Ya know what grinds my gears? This American penchant for pronouncing Germanic names incorrectly. Like ‘stein’ as ‘steeeen’. EpstEEN. WeinstEEN (even more frustrating, that last one, as the ‘ei’ is pronounced how it ‘should’ be, but not the second occurrence!).
Even the people with these names often insist themselves on these pronunciations. I mean it’s their right ultimately, it’s their name after all – but why/where/how did this pronunciation take root in the USA?
I was taught in German class that ‘ei’ is always a long ‘i’ – hence ‘schtIne’ not ‘stEEEn’. Hmmph.
Same with Robert ‘Muller’. His name’s spelled Mueller, so by German language rules it would seem it should be pronounced ‘Müller’ (‘ue’ in English being a substitute for the umlauted ‘u’).
I guess it falls out of what appears to be an American myopic view that everyone else has ‘accents’ and they must be purged from American speech since it’s ‘foreign’…
Grumble grumble… OK, I am done my little rant now.
Ya know what grinds my gears? This American penchant for pronouncing Germanic names incorrectly. Like ‘stein’ as ‘steeeen’. EpstEEN. WeinstEEN (even more frustrating, that last one, as the ‘ei’ is pronounced how it ‘should’ be, but not the second occurrence!).
Even the people with these names often insist themselves on these pronunciations. I mean it’s their right ultimately, it’s their name after all – but why/where/how did this pronunciation take root in the USA?
I was taught in German class that ‘ei’ is always a long ‘i’ – hence ‘schtIne’ not ‘stEEEn’. Hmmph.
Same with Robert ‘Muller’. His name’s spelled Mueller, so by German language rules it would seem it should be pronounced ‘Müller’ (‘ue’ in English being a substitute for the umlauted ‘u’).
I guess it falls out of what appears to be an American myopic view that everyone else has ‘accents’ and they must be purged from American speech since it’s ‘foreign’…
Grumble grumble… OK, I am done my little rant now.