Quote:
Originally Posted by grocerylist
It's not pretentious to pronounce something correctly.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gatorfast
I think here in the states saying "porshh " is much more common than saying "porshh uh". While perhaps reflective of the German pronunciation, the latter can be a little pretentious imo.
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Perhaps. But I often find it rather curious that people hold double standards when it comes to French or Spanish names.
One would probably get laughed at for pronouncing Louis Vuitton as "Lewis VWITT-un" or Hermés as "HER-meez".
Similarly, someone named Jose would probably be taken aback and correct the pronunciation if someone called him "JO-sie".
The English language is quite incongruent in this sense. And it's just rather interesting to see how names originating from Romance languages are held to a higher standard of approximating the original pronunciation while on the other hand, names of other European languages, Asian languages, etc. can be completely Anglicized/mispronounced/butchered where approximating original pronunciation is seen as "snobby" (in the case of Porsche) or pretentious.
Personally, I find no issue in trying to approximate (but not completely replicate, since phonology is different across languages) the original pronunciation.
Obviously, even the approximation "Louie Vit-TAWN" is still nowhere near "proper" French, but rather an approximation.
If English speakers are more or less culturally/socially required to do it for French and Spanish, then it should be equally applied to German or Russian or Chinese or Malay, etc.