pronunciation?

[Gabriel M.A.]

Zeiss rhymes with but does not mix with ice.

Ikon, next to your Nikon, when doing a reportage in Iran, is with the "i" pronounced "ee".

Leica, is not like like, but more like Einstein, or Bernstein. Remember Ich bin (ein) blah? Ein is not "ayyynn", but "eh-yh". I'm not even German! But I have a freunde that taught me some words so that I would not be singled out the week I stayed in Wien and Dresden (dhrehhhsdn).

There will be a test tomorrow 😉

 

[doubs43]

From what I heard, when the town was founded in the late 1800s, they decided to name it NorFork, since it was on the north fork of the {mumble} river. The town government then sent away to the US Postal Service (or whatever it was called back then) in Washington for a post mark stamp for their new post office, and the Powers That Be in Washington (Warshington?) thought it was a typo and issued the stamp as Norfolk. The town was listed in the postal records as Norfolk and therefore appeared on maps and railroad timetables as Norfolk, and that spelling survives today.

That's what "they" tell me, anyway. 🙂 🙂

Exactly the same story as a town about 10 miles from me....... Fort Valley, Georgia. It was supposed to be "Fox Valley" and the US Post Office in DC got it wrong. It's been Fort Valley ever since.

Walker

 

[jaapv]

Gabrielma,Wien and Dresden? That is two different languages spoken there! I doubt they can understand one another..... 😀

 

[dmr]

So it's not named after the East Anglian county of Norfolk?

Nope, named for the north fork of the river. Even TV weather people around here pronounce it "Nor-Fork". 🙂

 

[mtokue]

Now, to get a totally different view, where I am. Zeiss is pronounced .....Zahisu.
and IKON....... iekonn..
Leica .......raikah.....
But then again Engrish is not the main language and Germany is still called Doichelando..or Jarmany
Miekerou.

 

[jlw]

The one that fascinates me is the town of Norfolk {sic} Nebraska. This is probably best known for being the childhood home of Johnny Carson. For those of you not from the States, the late Johnny Carson was a long-time TV host over here.

The townies insist, sometimes defensively, that the name of their town is to be pronounced "Nor-Fork", and yes, there's a story behind it.

And there's another reason why they prefer it. For ages (including when I was going to college there) Lincoln, Nebraska TV station KOLN had an ancient weatherman named Mel Mains, who was famous (or notorious) for his idiosyncratic pronunciation style.

That meant that every night, as he was doing the regional weather roundup, we'd all get to hear Mel say, "...and the temperature in NOR-FUKK tonight..."

I've spelled it phonetically, to get past possible naughty-word scanners on the board, but you can picture how it sounded. No wonder the natives preferred "Nor-Fork"...

 

[oftheherd]

Between Vietnam tours, I spent about 3 months at Ft Devons, MA, in the USA. The town of Worchester is close to that. An attractive young lady at the Provost Marshal's office corrected my pronounciation of that, telling me it was pronounced "Woo(r)ster." When I asked her what it was woorster than, she wasn't amused.

 

[Trius]

Clarified?

Butter.

Trius

 

[Roman]

Gabrielma,Wien and Dresden? That is two different languages spoken there! I doubt they can understand one another..... 😀

Like they say - 'Austrians and Germans are divided by their common language!'.


Roman

 

[dll927]

The late conductor, Leonard Bernstein, was often asked if his name was "steen" or "stine". His answer: Did you ever hear of a "Steenway" piano?

In German, "ei" = English "I". Das ist richtig.

"Stein" means "stone" in German. Einstein was, therefore, "one stone". (At least below his brain???)

 

[jlw]

Ikon, next to your Nikon, when doing a reportage in Iran, is with the "i" pronounced...

Once they're in stock, I'll bet your friendly Hasselblad dealer will be happy to sell you one even if you mispronounce the name -- as long as you have the requisite dollars.

That's Zeiss Econ!

 

[Mike Kovacs]

I'll add my 2 cents from having knowledge of German:

Tz-eye-ss Ee-cone - definitely "own" for German "on" with the most emphasis on the K. "On" in the English way is written "an" in German. There is no "aih" type sound in German like "can".

 

[BJ Bignell]

Between Vietnam tours, I spent about 3 months at Ft Devons, MA, in the USA. The town of Worchester is close to that. An attractive young lady at the Provost Marshal's office corrected my pronounciation of that, telling me it was pronounced "Woo(r)ster." When I asked her what it was woorster than, she wasn't amused.

