Munich is the English name for the German town München. According to the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, it has two different pronunciations. The more common one is [mjuˈnik], and the less common one is [mjuˈnix]. In the first variant, the ch is pronounced just like k, whereas in the second variant, it is pronounced like the
Recently, I noticed that British people pronounce Moscow differently than I had thought, and been taught in school. The correct British pronunciation is [‘mɒskəʊ], with the first part pronounced just like moss. However, -cow is not pronounced like the word cow. Instead, the -ow in Moscow is pronounced like the -ow in low or grow.
Every week, I hear conductors working for Deutsche Bahn say good-bye to passengers. And every week, the word bye is pronounced incorrectly. If you enjoy making fun of Deutsche Bahn English, read on to make sure you don’t make the same mistake. What happens is that German speakers tend to pronounce bye exactly like the
Every time I take the bus in Munich, I hear the number five (as in U5, the underground line I take) being pronounced incorrectly, namely as [faɪf] instead of [faɪv]. You can hear the correct pronunciation here. This common mistake among German speakers is also often made in the case of live; live is correctly pronounced as
While flipping through my trusted Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, I came across the name Würzburg, a lovely city in Germany. As you may expect, the umlaut makes the English pronunciation a nontrivial issue. Since there is no ü sound in English, it has to be replaced by something else (ignoring this rule may show that you
Abbreviations such as LCD, HTML, or USA are commonly used in many languages. The correct pronunciation of such abbreviations is a two-step process. First, you have to be able to correctly pronounce each of the letters. As discussed in a previous post, this task can be more daunting than you would expect even for advanced
The pronunciation of the word day is straight-forward, or is it? Have you ever noticed that day, which is pronounced as [deɪ] in day, today, everyday, weekday, etc., can also be pronounced as [di] when being part of the weekdays Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? The Longman Pronunciation Dictionary argues that [di]
During a recent trip, I noticed that many flight attendants mispronounce the word fasten (as in “fasten your seatbelt”). This is quite surprising given that they use this word very often (I’ll come back to often). In contrast to the word fast, the letter t in fasten is not pronounced. Instead, fasten is pronounced as
While apparently rather simple at first sight, the word interaction is very often mispronounced. In fact, there are two pitfalls. First, as discussed in this recent post, action is pronounced as [ˈækʃn] rather than [ˈæktʃn], listen here. Second, a remarkable number of people do not pronounce the letter r in interaction, which is incorrect. The
While listening to German radio the other day, I noticed that the presenter repeatedly pronounced the German word Passwort incorrectly. The mistake was that he pronounced “Pass-” as in the British pronunciation of the English word password, listen here and here. The correct pronunciation of Passwort can be found here. I find the mistake quite