[jeevan007]

This one is quite funny. We indeed find some Spanish and Italian words hard to pronounce.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1PJaM_X9sY

[Crazy_cars_guy]

Originally Posted by tilt

Volkswagen - ah, here it comes First the VW itself: like BMW, it's pronounced "fow-vay". "Fow" is how V is actually pronounced in the German alphabet, and "vay" as you already pointed out, is W.

Reminds me of dear Sam Kapasi. His take on this was superb.
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-d...ml#post2617773

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

How about the VW polo?
My wife has a strange way of pronouncing VW. You think she would say VEE-DOUBLE-YOU right? Wrong.
She says FAUW-VAY, sounding a bit like far-away.

[Pal]

Haha what an awesome thread!

Another addition - Maybach is NOT to be pronounced similiar to 'payback'.
Rather, it is Maiboch (Mai in the Marathi "Aai", followed by boch as in "lock")

These goof-ups are based on the local dialect/pronunciation and hence, happen everywhere across the world.

Like here in the middle east, whenever I say 'Hey, I work with Aoodee' people actually think twice and say 'ohh! you work with ooodi"
The worst, is when some locals confidently say 'filixwegen' for folkswagen! It breaks my heart to correct the person then and I just go with the flow!

But it is also here that I learned, from an owner nonetheless, that the Ferrari 458 Speciale was actually 'S-PAYS-EE-AA-LAY'!

So it is once again, thanks for this starting this post, deetjohn (or is it doitchuan / deetzyuan) hehe

Hey, also some other Sold in India products' names come to my mind:
Hero Honda CBZ (CeeBeeZee)
BMW Z3 (Zee3)
Mahindra XUV 500 (five double O)

[dark.knight]

Most of the major automobile markets do not stick to traditional pronunciation (assuming the correct way is the way the home country of the brand pronounces it as). Major examples are U.S, Australia, India, and all of Europe.

Yes its more than obvious that we're mispronouncing but why not? If we stick to Germanic spelling we've to call BMW as Bee-ehm-vee, Volkswagen as Fohksvagen, AMG as Aa-em-gee and so on. We do not know how to interpret the umlauts as well. British brands like Rolls-Royce and Bentley, while they are standard English, will still have that British accent in them, we don't need to implement that at all. Germans call Ford as Foahd (it sounds like that, German r's are guttural and uniquely accented, this contrasts with the traditional American emphasised R.. FoRd. Americans and the Australians get almost every "traditional" pronunciation wrong too, not that there's anything wrong with that, they're being themselves.

In the end I'd say just say it as long as you're comfortable with it. It cannot come off as being pretentious as that's what happened when I visited a Fiat showroom and I heard them say Fee-aht Pooon-toh.. the only thing missing was the cupped finger emphasis that Italians are only too famous for, the rest of their conversation happened in local language though.. couldn't stop laughing, oh and that executive dressed in full-on formals proudly introducing me to the "Folks-wagon" Polo - the tech specs.. that he had no idea about.

Source : I did some basics of German and French in school, while I cannot hold a conversation or even form sentences, my pronunciations are spot on.

[narayans80]

Originally Posted by jeevan007

This one is quite funny. We indeed find some Spanish and Italian words hard to pronounce.

Actually its not. There rules wrt spelling and pronunciation in Italian are actually small. Once you know that, it applies everywhere the same way. On the contrary, we have lot more variations in terms of spellings and pronunciations in English. The multiple pronunciations for -ough is one such example.

I see it day in day out when am helping my 7-year old

From a colleague, Spanish isn't too different either. Its just the pronunciations vary from the European to the colonies across the pond.

French was totally different, barring few words. The spellings and pronunciations are poles apart.

Interestingly all Italians and the Spanish colleague pronounced our Indian names spot on or at least close enough first attempt. On the contrary, not a single American has pronounced my name correctly first attempt they start Na Ra and then get confused

[Sheel]

Originally Posted by ariesonu

Wouldn't it be fun to find out how MARUTI, MAHINDRA, HINDUSTAN, EICHER or SONALIKA is pronounced by non-Indians.
More fun will be to find out how many know of us the full form of TVS.

