Ya know what grinds my gears? This American penchant for pronouncing Germanic names incorrectly. Like ‘stein’ as ‘steeeen’. EpstEEN. WeinstEEN (even more frustrating, that last one, as the ‘ei’ is pronounced how it ‘should’ be, but not the second occurrence!).
Even the people with these names often insist themselves on these pronunciations. I mean it’s their right ultimately, it’s their name after all – but why/where/how did this pronunciation take root in the USA?
I was taught in German class that ‘ei’ is always a long ‘i’ – hence ‘schtIne’ not ‘stEEEn’. Hmmph.
Same with Robert ‘Muller’. His name’s spelled Mueller, so by German language rules it would seem it should be pronounced ‘Müller’ (‘ue’ in English being a substitute for the umlauted ‘u’).
I guess it falls out of what appears to be an American myopic view that everyone else has ‘accents’ and they must be purged from American speech since it’s ‘foreign’…
Grumble grumble… OK, I am done my little rant now.
Same with Robert ‘Muller’. His name’s spelled Mueller, so by German language rules it would seem it should be pronounced ‘Müller’ (‘ue’ in English being a substitute for the umlauted ‘u’).
This one gets a pass from me because the German vowel “ü” doesn’t exist in English. Are you going to complain to ze Germans that they can’t natively pronounce the th, too?
It’s pretty fascinating considering the history of the US that Americans tend to be worse than the English at pronouncing various European languages. You’d think at least some people would cling on to the correct pronounciation of their own name, as the bare minimum.
I don’t really care how Americans pronounce their own names—if anything I think most Europeans are happy to be easily distinguishable from Americans with shared ancestry at this point—but it is a bit striking.
Not necessarily relevant to the people mentioned in this post, but broadly speaking, there were lots of immigrants to the US between 1930 and 1950 that very intentionally changed the spelling or pronunciation of their names to look and sound less German and Italian.
There was also the practice of giving people a new name upon arrival in Ellis Island, establishing pretty early on what kind of names were considered “American”.
I guess it worked wonders, at least if the stereotype is true that they managed to transform the Irish into a bunch of racist cops.
But yeah, you certainly had a lot of German Americans voluntarily backing away from their cultural heritage in the 30s and 40s.
I mean, I can see where you’re coming from. However, you neglected to mention an equally important problem with the English pronunciation of Weinstein. The w is pronounced as a v. So, vineschtine.
Ya know what grinds my gears? This American penchant for pronouncing Germanic names incorrectly. Like ‘stein’ as ‘steeeen’. EpstEEN. WeinstEEN (even more frustrating, that last one, as the ‘ei’ is pronounced how it ‘should’ be, but not the second occurrence!).
Even the people with these names often insist themselves on these pronunciations. I mean it’s their right ultimately, it’s their name after all – but why/where/how did this pronunciation take root in the USA?
I was taught in German class that ‘ei’ is always a long ‘i’ – hence ‘schtIne’ not ‘stEEEn’. Hmmph.
Same with Robert ‘Muller’. His name’s spelled Mueller, so by German language rules it would seem it should be pronounced ‘Müller’ (‘ue’ in English being a substitute for the umlauted ‘u’).
I guess it falls out of what appears to be an American myopic view that everyone else has ‘accents’ and they must be purged from American speech since it’s ‘foreign’…
Grumble grumble… OK, I am done my little rant now.
This one gets a pass from me because the German vowel “ü” doesn’t exist in English. Are you going to complain to ze Germans that they can’t natively pronounce the th, too?
It’s pretty fascinating considering the history of the US that Americans tend to be worse than the English at pronouncing various European languages. You’d think at least some people would cling on to the correct pronounciation of their own name, as the bare minimum.
I don’t really care how Americans pronounce their own names—if anything I think most Europeans are happy to be easily distinguishable from Americans with shared ancestry at this point—but it is a bit striking.
Not necessarily relevant to the people mentioned in this post, but broadly speaking, there were lots of immigrants to the US between 1930 and 1950 that very intentionally changed the spelling or pronunciation of their names to look and sound less German and Italian.
There was also the practice of giving people a new name upon arrival in Ellis Island, establishing pretty early on what kind of names were considered “American”.
I guess it worked wonders, at least if the stereotype is true that they managed to transform the Irish into a bunch of racist cops.
But yeah, you certainly had a lot of German Americans voluntarily backing away from their cultural heritage in the 30s and 40s.
I mean, I can see where you’re coming from. However, you neglected to mention an equally important problem with the English pronunciation of Weinstein. The w is pronounced as a v. So, vineschtine.
Good catch, yes.