Comment on Please check you kids' Halloween candy, everyone
Akasazh@feddit.nl 8 months agoMien Kalf can only be read as ‘my calf’ or a woman with the first name Mien and last name Kalf in Dutch. Mien being pronounced like ‘mean’.
Mein is pronounced to rhyme with nine. The ‘ei’ only being correctly pronounced in American when saying Einstein, other -steins get mispronounced to rhyme with ‘lean’ (Weiner as Weener instead of whiner fi).
So we’ve got ‘mein’, to rhyme with nine, and Kampf, which might look like it’s out of your comfort zone, but it’s pronounced like comfort without the -ort.
Didn’t intend for this to become a German pronunciation lesson using dictatorial literature, but there we are…
MossyFeathers@pawb.social 8 months ago
If Kampf is pronounced “comf” does that mean the English words, “comfy” or “comfortable” come from the German word for “struggle”?
Akasazh@feddit.nl 8 months ago
Nah, not at all.
To be fair, it only really works with the american accent, where the ‘o’ in comfortable gets pronaunced a bit like an a. In British english it leans more to ‘u’.
Comfortable is from latin ‘to strengthen or to help’. Com (cum) Force (forte) (maybe the british pronounciation is more correct because of the latin ‘cum’ :).
German Kampf is related to camp, which would mean a military kamp, but also a battle. It gets translated to ‘struggle’ in English, but ‘My Battle’ or ‘My Fight’ would be more correct, albeit less litererary pleasing.
MossyFeathers@pawb.social 8 months ago
Ah, okay. I was wondering if it was a silly reason like, “it’s a struggle to do anything when you’re comfy” or something like that.
Masimatutu@lemm.ee 8 months ago
As a rule, when speculating etymological relations, always look at the spelling rather that the pronunciation, since the latter tends to change a lot more quickly. English, of course, is an extreme case of this; during the Great Vowel Shift spellings stayed much the same while most vowels changed to the point of becoming unrecognisable. This is why English spelling makes no sense.
Masimatutu@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Remember to always provide context when describing pronunciation in English. The letter u may be realised /jʉw/ (“use”), /ʉw/ (“rule”), /ɵ/ (“put”) and /ʌ/ (“cut”), of which only the last one is a valid approximation.