English words which are frequently used in German often acquire their own, modified pronunciation (for example, London). Less frequently used words do not have their own German pronunciation, but are supposed to be pronounced as in English (for example, Boston). Today I want to explore the difference between English and German pronunciation of English words,
Happy Birthday has spread way beyond the English language, and is commonly seen and heard in many different countries. It is not surprising that it is often mispronounced, in particular as it contains the tricky th. A quick youtube search produced the following video (which was certainly made with the best intentions and well received,
London, Boston and Washington are not only very nice cities to visit but also happen to be very often pronounced incorrectly by non-native speakers. This includes people on television, radio, and even English teachers. As I will tell you below, there are many other examples of the same mistake. English and other pronunciations Before calling
Today, I want to cover a topic that has been suggested by Gerrit, a follower of my blog on FB. He pointed out that German native speakers (and quite likely also people with other native languages) sometimes have difficulties getting the pronunciation of the syllable ‘ey’ right. For example, in the words Disney, Kinsey, hockey,
The pronunciation of the titles lieutenant and colonel, given to selected army and police officers, respectively, is both challenging and interesting. First, the British and American pronunciations are very different in the case of lieutenant. In British English, the pronunciation is [lefˈtenənt], see and listen here, whereas in American English it is [luːˈtenənt]. Second, colonel
Most people are very comfortable cursing in their native language, because it is (for so many of us) something we do every day. In recent years, certain English curse words have become very popular also in other languages, most notably the four-letter word starting with an F (yes, an F, see here). However, cursing in
In their commercials promoting a special type of athletic gear that supposedly improves performance, SKINS uses the phrase “Cheat Legal“. One of the videos can be watched here. The word “legal” in this phrase can either be an adverb characterizing the verb “cheat” (in which case it should be replaced by the grammatically correct form
You all know that the plural of man is men. In line with the different spelling, the words man and men also have different pronunciations, namely [mæn] for man and [men] for men, respectively. Listen to both pronunciations here, and make sure you can tell the difference. The motivation for this post comes from a whole
Whenever I watch Formula 1 on German TV, I notice that the commentators pronounce Caterham incorrectly, namely either as cat-er-ham [ˈkætəhæm], listen here, or as cater–ham [‘keɪtəhæm]. In both cases, the letter r is not pronounced, and the second part, –ham, is pronounced just like ham. The problem is that—as is often the case with
PayPal™ (I’ll drop the trademark symbol from here on) has become a ubiquitous name in online shopping. For many years, I had never thought much about its pronunciation. However, since I encountered a different pronunciation recently on German television, and could not find a satisfactory answer online, I decided to explore this topic. The most