> The proximity of the name change to April Fool’s Day initially raised suspicions that it was just a joke. But VW insists that it’s a real thing, so here we are.
> "The company was apparently planning to make the announcement at the end of April but accidentally published a press release about the name change early Monday afternoon, which was first spotted by CNBC before it was taken down. The proximity of the name change to April Fool’s Day initially raised suspicions that it was just a joke. But VW insists that it’s a real thing, so here we are."
Sounds to me like a publicity stunt -- they "accidentally published" a press release a month early? Sorry, that doesn't happen.
Seems like trying to generate buzz on social media, then they'll quietly "decide" not to change the name after all, but people associating VW with electric cars more so -- mission accomplished.
No, but I find it very hard to believe that a gigantic company had a press release finalized and sitting in a CMS a month in advance, just waiting for time to pass.
(Source: have worked in 3 large public companies and seen how these things come down to the wire with approvals from PR, Marketing, IR, Legal, Country Leadership, Corporate, etc...)
Huh, why does the name change have to be announced 2-3 days before in your world? They would need to send new stationery and signage to dealers, so the chatter would start in the coming week or 2 anyway... Why not pre-empt that with a press release.
Does it bother you when Germans say "zis"? German has no "th" sound, so "zis" is what they start with before they practice. It's similarly grating to Germans to hear their language mispronounced by others.
And yet, English has an "f" sound. German has an extremely consistent spelling and essentially all "v"s are pronounced as "f". We share (the latin) alphabet, and English has absolutely no authority, given how inconsistent it is.
Given that, I will say the voiced "V" when speaking English and the unvoiced, as necessary, speaking German.
> It's similarly grating to Germans to hear their language mispronounced by others.
Americans are generally very tolerant and patient with non-native speakers butchering proper english. So no, it's not nearly as grating to an American to hear people mispronounce english words than it might be for Germans.
No one cares what Germans think about people abusing their language. I personally have zero issues with accents or mispronunciations here and there by non-native speakers. That smells of "fear of the other" to me and taking easy potshots at people I consider my full equal isn't cool. If I feel a little "anger" then that's a fallacy in me not in their pronunciation. As long as I can understand we're good otherwise we'll work it out someway or other.
It just bothers the historical linguistics nerd in me that all the other Germanic languages (other than Icelandic) lost the beautiful Thorn and Edh sounds consonants :-)
I've always found it interesting that the German approximation is "z" here when it could be "t" or "d", since that is what "th" sounds turned into in Old Franconian.
'bother' me? No, not at all, the sounds are close enough I get the meaning, mostly from context.
I am not sure why there should be an emotional factor here, as expecting everybody to conform to some pronunciation ideal they have no experience with is arrogant, to say the least.
Well you claimed that Americans are pronouncing it "perfectly correctly," and Germans might disagree. It's a German word which has been Americanized. The company mostly doesn't care, but there is a single correct pronunciation in their native language. Insisting you are correct mispronouncing a foreign word because the letters look a certain way is just hubris.
Accent is an inevitable part of second language speakers. I've lived in US most of my life, but English is not my native language and I started learning it around the age of 5 and at the age of 25 after living here more than 20 years, I still have a distinct accent I can't get rid of. It's just the way things are, human brain seems to learn pronunciation differently when we're a child.
This same goes for English speakers too. I know how Volkswagen is supposed to be pronounced (I know some German) but that's not the way English speakers would say it.
I don't think there is anything to be bothered by any of this. This just adds to our diversity.
Vice versa, it's interesting to me why German speakers tend to approximate the pronunciation of e.g. "think" as "sink", rather than "fink" or "vink". There's even some British accents where it sounds more like "fink". English is hard :D
Sorry, but just noticed you were using an English-only term to describe the homeland of someone who doesn't live in your country. The correct term is Deutschland.
It is respectful to at least attempt to pronounce names from different cultures. In many cases, I totally understand it is difficult. In those cases, an attempt is great. In this case, the syllable F exists in Latin and I don't see why it.
I must say, I have seen many many times a lack of interest to even attempt to pronounce of even write a name properly. One example which comes to my mind is Ghandi instead of Gandhi.
To re-iterate my point, it's not about 'respect' (respect for whom, exactly and why?) it's about communication.
