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mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
I'll watch this thread, but I have always pronounced it "vawn," or the same way the German last name Vaughn is pronounced.
 
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mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
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.
 

BROBS

Lifer
Nov 13, 2019
11,765
40,026
IA
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.
 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
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.
 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
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.
 

Duke of Erinmore

Can't Leave
Jul 5, 2020
314
1,406
45
Bayreuth, Bavaria, Germany
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...
 

tobefrank

Lifer
Jun 22, 2015
1,367
5,005
Australia
One of my friends from Eastern Germany actually pronounces the V more like a W. Sort of like Vodka is pronounced Wodka. He would often say he was going to play wolleyball. ?
 
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