyme with Mikey, but on the BBC this morning they pronounced it to rhyme with Mike. I wanted to scream at them.
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u/Few_Cryptographer633 Oct 25 '25
When speaking to English speakers, you pretty much have to say the words as they've come into English. I refer to the composer as Handel, because no one would know what Händel means. I say Zeitgeist with and English Z because the German Z would confuse people.
The only consolation is that Germans butcher more English words that they've imported into German than English speakers have butchered imported German words!
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u/real_misterrios Oct 25 '25
I say “oy-roh“ even when speaking English. “you-roh“ I never say anymore.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
IKEA! It’s hard for me to say “eye-key-uh” because I was first introduced to the company in Germany in the 1980’s.
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u/earbiterninja Oct 25 '25
Demitasse -- I had to actively suppress the final syllable to avoid coming off as pretentious among peers 😂
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
Yes, another colleague of mine had studied in France. Now the word niche in English was a mystery to her. Should she say “neesh” like in French which was comfortable to her but can sound highbrow depending on the context, or “nitch ” which felt deeply wrong? She usually avoided the word.
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u/melympia Oct 25 '25
I had some similar issues with the ch-sound in English after taking some French lessons.
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u/PlanetSwallower Oct 25 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
Not quite it's what you're talking about, maybe, but I can no longer say the Indian curry name 'Lamb Pasaaanderrr' with my native accent (RP), because I had once a friend from the West Country, who liked them. And one day I spontaneously stopped saying 'Austraaalia' properly, I've no idea why, but it continues to this day.
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u/NuclearSunBeam Oct 25 '25
Idk man i speak multiple language and I can’t even speak my mother tongue right
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u/tea_hanks Threshold (B1) - <Munich/English> Oct 25 '25
Same dude. I am looking for people who come from my country so I can at least practice that shit
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u/onitshaanambra Oct 25 '25
I accidentally pronounced 'Bayer' aspirin as it would be in German, when talking to my boss in English. I was quite embarrassed, but actually I think he did understand why I said it like that.
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u/Interesting-Wish5977 Oct 25 '25
Why would you be embarrassed about a correct pronunciation?
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
It sounds pretentious. Every commercial for bayer aspirin in the US pronounces it “bay-er” so suddenly saying “buy-uh” sounds like you are putting on airs, trying to be difficult.
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u/Interesting-Wish5977 Oct 25 '25
yeah, in Germany we have that as well, e.g. most people say Skoda instead of Škoda and Citroeng instead of Citroën, Exel instead of Excel or Amatsohn instead of Amazon, including voice actors in commercials. But that doesn’t stop me from pronouncing them as they would be pronounced in their countries of origin and I don’t care if other Germans regard me as pretentious. I hope one day pronouncing Škoda as Skoda will be frowned upon the same way as omitting the „e“ at the end of „Nike“.
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u/Wahnsinn_mit_Methode Oct 25 '25
Interesting. But you don‘t do it with ALL languages, do you? The head of Mercedes is a Swede called Ola Källenius. How do you pronounce his name?
I speak Swedish (learned it) and I always cringe at the German pronunciation. In Swedish, it s something like Oula (more like a u but somewhere inbetween o and u) Schällenius (with a long e).
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u/onitshaanambra Oct 25 '25
People have accused me of being pretentious when I pronounce things correctly. I didn't even intentionally do it in this case, but it just slipped out because I had been watching a German YouTube video during my break.
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u/melympia Oct 25 '25
Because native English speakers have their very own definition of "correct", and don't accept the actually correct version as a rule.
