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From: comm@zeus.bris.ac.uk ()
Subject: Re: The Naming of Letters
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References: <sullivan.190.185.33D76309@osu.edu> <33da13e7.8964219@news.cww.de> <EEE2tC.C1D.0.staffin.dcs.ed.ac.uk@dcs.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 17:59:46 GMT
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Rainer Thonnes (rwt@dcs.ed.ac.uk) wrote:
: In article <33da13e7.8964219@news.cww.de>,
: michael.rohde@usa.net (Michael Rohde) writes:
: > Am Thu, 24 Jul 1997 14:13:30 GMT
: > schrieb sullivan.190@osu.edu (Ryan Sullivan):
: > 
: > >What I'm really getting at is, where did the name for 'H' /eich/ come from?
: > 
: > Well, I don't know, sorry. 
: > But in Germany we call 'H' as 'Haa' (comparable with 'Hunter').
: > And 'Y' we call as 'Ypsilon' (comparable with 'young').
: > 
: > BTW: 'W' we call as "Weeh" (comparable with 'whether').
: 
: What do you mean by "comparable with"?  The German name for 'H' does indeed
: sound like the "hu" in "hunter", but there is no such similarity in your
: other two examples.

If Michael Rohde and Rainer Thonnes really pronounce the English word
"hunter" starting with the same sound as the German name for "h" then they
still have a lot of learning to do. Maybe they do say something like
"haanter", but that just makes them sound very German. They might be
closer pronouncing it "hntt" (both vowels very short), or even
pronouncing it just like German, which would be a quite acceptable
northern English dialect. German teachers of English have traditionally
had weird ideas about how to pronounce English vowels
(Tschitty-tschitty-png-png etc).

For the eight-bit impaired, hntt was with o umlaut, png-png with a
umlaut.

Martin Murray
If a German pronounces "Hull" as if it's German, the residents of Hull
will understand perfectly. If he pronounces it like "Halle" without the
final e, the residents won't know what he's talking about.