If I were trying to say the word 'Volkswagen' to a German speaking person, I would do my best to pronounce it in a way they would understand.
As most of the time I ever say the word 'Volkswagen' out loud it's to my fellow English speakers, pronouncing it in the expected English way seems way less pretentious and way more effective.
In practice, if a name has a common pronunciation within English, you show respect by using that pronunciation when speaking to native English speakers.
Otherwise you just cause confusion. The adapted names have their own history.
If you insist on saying København and not Copenhagen, you get to have a little pretentious discussion explaining what you meant to every person you talk to. Ditto for Folks-vagen.
> In practice, if a name has a common pronunciation within English, you show respect by using that pronunciation when speaking to native English speakers.
Here's how I read this. "We as an English speaking group will continue to not make an attempt to pronounce it right even if we can. Once we don't we will have a common pronunciation that doesn't fit the original one. Once it becomes common, we will get offended if it is not pronounced in the common way that we as a group chose to actively ignore in the first place. If the original speakers insist, we will call them pretentious."
> In many cases, it is unnecessary and only makes the speaker look foolish.
Comedic skits touch on this [1][2] and though a caricature, I think they capture the gist of how it's perceived when attempted.
I think it stems from a desire for "cultural wokeness" which is a good thing and has its place, but as you say when communication is the goal, speak the language of the receiver.
I found a YT video saying it's "wo er wo". Which suggests they have a hard time pronouncing it, which shouldn't come as a surprise given how different their phonemes are.
Approximating it, because you can't pronounce it is one thing. Not giving a shit, even though you do have the same word (i.e. folk) is another one.
But for a brand definitely not. It's the job of the brand creators to make sure that the name can be read and pronounced in the various target markets.
This is an unreasonable expectation. People should try but if they don't, there is no malice here.
There are many languages around the world and it is impossible to remember every nuance of how to pronounce things. Ghandi is common pronounciation even in Germany. The Japanese might pronounce it something else.
> Ghandi is common pronounciation even in Germany.
I don't think it is an unreasonable expectation to write the word "Gandhi" as "Gandhi". That's how he wrote the name, that's how he signed it and that's the actual spelling. I can understand the difficulty in pronunciation but getting the name right while typing it out is unforgivable in this century.
The worst part of English orthography is adopting the writing conventions of literally every other language in the world and then expecting people to pronounce the words "correctly." If you want English speakers to pronounce something a certain way, it should be written use our spelling system. There's no point in shaming people for not knowing literally every language. But that's basically the system we have now.
That "correctly" needs an extra pair of scare quotes. The spelling bee competition is, essentially, the "guess the mispronounced foreign word" competition. Pejerrey? "Pay-ray". Lol.
This is an interesting observation. As a non-native speaker I was surprised by how many German expressions are used in English (with the correct German spelling). Even when there is a perfect (or near perfect) English equivalent.
However, this is pretty different as VW is a brand name so you don't have much liberty in how you write it.
Toyota was toyoda in Japanese, but they changed the spelling to look better in English. It can be done. And why not? They change the names of cars all the time. Why not the brands too?
Ei sink ju wud bi surpreist if Ei wud tok to ju leik sis.
(I think you would be surprised, if I would talk to you like this.)
German pronounced English. :)
"ju" would be pronounced the same as "you" when speaking.
And "Ei" would be just the same as "I".
"wud" = would
"leik" = like
"tok" = talk
"bi" = be
All of the above would sound exactly the same when spoken.
Nope. It's not about using similar phonemes instead of the actual ones a German would use. It's trying to pronounce the wrong word/name. The name doesn't start with a V but with an F. It's just written with a V. It's nothing Americans can't pronounce.
If you argued that you can't pronounce 'Wagen' as the Germans do ("'vaːɡn̩", according to Wikipedia), that would be a different thing. But we're not talking about that.
Indeed, the word, i.e. folk, you are not willing to pronounce happen to exist in English as well and can mean the same (or very similar) thing. "Volk" (i.e. "wolk") OTOH doesn't mean anything in either languages. (It does mean wolf in Russian, though ;) )
People's car or you could say "Folk's Wagon" (or maybe "Folks' Wagon"). Yeah, weird choice of words and won't exactly sound like it was German but close enough, kind of meaningful and nothing you couldn't pronounce. Just remember to write is as VolksWagen.
