• Nikls94@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I took a picture of a sparrow once. They’re called Spatz in German. In my local dialect, they’re called “Spotz” ʃpɔts in english it’s pronounced like “shpowts” - which is one of the words used for penis as well. Picture in German is Bild and in the local dialect it’s “büdl” ˈbʏdl in English pronounced like “boodle” (you have no pronunciation for ü).

    So in my local dialect, a sparrow-pic is pronounced the same as a dick-pick. Spotzbüdl - ʃpɔtsˈbʏdl - spowthsboodle

    • waz@feddit.uk
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      1 day ago

      We kind of do have a pronunciation of ü The cornish town Bude, would be pronounced by locals as “Büd” It’s how I explained to my kids how to handle umlaut words, if it was the English word “lane“ imagine it’s spelled ‘laen’ and then get rid of the e to make ‘län’. It’s rare but some English words still use æ as a sound not a pair of letters. Spelæological for caving for instance. Often simplified to speleological.

      • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I feel like it’s easier to tell English speakers to make an “eee” sound with their lips and then pronounce the vowel in question (ä, ö, ü) with the rest of their mouth (at least that’s how we do it when we sing in German, I know choral German doesn’t always line up with proper German pronunciation).