Yeah it's like "wu(r)ss-ter", with a very subtle (r) as mentioned. And the folks there aren't shy about correcting you either! (It's Worcester, without the "h", too.)

Did you ever go and wander the grounds of the abandoned mental institution on the top of the hill? It's enough to give you the creeps, I tell ya!

1) http://www.worcestermass.com/places/asylum.shtml
2) http://www.abandonedasylum.com/wsh.html
3) http://www.kirkbridebuildings.com/buildings/worcester.html

 

[titrisol]

Leute besser wurde wenn sie Deutsch gelernt???

Ja woll Herr Komandant!!!

LOL

True, Frank, but he is getting somewhere! Expanding his horizon! Learning German!

 

[dll927]

Having majored in Spanish and taught it for 34 years, I've been through my share of linguistics and Latin. (Where I went Spanish and French majors had to take a year of Latin.)

It's interesting how letters differ in different languages, and "r" is one of the bugaboos. It gets a different treatment in English, Spanish, French, and German,largely based on just where yu hook your palate or tongue to the roof of the mouth.

Anyone else to a New Englander: How come "Cuber" has an "r" but "cah" doesn't??

German (and Latin) have so-called "cases" by which nouns and adjectives change according to whether they are subject, direct object, indirect object, or possessive - plus in Latin ablative and vocative. Anyone who has ever had to study Latin knows why it died out and became the respective "romance" languages. Prepositions are exactly that: PRE-positions that took the place of the infernal cases.

That is not to say that German doesn't also have prepositions. I took a year of German in high school (fifty years ago), and to this day I can still recite the "dative prepositions": aus, auser, bei, mit, nach, zeit, von, zu. Now, don't ask me to try to remember what they all mean!!!

I wish I had a dollar for every time somebody has told me what an advantage it is to speak two (or more) languages - just don't ask them to do it.

NOW -- how the H... did we get off into this???

 

[Seele]

More fun to this thread as in prounciations in HongKong:

Zeiss: Sy-see
Leica: Lie-gar
Contax: Con-tac-see
Nikon: Nick-corn

Took me a while to figure those out.

 

[Duncan Ross]

Having majored in Spanish and taught it for 34 years, I've been through my share of linguistics and Latin. (Where I went Spanish and French majors had to take a year of Latin.)

It's interesting how letters differ in different languages, and "r" is one of the bugaboos. It gets a different treatment in English, Spanish, French, and German,largely based on just where yu hook your palate or tongue to the roof of the mouth.

And English and Scottish have very different 'R's. Nobody speaks like groundskeeper Wullie here but it is easier to understand us Scots when you realise that 'r' is its own syllable. For most people 'girl' has one syllable, in Scotland it has two. Now where's me Zorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrki..?

 

[Pherdinand]

Well, i won't say anything about dutch and their "r" and "g" and "h" 😀

 

[dll927]

When I lived in West Covina, CA, I had a neighbor who was British and his wife Scottish. The wife was the only person I ever heard who made a two-syllable word of "arm". As in, "I slipped yestahrrrrday and bruised my arrr-um."

One of my Spanish professors at San Jose State had a saying, "Cada uno es dueno", which is a rough equivalent of "To each his own". (There should be a tilde over the "n" in "dueno", but this damned thing won't do it except in the word processor.)

When I belonged to the Elks lodge in W. C., there was an Irishman who had a friend in the Alhambra lodge who was also Irish -- but they were from different counties. Whenever the Alhambra guy showed up, it was "Is Jerrry herrre?" Yeah, Jerrry's herrre. The two of them together were a fright to understand.

 

[XAos]

And English and Scottish have very different 'R's. Nobody speaks like groundskeeper Wullie here but it is easier to understand us Scots when you realise that 'r' is its own syllable. For most people 'girl' has one syllable, in Scotland it has two. Now where's me Zorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrki..?

Robinson Crusoe was actually based on a true story, the protagonist was an officer who asked to be put ashore, changed his mind, and got left anyways. The version I saw on the history channel said that despite his efforts at maintaining his speech, and the fact that he was discovered by people who knew him and had sailed with him before on previous vessles - they could barely understand him.

At which point I thought - A sailor and a scottsman - no wonder they couldn't understand him.