Pronunciation doesn't go like that but that is a big discussion for its own thread
Funny remark though while watching the F1 Netflix show, Schumacher said his name like SchumaKer , hence the Engish Pronunciation which goes to show that he adapted to the audience.
> Pronunciation doesn't go like that but that is a big discussion for its own thread
Honestly it kinda does. I wince every time I hear emoji pronounced like いmoji (where the e rhymes with tea) instead of えmoji (where the e rhymes with meh), or pluralize Japanese nouns (“emojis” “sushis”). That said, this is a me problem. People are going to pronounce words in whatever way makes sense to them, where the emphasis goes, how it is pronounced, which vowels get emphasized or contracted together will change over time. There is a reason we don’t all sound like Elizabethan-era Englishmen when we speak English.
Even proper nouns such as names get adapted. How many different variations and pronunciations are there for the name “John” in Europe?
The odd thing I notice is how English speakers always want to put a stress in the middle of Japanese names (naRUto). Japanese pitch accent is different in different dialects but the standard one is always at the start.
If I were trying to say the word 'Volkswagen' to a German person, I would do my best to pronounce it in a way they would understand.
As most of the time I ever say the word 'Volkswagen' out loud it's to my fellow English speakers, pronouncing it in the expected English way seems way less pretentious and effective.
This is an issue I face from time to time when I'm (native German) in international calls and am talking about a German colleague ... I could pronounce properly German (while it's not too easy always for my mind to switch) or adapt to the way most others do (which often is English with an attempt to Germanize)
Luckily due to video conferencing software printing my name on my image, I don't have to do that for my name, as I had to do in phone conference times.
It has been adopted to a degree. Just like you don't need to say Paris as "Pari" in an imitation of the French pronunciation (which would probably sound rather affected and twee in English if you did)
Anyway, let's hope they make reliable electric vehicles (as their combustion engine cars have traditionally been) otherwise people may render it as Faultswagen
Typically the capital city has an English name, which is often not just pronounced differently but also spelt differently from the local name. But for almost every other town English speakers use the same spelling, or a transcription of it, and aim for something like the local pronunciation. So for France, there's "Paris" and "Strasbourg" and that's about it. For Germany, there's "Berlin" and "Munich" and that's about it. But for some reason loads of Italian towns have their own English name: Venice, Milan, Naples, Florence, Turin, ...
They most certainly did not want Americans pronouncing it in German when they came to the US after WWII. Hell, they called them Victory Wagon at first.
Some Americans have pronounced it "Voltswagen", not sure why.
I wonder if it would be less confusing to Germans if we used "Fow Vay" to pronounce the abbreviation. Instead of "Vee Double-You." I'm not being sarcastic, but I don't think a change to the correct pronunciation is likely.
Do you actually pronounce it like "double-you" (with 3 syllables) in that context?
I'm a native speaker from the US South, and hadn't realized this until I read your comment. For me, the "W" always gets shortened to "dub-you" in AWS (or "dubya" if I'm not being picky about it). Standalone, I might pronounce "W" more like "dub-a-you if I'm emphasizing it, but not usually.
Anyhow, thanks for pointing this out. I will also now forever think that "double-you" is ridiculous.
I’m a native speaker from the north and west US and it’s definitely “double-u”. A double-u S. In my experience only Southerners shorten it the way you describe.
How so? The Taycan (and eTron GT) is an excellent car; the ID4 is receiving okay reviews despite choosing a different space in the compromise space than other makers, and they have a large slate of upcoming cars that seem decent to great. I think that within 5 years, VW AG will be selling more electric cars than Tesla.
Make that 3. I'm not going to go out and buy their car, but I don't see how this is ridiculous in any way. 50 years from now, people may look back and think "yes, that was the moment that really marked their switch to EVs"
I think it's likely they're feeling that their EV product isn't compelling enough to stand out on its own, so they need to do something ridiculous to capture attention and hopefully gain market share in the EV market.
.com for example was only reserved today and is using a domain parking service. Things like this would have been prepared if it was a serious rebranding.
But Voltswaken, honstely if that isn't a joke it's sad. It is basically guaranteed to be a typo crisis. I can just say have fun, to all the banks and other companies doing business with it.