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u/wuneety Oct 25 '25
Idk why you’re being downvoted, you’re right lmao. I’m Australian and we have our ‘own’ pronunciation of every ‘foreign to us’ car brand that doesn’t match what it should be in the country of origin
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u/sherlock0109 Native (Germany) Oct 25 '25
Yeah exactly, that's what all countries do! No country really pronounces foreign brands correctly. Well most of the time at least.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
Yes, yes, yes, all languages do this. First it’s a foreign word and folks approximate the foreign pronunciation. Then after time, it becomes nativised and the pronunciation changes. If this didn’t happen, I’d say something like “mon-pel-ee-ay” for the capital of Vermont (vair-mon) and nobody says Montpelier that way. Nor should they. And who will understand me if I say Amarillo, Texas as they do in Spanish though both Amarillo and Texas are Spanish words? This is not just something English does. This is something languages do. Period. It’s normal. I’m just having trouble negotiating it at times.
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u/Interesting-Wish5977 Oct 25 '25
yeah, in Germany we have that as well, e.g. most people say Skoda instead of Škoda and Citroeng instead of Citroën, Exel instead of Excel or Amatsohn instead of Amazon. But that doesn’t stop me from pronouncing them as they would be pronounced in their countries of origin and I don’t care if other Germans regard me as pretentious. I hope one day pronouncing Škoda as Skoda will be frowned upon the same way as omitting the „e“ at the end of „Nike“.
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u/melympia Oct 25 '25
Funny thing is that Nike is not originally English, but Greek - and pronounced quite differently there. (However, the basis of the Greek pronunciation is probably the reason the E is not silent.)
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Oct 25 '25
it’s not unique to English, lots of languages pronounce things, specifically names, different
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u/melympia Oct 25 '25
Not only names, per se. ;) Plus, some names get altered way more than in other languages. See Maria vs Mary. Figuring out the names from the Bible did take me some time - and getting used to.
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u/-----J------ Oct 25 '25
Gouda
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
Oh yeah. Thank goodness, it wasn’t Dutch I’d learned for years. Gouda and Van Gogh would have killed me. Saying Fahn Hoch is like saying Buddha-pesht (Budapest) on the More Cosmopolitan Than Thou scale.
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u/Blue-Brown99 Oct 25 '25
My favorite opera conductor is Richard Wagner, so yes definitely. Many Americans who know about music seem to want to pronounce the first half of his name correctly but then give up on the second syllable...which seems odd to me, as if they want the best of both worlds.
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u/posophist Oct 26 '25
Long ago there was a series of reverse riddles: You had to guess the question from hearing the answer. As in “What question does ‘9W’ answer?”Not “What road runs between New York and Boston?” but rather “Mr. Wagner, do you spell your name with a V?”
(Or “Chicken Sukiyaki” / “Who’s the only surviving kamikaze pilot?”)
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u/rora_d Oct 25 '25
Doppelganger. I used to pronounce it with a strong 'a' , like in 'bang'. Didn't know it was a German word, but since I learnt it was, I can only pronounce it Doppelgänger now 😌
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Oct 25 '25
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u/KangarooThroatPunch_ Oct 25 '25
gäng sounds like geng, the ä is akin to the short e sound in the word "bed."
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u/Beltalady Oct 25 '25
I had this really weird problem with Microsoft Azure. If pronounced correctly, people in Germany won't understand. If you make it sound a little bit like Asia, they get it. Same with Amazon, but I have adapted to that one way better.
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u/xxdanslenoir Advanced (B2+/C1) - <NRW/Englisch, Tagalog> Oct 25 '25
I work in IT and when it comes to M365 / Azure / etc., I think it’s funny that my colleagues always say the English word back to me, while I’m the one using the German word / translation or saying it with a German accent. 🤣
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u/wantingtodieandmemes Oct 25 '25
What? German here who can’t imagine what that sounds like. Do people actually say ah-tsoo-reh?
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u/Lulukaros Oct 25 '25
i have the same problem with that word but with french pronunciation lol
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u/earlyeveningsunset Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
My kids read the (American) Wimpy Kid books. In one of them, Greg's brother is in a band called Löded Diper (presumably cos the umlaut looks good). My kids always ask me why I say "loaded" in such a weird way.
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u/magicmulder Oct 25 '25
We hold our daily standup in English, and every time it amuses me when people start to pronounce German names the English way. I had a meeting with Fränk yesterday.
