Weizen vs. Viezen

Agreed.

Oh sure you can. In trying to impress my kids with my Rap cred, I decreed that my name was: Mart IN. Sort of like the rappers: Will I Am or Flo Rida. :slight_smile:

An excellent point. This example, as well as the Vitezen / Weizen discussion is emblematic of a much larger problem in the English language…

The phonetic characteristics of English letters are frequently undermined when a foreign word is adopted into the lexicon. And whether or not the native pronunciation is kept, is not handled consistently. Case in point… Fajitas = “faheetas” and Bratwurst = “BrotWurst”.

If I had my druthers foreign words would be translated into English phonetics before being adopted. In that scenarios Hefeweizen would be spelled “Heffehvitezin” once brought into English.

I will step off my soapbox now.

Wheezin’. And double. Drives the geeks nuts.

Now you stepped in it! My favorite here is the NFL player, Julio Jones. They say Hoolio Jones, but I say it either has to be pronounced Hoolio Hones or Julio Jones. You can’t split this one.[/quote]

Yes, you can. Latin first name, Anglo last name.

How about Sean Bean…Shawn Bawn? :wink:

Oh sure you can. In trying to impress my kids with my Rap cred, I decreed that my name was: Mart IN. Sort of like the rappers: Will I Am or Flo Rida. :slight_smile: [/quote]

OK, you;re not gonna hear the end of this from me, Mart! :wink:

Perfect.

I’m amazed that German decendants are the largest ancestry group in the US. Growing up here about an hour from NYC, 50% of the people I grew up with were Italian, with the remainder being Irish, Jewish, Greek, or Polish/Slovak. I knew exactly one German family growing up.

You can’t throw a statement like that out in front of a librarian without making me scramble to find the answer. So I looked it up.
The relevant table at the Census is here

http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tab ... Type=table

There’s a table with percentages here, but it’s a subscription source so you may not be able to access it

http://www.socialexplorer.com/tables/AC ... =R10530014

German is the highest reported ancestry at 14%. I was expecting English or Irish to be top, but they are 3 and 2 respectively. But if you look at the table you’ll see other groups at over 120 million, or 36%. Since the data are self reported, that could be all kinds of things.

And I say data with a long A :smiley:

Now you stepped in it! My favorite here is the NFL player, Julio Jones. They say Hoolio Jones, but I say it either has to be pronounced Hoolio Hones or Julio Jones. You can’t split this one.[/quote]

Yes, you can. Latin first name, Anglo last name.

How about Sean Bean…Shawn Bawn? :wink: [/quote]
That’s right! And I drive a Heep Wahrangler.

Damn! This is FUN! :lol: