Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3221 to 3225 (16 - 20 May 2016)
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: Case on 20 May 2016, 15:09 ---Question: Is it true that you write "Kindergarten" - just like the German spelling - but pronounce it "Kindergarden"? And what's the plural? Kindergartens? (German plural would be "Kindergärten")
--- End quote ---
The pronunciation I expect to hear here is "Kintergarden" - weird, I know; but the OED gives the pronunciation as "Kindergarten" (and yes, plural with -s)
Gyrre:
--- Quote from: Case on 20 May 2016, 15:09 ---
--- Quote from: Storel on 20 May 2016, 13:12 ---There does not need to be any umlaut in Brun's name to explain Clinton's mispronunciation of "Broon". When pronounced with the German u, "Brun" is fairly close to English's "Broon". The difference is that the vowel sound "oo" in Broon is a little too long. Instead of the "oo" sound from, say, "broom" or "boot", it should actually be the "oo" sound from "book" or "took".
--- End quote ---
Native Kraut agrees (somewhere earlier in the thread) - though I couldn't think of a suitable English word with a "1+1/2 - length double-o".
You have no idea of the evil genius of having the Italian subtitles in "Django- Unchained" spell Brunhilde as "Broomhilda" to Christoph Waltz' immaculate high-German pronunciation - It's like Tarantino & Waltz wanted to give the tedeschi hysterical bellyaches ...
--- Quote from: Storel on 20 May 2016, 13:12 ---
--- Quote from: Case on 20 May 2016, 11:22 ---Your dumping on Americans' difficulties with German pronunciation would have a lot more gravitas if you stopped messing up German grammar ...
Just sayin'
(The plural of "Umlaut" is "Umlaute", not "Umlauts" - Germans might use the latter deliberately, in order to mock uneducated people ... Soooooh, actually, to a native speaker, you sound like you 'got hoisted by your own petard', but: I know, I know, your Head & it's cannon ...)
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The German plural of "umlaut" is "umlaute", yes, but the English plural of "umlaut" is "umlauts". Since PR was writing in English at the time, their use of "umlauts" is correct.
Edit: Yeah, people trying to import foreign plurals into English is a pet peeve of mine. Come on, folks, English has enough crazy inconsistencies already; can we at least try not to introduce any more?
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Aaaaaand you sprung my trap ...
From a German's POV, this is almost PoMo. Germans are certainly not above gently ribbing Americans about their pronunciation of the "Umlauts" (or rather: filming their attempts, see above) - but actually chiding them for their efforts would almost certainly be considered "being too German".
So: Stop being so German, 'Murricans!
Loanwords & plurals: We do the same with "Computer" - German plural is "Computer", just like the German "Rechner", despite the English plural being "Computers".
Question: Is it true that you write "Kindergarten" - just like the German spelling - but pronounce it "Kindergarden"? And what's the plural? Kindergartens? (German plural would be "Kindergärten")
--- End quote ---
It's mostly true. It depends on which region you're in for both spelling and pronunciation. Some say and spell it "kindergarten", some say and spell it as above. And some regions pronounce the 't' halfway between a 'd' and a 't' (like how the letter 'd' is sometimes pronounced in Cherokee).
Storel:
--- Quote from: Case on 20 May 2016, 15:09 ---Loanwords & plurals: We do the same with "Computer" - German plural is "Computer", just like the German "Rechner", despite the English plural being "Computers".
--- End quote ---
Huh, I would have expected it to be "Computern" or something like that. 8-)
Some people like to do that with loanwords in English, too, but English has loanwords from so many different languages that it's much harder to try to remember all the different plural forms than to simply apply the standard English ones. Plus, this seems to be a tendency with fairly recent loanwords; ones that came into English longer ago got stuck with English plurals (whether they liked it or not!), so that makes it even more inconsistent.
--- Quote from: Case on 20 May 2016, 15:09 ---Question: Is it true that you write "Kindergarten" - just like the German spelling - but pronounce it "Kindergarden"? And what's the plural? Kindergartens? (German plural would be "Kindergärten")
--- End quote ---
Yes, and yes, at least the way I usually hear it around here (California). There are so many regional variations in the English pronunciations of everything that I'm sure there are other pronunciations, too.
Before I even saw your reply, I wrote up a little example for the next time I get into a discussion of foreign plurals -- and I used "kindergarten" as one of the examples:
--- Quote ---All together now, folks, repeat after me:
English is not Latin, so the English plural of octopus is octopuses, not octopi.
English is not Japanese, so the English plural of tsunami is tsunamis, not tsunami.
English is not German, so the English plural of kindergarten is kindergartens, not kindergärten.
--- End quote ---
No English speaker ever tries to apply the German plural to kindergarten, because that's an older loanword (and because we don't do umlauts), but the other two are pretty common.
Stoutfellow:
--- Quote from: Case on 20 May 2016, 15:09 ---Question: Is it true that you write "Kindergarten" - just like the German spelling - but pronounce it "Kindergarden"? And what's the plural? Kindergartens? (German plural would be "Kindergärten")
--- End quote ---
In the interior of words, AmE typically neutralizes the t/d distinction. In most people's speech, "ladder" and "latter", for example, sound essentially the same. (People will typically deny that they do this, but the recordings and spectrograms are clear.) (And no, if you just pronounced both of them carefully and they sounded different, that doesn't count - people normally don't speak that carefully.) What sound is actually used varies; in some people's speech it's more like a 't', in some it's more like a 'd', in some it's a glottal stop or a quick, r-like tap.
ZoeB:
Lesson for today about Life.
In the morning, you may see a polite rejection by your G/F of a date proposal to be a Big Thing.
In the evening, the Universe may have given you some perspective, the hard way. Not to mention pressing a Reset button on your own life. Twice.
Moral: don't sweat the small stuff, it just encourages bigger stuff to come along and go Booga Booga to you.
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