Even Indians do not spare the Scorpios & Boleros.

Skarpeo & Balero is what the majority pronounces.

[Pferdestarke]

Japanese marques:

Toyota: "toe-yo-tah"

Honda: "hawn-duh"

Mazda: "maaz-duh"

Mitsubishi: "mit-su-bee-she"

Isuzu: "e-soo-zoo"

[Thilak29]

How to pronounce Hyundai Tuscon ?

[Divya Sharan]

Originally Posted by Thilak29

How to pronounce Hyundai Tuscon ?

Hyundai Too-saun.

Taken from here - https://www.howtopronounce.com/hyundai-tucson/

[tilt]

Originally Posted by Divya Sharan

Hyundai Too-saun.

Taken from here - https://www.howtopronounce.com/hyundai-tucson/

The issue here is not the word "Tucson", it's the word "Hyundai". The English say "ha-yoon-dai" in a convoluted manner, the Americans say "He-yun (to rhyme with fun)-day", India says "he-yoon-daaaaiiii".

I have even heard some people say "Hunday" to rhyme with Sunday! That's not however specific to any nationality.

To be fair, only Americans already know the correct pronunciation of Tucson because it's a city in Arizona. For everyone else not familiar with native Indian (Red Indians) tribe names or American cities, it will always be "tuck-sawn" to begin with until they're corrected

Cheers

[shankar.balan]

Originally Posted by tilt

For everyone else not familiar with native Indian (Red Indians) tribe names or American cities, it will always be "tuck-sawn" to begin with until they're corrected

Cheers

Most people say TUCK-SUN or TOOK-SAWN.

It is actually Too-Zawn with the N being a mere Nasal tone...

[sarathlal]

Here is an attempt on How to pronounce car brand names by Coches.net
They stitched by getting the brand names pronounced directly by those brands representatives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBdymVDEIcQ

[ashishskapoor]

Here's another take on how to pronounce car brand names correctly and covers brands like Audi, Volkswagen, Bugatti, Skoda, Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo, Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz among others. These are the most commonly mispronounced car names.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNLi5l6prM4

[meta]

A tricky car model name is that of the Lamborghini Gallardo.

Do you pronounce the "l"s literally (roughly Gul-lard-o), or do you pronounce them as "y" (roughly Gui-yard-o)?

Even a marginally illuminated car enthusiast should know that Lamborghini likes to name their cars after bulls: either breeds of bull, like Gallardo, or specific individual bulls, like Murciélago. In Spanish, you would pronounce the double-l sound kind of like the English "y".

Now, the double-l also appears in Italian. In fact, the word for chicken is spelt the same in Italian as it is in Spanish: pollo. However, in Italian, you pronounce the double-l just as it is written: pol-lo (Italian), and not poi-yo (Spanish).

The Gallardo is a car model with a Spanish-origin name, with the car company being Italian, with the parent company being German, and the majority of the customers being neither Italian nor Spanish.

So what is the "correct" way to pronounce Gallardo? As it turns out, there isn't a binary answer.

Once during a visit to the Lamborghini factory, I asked some workers on the assembly line how to say the name of their best selling model. They were all Italians and they pronounced it the Italian way.

A few years later, I found myself sitting next to a certain Stephan Winkelmann at the dinner table, so I asked him for an authoritative answer. (Winkelmann was the Bugatti CEO at the time, but he used to be the CEO of Lamborghini, and almost all of the Gallardo's production happened under his leadership.)

He said that he has pronounced it both ways, but given that the car is Italian, and the Italians are wont to pronounce it the Italian way, he feels that would be the preferred pronunciation, but neither way should be scoffed at.

[Emvi]

I have a list of few best selling cars whose names are commonly mispronounced.

Maruti Brezza
A lot of people pronounce it as BREEEZA. What's surprising is even the guys at the dealerships pronounce this way!

Maruti Alto
There are some who call it AULTO!

Maruti Wagon R
It is sometimes pronounced as WAGNER!

Maruti Spresso
It is quite common to see people pronouncing it as EXPRESSO!

Hyundai Creta
I have heard people calling it CREETA!