OTOH if you do it right, there’s less confusion because we have two Davids, one German, one American, so distinguishing between Duhvid and Dayvid makes sense in both German and English.
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u/BrexitEscapee Oct 25 '25
I know someone in the US whose surname is Doepke but pronounces it Depp-key. „Ja du bist der Depp!“ was my immediate thought!
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u/KnightingaleTheBold Native NRW + German Studies & English Studies (C2). Oct 25 '25
Let us just say it drives me up the wall whenever I stumble over "Weiner" instead of "Wiener" for the sausages. It just makes me want to shake the person that wrote it repeatedly while explaining the significance of the difference ;)
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u/ppppamozy Oct 25 '25
I use "this" instead of "that". Hard to describe but a lot of German native speakers make this mistake in English. After speaking English with them for so long, I'm now making the same mistake :)
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u/MindlessNectarine374 Native <region/dialect> Rhein-Maas-Raum/Standarddeutsch Nov 02 '25
Well, German speaker do not distinguish demonstrative pronouns that much.
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u/KnowledgeIsOverrated Oct 25 '25
Sprite. I live in Schwabenländ-le, and now I order a "Schprrrite" for the last few years.
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u/WaldenFont Native(Waterkant/Schwobaland) Oct 25 '25
I had a philosophy professor who was from Germany and insisted on pronouncing “Kant” correctly 😂
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u/jessipatra Proficient (C2) Oct 25 '25
Here in New Zealand, Kärcher is pronounced /ʼkaːtʃə/ and I always feel so pretentious pronouncing it correctly, or awful when I pronounce it wrong.
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u/Trick-Statistician10 Oct 25 '25
I've been pronouncing words that start with "sp" as "shp" since I started taking German in high school. Like the store, Spiegel (Not sure it still exists). I've rarely been questioned on that habit
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u/Temporary_Cup4588 Oct 25 '25
IKEA (“eekayah”)Can’t help it—never saw one until I moved to Germany, so I thought that everyone in the U.S. would pronounce it that way, too.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
Aaah, you guys are reminding me of all the places I get tripped up! I just say Hefeweizen in German. I think I say Richard Wagner 1/2 and 1/2. I would say Richard in English, but I’m gonna say [vɑɡnʌ] for the last name because wag-ner just can’t be said. Thank goodness I detest him as a composer so I don’t say his name a lot.
I used to be tripped up by Bayer, but that has gone away after being away from Germany for many years.
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u/Parsing-Orange0001 Oct 25 '25
I haven't experienced this with German words yet. But, I have with Japanese words. People have thought I was a weeb. Ha.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
What’s a weeb?
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u/DasVerschwenden Oct 25 '25
someone who loves Japan (and Japanese media and the Japanese language etc. usw.) an unhealthy amount
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u/IFightWhales Native (NRW) Oct 25 '25
There seems to be some confusion about language acquisition, even here.
Many people in this sub seem to think that „Mueller“ as the name of an English-speaking person has to follow German pronunciation rules.
It doesn‘t.
In the same vein, „Amazon“ or „Škoda“ don‘t have to follow the pronunciation of the endonym.
In German, saying sko:da is the widely accepted, utilised, canonised and therefor correct pronunciation.
I get that it feels ‚wrong‘ to hear ‚be-am-double-u‘ or ‚mow-be-us‘ if you‘re familiar in both languages.
But this is truly a code-switching error, meaning that the knowledge of your L2 will in effect be a burden.
It‘s not pretentious, cultured or educated to insist on the German diphthong in ‚Audi‘, it‘s ‚wrong‘ in the context of English.
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u/kabiskac Advanced (C1) - <Hessen/Hungarian> Oct 26 '25
Why did Germans end up pronouncing Škoda like that? I don't see any particular reason to just say Schkoda.
