Screenshot: YouTube
Language is a powerful tool but not immune to amusing mishaps. Sometimes, there’s nothing funnier to native speakers of another language than when English speakers get pronunciations wrong. YouTuber Feli from Germany has taken on the task of teaching English speakers how to correctly pronounce 15 of Germany’s most iconic brand names. We know these brands so well and yet most of us don’t know how to pronounce them properly.
Feli, a Bavarian ex-pat living in Cincinnati, Ohio, shares how to say German brand names in an informative YouTube video. German cars are sold all over the world, and each has a distinct and familiar identity. She explains the interesting story behind the Audi brand, a name which, as Feli points out, most of us mispronounce. In 1904, August Horch founded a company called A. Horch & Cie Motorwagenwerker Zwiekau. When he left the company and founded a different car company, he couldn’t call it Horch again. The name Horch actually means listen in the imperative German form, so Horch looked to its Latin translation and found that it was audi. Thus, the popular car company found its name.
Adidas is the second-largest sports manufacturer in the world, yet the way that Germans pronounce it is different from English speakers. The company was founded by Adolf Dassler, whose nickname was Adi, so the brand name is based on his nickname and the first three letters of his last name. Dassler founded the company at his mother’s house after returning from World War I, and it played a major role in developing the spiked running shoe. Dassler founded another company with his brother in 1924 called the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory, but they split after a fight. His brother went on to start Puma, now a major Adidas rival.
Other pronunciations up for our correction are Volkswagen, Jägermeister, the grocery store Aldi, Deutsche Bank, appliance producer Miele, Haribo, and Lufthansa, the second-largest airline in Europe. But despite these mispronunciations, the German and English languages actually have more similarities than differences; German was the root language for the development of English.
Follow Feli from Germany on Instagram or Facebook for more about the cultural differences between the U.S. and Germany and beyond.
YouTuber Feli from Germany has created an interesting video that explains how to pronounce 15 iconic German brand names that are often mispronounced in English.
She made a follow-up video with 10 more brands that English speakers commonly mispronounce:
Watch this YouTube video about the mistakes that many Germans make while speaking English:
Feli from Germany: YouTube | Instagram | Facebook
h/t: [Laughing Squid]
Related Articles:
Comic Artist Maps the History of Languages with an Illustrated Linguistic Tree
Here’s How People Laugh Online in Different Languages
This World Map Shows You the Name of Every Country in Its Own Official Language
Revealing Map Shows How Long It Takes to Learn the Most Popular Languages in Europe