Mispronunciation of car make/model
Discussion
Section 8 said:
I know it's petty but it makes my teeth itch when watching a car show and the presenter insists on saying the car name wrong! Example last nights Top Gear. Yeah i know he's a yank but ffs Le Blanc you are in the UK now it's Fiat ( fee-ut) not ( fay-yaght). His pronunciation of Abarth was way off too.
Mike Brewer made me want to slap his chubby face in when he droned on about a Camaro( cam-aero) calling it a (cam-are-o) over and over again. Cock!!
Clarkson just grips my s
t though with Volkswagen( volks-wagon) calling it (vowks-vagen). And a Cobra (co-bra) a (cob-ra).
Am i the only person that is bothered by this?? Dear God please say i'm not .I know i have issues but come on, they just sound wrong!
I think the Germans would say Clarkson is closer to the correct pronunciation of Volkswagen than you are.Mike Brewer made me want to slap his chubby face in when he droned on about a Camaro( cam-aero) calling it a (cam-are-o) over and over again. Cock!!
Clarkson just grips my s
t though with Volkswagen( volks-wagon) calling it (vowks-vagen). And a Cobra (co-bra) a (cob-ra). Am i the only person that is bothered by this?? Dear God please say i'm not .I know i have issues but come on, they just sound wrong!
Skoda did try an get us to pronounce their name correctly for a while but presumably gave up.
Sshh-Koda - (Koda as in cod-a, rather than code-a)
One that gets me is the pew-geot pronunciation of peugeot.
It's a slippery slope though, as we suddenly started saying Beijing and Mumbai not so long ago, but still call it Paris, not Paree and Munich, not Munchen but hey ho.
jjr1 said:
Porsche https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RLg0xw_4bo
Not a Porsh
I call it Porsch and I've lived in Germany. Why would I use the German pronunciation of just 1 car brand when I don't use the others? I'd have to change how I pronounce BMW or VW for a start. I pronounce it the way I feel it's best in my own language from reading the letters. Same applies to many others such as Dacia as already mentioned here.Not a Porsh
Edited by jjr1 on Monday 20th March 20:12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksafvKINq5U
swerni said:
Germans pronounce "v" as "f"
The German "V" is very definitely not the same as our "F"; it varies a bit by region but to my ear it's closer to a "v" than an "f", it's too... I suppose thinking about it it's more like "fv".I suppose this is one of the problems; we try to shoehorn a continuum of sounds into 26 discrete letters.
) referred to the AM as an Astin last night 
swerni said:
I'll do a straw poll tomorrow, I'm in Hanover, let's see what the local say.
But you're right, regional dialect will make a big difference
Most of the online pronunciation guides say the English approximation is "f" so you're probably more right than me. I do have an appalling ear for languages so it wouldn't surprise me. But you're right, regional dialect will make a big difference
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