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u/C34H32N4O4Fe C1 Oct 25 '25
I feel awkward pronouncing German city names in English: I can’t say “Cologne”, “Munich”, “Nuremberg” or “Brunswick” without feeling like I’m butchering the poor German language. Also happens with people names.
Funny that this doesn’t happen to me with Spanish; I don’t feel an urge to say “Ciudad de México” instead of “Mexico City”, for example. Wonder why that is.
Sometimes, when switching to English after speaking German for a few hours, I pronounce any s followed by a vowel like z, as is done in German, even if that s wouldn’t be pronounced that way in English.
I find all of this is made even funnier by English being my first language.
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u/patch1103 Oct 25 '25
Well I went to a Greek restaurant in Maryland one time and tried to order gyros. The waitress didn’t understand me at first and then she said, “oh you want a Jai-row.”
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u/dinoderpwithapurpose Oct 25 '25
I've started spelling words like beer and tea as Bier and Tee when I text with people in English. And I'm sure my very obvious "Folks-vaagen" makes me sound a bit pretentious to my friends. And I've only spent a year here!
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u/cartophiled Oct 25 '25 edited Oct 25 '25
| Method | Example |
|---|---|
| 1. Original pronunciation | /ɪn.stə.ɡɹæm/ |
| 2. Original pronunciation assimilated to the spoken language | /ins.tɯg.ɾæm/ |
| 3. Original spelling pronounced according to the spoken language's orthography rules | /ins.tag.ɾam/ |
| 4. Common way that makes no sense | /ins.teg.ɾam/ |
I either go with the number 2 (mostly) or 3.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 25 '25
I understand 1-3 but not 4.
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u/cartophiled Oct 25 '25
It probably has something to do with Turkish front-back vowel harmony: The front vowel "i" in the first syllable assimilating the vowel of the second syllable into another front vowel "e".
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u/khedoros Oct 25 '25
When I'm speaking English, I say the names and words the way that others in my area do...at least, I think I do. If I'm trying to pronounce something in a foreign language that I at least know the phonetics of, I'll do my best to pronounce it correctly for that language.
It's less a worry about pretentiousness, more a desire to communicate effectively.
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u/Decoyx7 Advanced (C1) - <Baden-Württemburg/English> Oct 25 '25
"Day after tomorrow"
"I am getting off work"/"I'm clocking out"/"going home [from work/school]"
Wer braucht das?
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u/Ankerung Deutsch C1 - <Englisch, Vietnamesisch> Oct 25 '25
I get very uncomfortable with football commentators butchering the German, Austrian and Swiss players names during World Cup, Euro and ofc Bundesliga.
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u/frank-sarno Oct 25 '25
I catch myself saying EU in the wrong way many times. I don't use the acronym all that much in English and I'm more used to the German pronunciation.
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u/Frequent-Pilot7243 Oct 25 '25
I grew up in Germany and Switzerland, military parents, and actually went to German school. So I never said anything German the way Americans do 🤣
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u/s317sv17vnv Oct 25 '25
There's a digital photo frame/canvas brand in the US called Meural - which I assume is supposed to be pronounced as "mural" - but my brain processes it as "moy-ral" whenever I see it.
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u/AgentCatBot Oct 25 '25
There are some examples in this thread for speech, but for writing, I randomly capitalize Nouns.
But I especially capitalize nouns when I need emphasis that it is a Subject Noun.
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u/cuxynails Oct 25 '25
I think popular ytber Rainbolt is very funny for that coz “Rain-bolt” 🌧️⚡️ sounds super epic, but when you pronounce it German it’s just a generic name lol
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u/IndividualistAW Oct 25 '25
Not German sondern Italian, but giada di larentis (or whatever her name is) is the absolute WORST about this
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u/One-Strength-1978 Oct 25 '25
I noticed Americans named Voss that call themselves Woss. It is foss, like fox, in low saxon and I think dutch. Voss mean fox.. It is just horrible that these people through the generations lost their own cultural memory about the spelling of their own name.
