Vauen
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Speaking of which, in a pipesmagazine interview with an Iwan Ries owner/executive, I learned that Iwan Ries is actually pronounced Ivan Reese, which after years of thinking of it differently, I was happy to learn, though I still mispronounce it in my mind from long years of being mistaken. My language skills are a great disappointment to me. After years of studying French, high school and college, the perpetual C student in it, and auditing a course I'd already taken, I still had no conversation skills. After picking up the vocabulary, I could read a novel in a night, but I couldn't converse. Trips to Montreal and Paris -- the folks would hear my "bonjour," and immediately switch to English.
I must just look European as in France and Germany people kept coming up to me and speaking to me as if I would understand. An older man in a park in Berlin told me a long story before I had the heart to tell him I only spoke English. He told me of his childhood and in this park they would have huge Easter Egg hunts every year... in the pre-WW2 years.
My brother-in-law grew up in Rotterdam and speaks three or four languages fluently and probably three or four more conversationally. Dutch, English, German, French, Russian, etc. Partly, in The Netherlands you get to hear and try speaking all of these; also, he's a really smart guy and good at languages. I kept hoping the magic would descend upon me with French. I had a friend who took a job in Lyon (France) with no French, but after studying it and living there, suddenly one day on the bus, he realized he could understand the conversations around him. Oh boy. I knew a guy who taught himself Russian on tapes in the library such that Russians said he spoke with no accent. I give up.
Think it's pronounced something like Fow-en.
Well that's vuckin stupid.
I know a guy who worked at Iwan Ries, and that’s how he pronounced it. “Ee-vawn Reese.” I thought it sounded fancy.
Well that's vuckin stupid.
Beats the Vuck out of me?
All I can say is, if you have another language, cultivate it. It's a window to the world. Whether it's Finnish or Tagalog or whatever. Or, with some members, English. Never has it been so limiting to be mono-lingual. It's peasantry to have only the one.
As mentioned, the V is an F in German so the correct pronunciation is fow-en or fau-en if you prefer. My grandmother is German.
I’d pronounce it like that but with a hard V in the USA otherwise no one is going to know what you’re talking about ?
And w is pronounced vee, right? So, Volkswagen is Folksvagen?
Fow-en it is. The name is an acronym for Vereinigte Pfeifenfabriken Nürnberg (United Pipe Factories Nuremberg), and the alphabet spelling for V is "Vau" (fow), so VN would be spelled "Vau EN".
Interesting to read that Anglophones also have difficulties with German spelling. We never get why it's Kaen-saes but Ar-kaen-saw...
Interesting to read that Anglophones also have difficulties with German spelling. We never get why it's Kaen-saes but Ar-kaen-saw...
It depends on the word - and there is not really a rule..
Pronunciation of v in German - Wikipedia
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