How to pronounce Lincoln

How to pronounce Lincoln

Image by Mark Thomas from Pixabay

With the movie about Abraham Lincoln out on DVD now, let me discuss the pronunciation of the name Lincoln. In contrast to the incorrect pronunciation often used by nonnative speakers, the second l in Lincoln is silent. The phonetic spelling is hence [ˈlɪŋkən]. You can listen to it here. A quick search on youtube brought up a number of videos (documentaries and film reviews) in which German native speakers pronounce Lincoln incorrectly, namely as [ˈlɪŋkəln]. Here are some examples:

While the name Lincoln could in principle be to pronounced differently in German, the Duden suggests to use the original, English pronunciation, see here. Finally, the same pronunciation is used for the car company Lincoln.

Martin

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