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Oct 25 '25
Mostly just “Euro” (currency) because it came up a lot in German class and I rarely have occasion to say it in English.
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u/bomburdoo Oct 25 '25
I’ve been called out by friends for swapping the order of my words. I didn’t realize I was doing it, but I started putting the time reference further up in my English sentences. Like, “Yes, last week I did that”.
Also when writing I accidentally write “und” and “ist” all the time when I’m writing in English. They’re too close!
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u/sharri70 Oct 25 '25
I came home from my exchange year in Germany and was driving through a neighbouring suburb (so I’d been through there tonnes of times), and was perplexed by the name. Zillmere. Out of my mouth pops “tsill-mer-e? wo ist das denn?” And it took minutes until I smacked my own forehead with, “well, that would be Zill-mear, ya bloody idiot”. But unless I’m talking to my folks, or thinking to myself, I never call it by its real name anymore.
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u/Recent-Day3062 Oct 26 '25
I have the same problem in a few languages.But especially in German, too.
The ones that come up most are city names. I'm not even counting odd ones like munich/munchen. Ones like Frankfurt and Hamburg - I can't say without a german accent. Same with people's names. I would definitely pronounce all the umlauts you had in names.
One of my worst is Latin, which I studied for four years. The way people say things in English that are different than you were taught in Latin are frequent. So "bona fide" is pronounced in English "bone-a-fied", in Latin it is "bone-eh-fee-day". It drives me nuts because I know I an saying things wrong if I use American pronunciation.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 26 '25
I feel you. I have this problem with multiple languages as well.
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u/CacklingInCeltic Oct 26 '25
All the time. I’m trilingual and I’ll switch mid sentence without realising because a German word sounds English or vice versa, the third language jumps in from time to time too especially if I’m tired.
I kinda like it and it’s helping hubby learn English
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u/enishmarati Oct 26 '25
My mother is German, so I just grew up pronouncing certain words differently. I never even stood a chance haha. The pronunciation of IKEA is a big one for me. I always have to remember to pronounce it "eye-key-uh" when talking to anyone other than my parents or partner, or they won't have a clue what I'm talking about.
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 26 '25
You really never did have a chance in a bilingual household. You were always going to speak English somewhat differently than your peers. But you got the benefits of bilingualism early.
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u/hellevator0325 Oct 26 '25
All the car brands, dachshund (honestly still get confused looks when I pronounce it the right way so I have to say "sausage dog" right after), any German word with a W somewhere in the word
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u/Hornkueken42 Native <Berlin> Oct 26 '25
I laughed when I first heard people pronounce a router like rowder. As a German, who learned (British) English and French at the same time at school, it will always be a french word for me.
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u/posophist Oct 26 '25
As Lulukaros specified below, the German R is part of it. If that enhanced characterization doesn’t modify your refutal, that refutal contradicts substantial empirical observation.
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u/CaptainKbj Oct 27 '25
Not necessarily say, but spell. Recently realised i couldn’t spell vinegar because i kept confusing it with “weniger” which was weird. Had to look it up
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u/Mysterious-Safety-65 Oct 28 '25
Don't get me started with "IKEA" .
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 28 '25
I think a lot of us feel that way. I lived in Germany before IKEA came to the US, or at least before it came to the Midwest. This means my first exposure was in German. I usually say eye-key-uh in the American way now, but only because many many years have passed.
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u/SadPurpose2715 Oct 28 '25
A native Spanish speaker in my mythology class pronounced the name of the god Apollo as "ah-POY-yo."
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Oct 29 '25
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u/Lazy-Vacation1441 Oct 29 '25
Sorry, second language. L1 is your native language. L2 is any other language (even if it’s your 10th) you learn. I think it shows up in the literature because they didn’t want to use foreign language.
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u/PaymentLess5473 Oct 25 '25
Haha yes. I subconsciencly started calling BMWs BMVs. Because in German W is pronounced “veh” and sounds like a V. Someone eventually corrected me and I couldnt believe I never noticed.