Swedish was Shocked by the Pronunciation of Swedish Brand Names in Nordic Countries!!

🇫🇮 Finnish for H&M is "hoo et äm", letter H pronounced like she said on the video. Other option is to say "henkkamaukka".

I'm Finnish and I say H&M as "hoo et äm". This highlights one interesting thing that I've noticed: when English-speakers come across the & character, they always pronouce it as "and". But in Finland people pronounce it as "et", which is the Latin word that the & character stands for. This also has an effect on how I would pronounce American brands like Procter & Gamble; I would read it Procter et Gamble, because from my point of view, that's what it says.

As a Finn I have never heard anyone call H&M "hooämmä". Everyone I know and myself call it "hoo et äm" as many comments already pointed out. "Henkkamaukka" is also a slang version of it, Henkka and Maukka are Finnish nicknames that resemble the full name of the store, Hennes & Mauritz (I know "hennes" means 'hers' in Swedish and is not a name but it's slang :'D)

Really glad the Norwegian said the full name of H&M. Many use the full name, or if you use a short version it’s often Hennes

The Norwegians are our closest linguistic siblings. As a Swedish person, I feel like we understand each other perfectly well (if you are not from Bergen) although we're two different countries.

I didn’t know Spotify was a Swedish brand, I learn new things in this channel. Thank you

The older generation often say "Hennes & Mauritz" ("Hennesåmaoritz") or just "Hennes". "Hennes" means "Hers". Originally in the 40s they were two different stores. "Hennes" sold women's clothes, and Mauritz Widforss Handels AB sold menswear and hunting equipment, but they became "Hennes & Mauritz" in the late 1960s.

I belive in Finnish we mostly say H&M as "Hoo et äm" and sometimes as "Henkka Maukka". 🇫🇮

I, as a Finn, can hear a clear continuum in pronouciation of Scandinavian languages moving towards Central Europe : If we start with how the Finnish-Swedish pronounce, then move to Sweden, then Norwegian, then Danish - and then flemish and finally German. There is a distinct "flow" in how the pronounciation changes.

Fun story: My friend and I were visiting Shanghai. We entered a store while talking danish to eachother. Sudddently one of the workers spoke fluently danish to us. We asked her where she learned to speak danish, and she told us she didn't, she spoke norwegian. She said she had lived 9 years in Norway. But as a dane I know she was speaking danish, so my friend and I left the store a bit confused. Maybe she lived in Denmark and thought it was Norway, or maybe chinese speaking people learning norwegian somehow ends up speaking danish 😂

Spotify is an "English" word though, because that Y sound [aɪ] does not exist in Swedish, we have [y:] and [ʏ]. So it's a word that is from Sweden but made to sound English, but Swedish people pronounce it with a Swedish English accent. If we were to spell it in Swedish just going off of the pronunciation, it could be spelled "Spottifaj".

”Spotify” is obviously an English name, even if the company is Swedish. If the intention was to have a name that really sounds Swedish, it would probably be something like ”Spotifiera”. That would follow Swedish patterns. We have a lot of words like that, such as identifiera (identify), initiera (initiate), mumifiera (mummify) and more. Spotify obviously follows English patterns, if it's not an English word already, it certainly could be.

it would've been interesting to have an Icelandic person there as well. The Icelandic pronunciation of these brands are very similar to swedish

I think it’s easy to forget, but Denmark does kinda “border” England, and English was heavily influenced by Norse in the viking era, so if there are similarities in pronunciation, it kinda makes sense.

The world according to World Friends: the USA is now a Nordic country. 🤣

It's actually really interesting that the Finnish speaker said she's surprised by Denmark being so Englishy. I'm a Brit who's been living in Norway for 8 years, and Norwegians occasionally confuse me for a Dane when speaking Norwegian, so there's definitely something that loans itself more to the English side of pronunciations.

I as a Finn has never heard anyone saying "hm" ("hooämmä"), it's "h&m" ("hoo et ämmä") while talking about that clothing shop 😃

In Finnish the pronounciation may vary when you start actually having these words as part of a sentence, since we do not use prepositions but case endings that are added straight to the main word, like: "to listen to spotify" = "kuunnella spotifyta" - pronounced: [spotifaita] or "go to IKEA" = "mennä IKEA:an" = [ikeaan] or "driving on Volvo" = "ajaa Volvolla"

Many brands that hardly anyone knows are Swedish, the Swedes should be proud

make more nordic related videos. i really like them