Quick poll: pronounce me Kraftwerk

I find it immensely pretentious (and thus sometimes hugely gratifying) to adopt the pronunciation of words' original countries on occasion, but in this case you just sound like a bit of a ninny.

I always assumed that Paris was like the Munchen/Munich thing, except the foreign and native names are spelled the same. In other words, I say the s with a clear conscience.

"work"

For heaven's sake. Don't you laugh when Germans say 'Lime ale' instead of Limahl? Do you say "nee-ooh' instead of 'Neu'? Exactly. Pronounce it properly.

Or maybe you're one of those people who can't pronounce Einsturzende Neubauten properly. I laugh at you.

How Spuggie, how often do yer clean yer windas a week?

People should shout NOO! whenever they want to talk about Neu!. Or NOY!, whatever. It's the shouting that matters.

TS: Kraaaaaarrft vs Krahft?

I say crarftwork.

(colin OTM up there; also take yr tongue back half an inch for the 'r' in 'Kraft')

But never in a normal voice, only in the best imitation of "Dieter" from Sprockets voice I can do.

Now, let's talk about the individual members of this basket weaving group, Craftwork. Ralph Hutter's surname should be pronounced to rhyme with 'butter'. And Wolfgang Fluhr's surname should rhyme with 'duuuuh'.

Come to think of it, any German band beginning with 'Der' should now have the indignity of this treatment. "Duuuh Plan" etc. And any German band beginning with 'Die'... well, "Die Todliche Doris" makes semantic sense when the 'Die' rhymes with 'Sigh' I suppose...

btw my outrage is completely affected, for the sake of enhancing the fun of this thread.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~levett/images/imalan/imalan.jpg

Now you may think that's a little pretentious. And you would be right.

wintermute and mr. meeder to thread!

Calling PJ to come shoot me down in flames

Ask your 'suspected pseud' the name of the theme music from '2001'.

If your suspicions are right, will probably try to Germanify the pronunciation, to something like, 'Toos Spark Zarathusteera', which of course is incorrect.

Then ask who composed it. He will probably answer, Richard (not Ri-kard) Strauss, which would be almost as ridiculous as referring to the other Strauss as 'John'.

There may well be similarities ib the 'Kraft-veerk/Craftwork' debate.

I also have suspicions that there should be a silent p in Kraftwerk, like there is in 'Knopfler' (and if not there should be).

There are regional diffences in Spanish. In mainland Spain at least, "z" is pronounced kinda like the English "th", but I don't about Ibizans themselves. The i's in Ibiza are definitely pronounced "ee", not "eye" - Spanish vocals are always pronounced the same way, I think.

Who is "Yan Barry"

ans: the correct pronunciation of Bjorn Borg

Er, that's not correct. The "ö" in Björn Borg is pronounced like the "i" in "girl", and the "rg" ending in Swedish turns into "ry", so the name is pronounced like this: Bj-er-n B-oh-ry.

my biggest problem like this is w/ "sauna" - I believe it is pronounced like "soun-a" (as in 'sound' or 'gown') but I tend to still say "sawn-a" to avoid people getting confused.

You're right, it is soun-a, but I guess no one expects you to know Finnish pronounciation (it might be easier than one thinks, however, since there is only one way of pronouncing any letter in Finnish).

I tried a halfway house of 'Hoogarden' for a while but was never understood, so I conceded defeat.

I'd been working in Germany at a famous Video Duplication plant with a crew of like souls, evenings nothing else to do but visit various bars/restaurants.

Anyhow, meeting up with most of the crew back in england, off to the bar to get the round in, I order in perfect german. Habit formed, you see. Bemused stares from all.

http://moogarchives.com/moog.jpg

I haven't heard all of those names, but most of them are familiar, so they're probably all for real. Finns have lots of names that "mean" something, but exactly because they're so popular, people don't tend to think the literal meaning of a surname, so the English translations sound a lot funnier than the actual names do to Finns. For example, if you'd meet a Mr. Smith, you wouldn't crack a joke about him hammering iron...

But some rarer names are indeed funny to Finns also. For example, during my life I've come across with "Mr. Bourgeois", "Mr. Tobacco" and "Mrs. Blood-Head", which made at least smile. Back in the olden days, when most people didn't have surnames and you could pick anything you want, some folks in North Finland used to have even funnier names, such as "Big Dick" or "Hairy Arse". But almost all of these were changed in the late 19th and the early 20th century, for chastity's sake. There are still some place-names is North Finland which recall those days, such as "Lake Pussy" or "Dick Hill".

I say Craft-work out loud, but Kraftverk in my head. I'm always a little unsure when it comes to localizing foreign words. For example, I almost always pronounce Shanghai as Shong (rhymes with wrong) Hai, because I lived there all last year, and that's how it's pronounced in China. I remember we had a few Canadian friends who would always anglicise the road names, so that Long Dong Lu, which should be with long O's (as in 'oh') became Long Dong (rhymes with Wrong Wrong), and the cab drivers would crack up laughing at them. But then again, when I say Mexico, I don't say "Meh-Hee-Co", because I don't want to get my ass kicked.

Also, can we all get on the same page with Iraq and Iran? It's always distracting when you're listening to an interview and one side is saying "eye-rack" while the other is saying "ee-rawk".

And finally, Pinochet is "Pee-no-shay", right? Because occasionally, I hear "Pee-no-chet" (rhymes with wet). I remember a sort of funny Morning Edition where Steve Inskeep got all insecure about it during an interview and said he had heard it pronounced both ways.