15 German brands YOU pronounce WRONG! | Feli from Germany

It's important to note that the "American" pronunciations are how the companies advertise their names in America. Post WW2, they often wanted to hide the German origins by giving them Anglican Anglo names/pronunciations.

I was a student in Germany in the 1970s, where I learned to speak German. When I returned, I always, and still do, pronounce German brand names like Germans do. What I really appreciated about this video was the backgrounds of the names and companies.

Thanks so much; this was fun.

It’s funny that as a native Swahili speaker I grew up pronouncing most of these brands correctly, until I learned english, so I was convinced that I was pronouncing them wrong, so I had to re-learn them, now I’m realising that I was actually right and I have to unlearn again? Agggh😂

I have never once in my life heard someone mispronounce Audi until she did to make this video. I have only ever heard it pronounced the German way and I have lived in the US all my life. Porsche on the other hand is one that I rarely hear anyone other than myself pronounce correctly.

Strangely enough because of the Afrikaans language in South Africa being so close in pronunciation to a lot of German words our pronunciations of most of the brands you covered is pretty spot on and very close to the way they would be pronounced in German 😊

I am from Sweden and we pronounce most of these companies almost like in German. But our languages are kind of closely related.
I was a little bit surprised. I though we would be more influenced by English, since we consume a lot of English content. But more often than not, the Swedish way to pronounce is close to the German way in this video.

Haha! As ghetto as I am, I always pronounced Audi and Porsche properly but you will never here me pronounce Mercedes-Benz that way!! I'm totally gonna mess with people now.

As a student of history, I love videos like this. Porsche also had one of the (failed) prototypes of the ever famous Tiger tank.

The problem is we pronounced them, just like the commercial, representing the brand, pronounces them on our TVs and radios. We didn’t just dream the stuff up. I think it’s just a different interpretation with the language. I would think the companies paying for the commercials would correct the announcer if they wanted them pronounced in a different way.

My great grandparents on my father's side were from Germany and my father had a German name. I fly the German flag along with the American flag. I am very proud of my German heritage. I was surprised at the number of names I pronounce correctly!

Du bringst unsere Sprache und Mentalität übelst toll und authentisch rüber! Das ist echt ein großer Gewinn, für alle, die "deutsch" lernen oder verstehen wollen. Super schade, dass du jetzt in den USA bist, aber du bist trotzdem ne Wucht! Bleib weiter so! Danke für deine Videos!!

The way Haribo is pronounced it sounds like it is Japanese. It lines up with the phonetics quite perfectly.

The problem with pronouncing words “correctly” here in America is that most people think you’re being idiotic and pretentious.

Congratulations for your remarkable language effort. As a spanish speaker, I personally think that we have less difficult to pronounce german words, compared with english speakers. And as far as I studied in College, that is because we have a large number of similar phonemas between spanish and deutsch. But, beyond that I realy think you speak both languages (english and deutsch) beautifully. And I can say that, because I don't have any difficutly to understand every single word you say. As a linguist, I really love your work, and as a deep admiror of german culture, I really love to see your videos. Please, don´t lose your spirit and keep up with your fabolous work! And greetings from Chile, the farest corner of the world.

As I live in Poland it's not so surprising, because most names are spoken very similar here.
In addition I'm Silesian and because of that even more names are spoken like in Germany (because Silesians use many German words, or pronounce many (even some Polish words) of them German style) 🙂

When Adidas first became known to us here in the 70s they were a big status symbol to wear for us teens. My friends mother pronounced them the way you do thinking she was making fun of them. We all laughed at her way of saying them but she was correct and we were wrong! ps: love Aldis and Trader Joes. I'm from Michigan and we usually put an s at the end of store names.

This was really fun to listen to and to learn about many companies we are familiar with. Danke! And I laugh as I recall many years ago telling a German woman in the US that we like shopping at Rewe, as we pronounced it with a W instead of a V. She set us straight right away 😂. We appreciated that lesson a lot! And yours are great.

This was very interesting and fun. For me its quite the opposite of what you were expecting, so I was a little disappointed because I thought there would be a lot more differences. I should not have been surprised since so much of English has heavily Germanic influences. While some names like BMW and Volkswagen were definitely different, many others were pronounced nearly exactly if not exactly like you did, but first I have one to add to your list:

(NEW) Bayer - this company in most of the US is referred to as (BAYR) one syllable. However, when I have heard Germans from the company pronounce it, it is more like (BAY yer) two syllables. This was a complete surprise to me as I had been using the one syllable pronunciation all my life until I started working with them. 😀

Now your list:
1. Audi - I have never heard this mispronounced in my region by anyone.
2. Porsche - I have never heard this mispronounced by anyone who has ever actually seen or owned one. Even in the US, not pronouncing it like you do is considered incorrect. There are even TV shows that mock people who mispronounce it as a sign of ignorance or false pretentiousness.
3. Adidas - how it is pronounced in my region is exactly how you described it. However, despite the face that they may sound different, it is actually quite similar. It's just (ah DEED ahs) vs (AH deed ahs). So its just a different syllable emphasis.
4. Birkenstock - nearly identical
5. Jägermeister - I have heard it called (Yay ger) but I have not heard the full name mispronounced other than the slight accent difference.
6. Deutsche Bank - I have never actually heard this mispronounced. I think that anyone in my region and in my work life that actually knows what it is enough to reference it also seems to know how to pronounce it. I HAVE however heard people just call it just Deutsche which I agree is silly but it is a common shorthand and not just Americans us it.
7. Lufthansa - I have never heard someone mispronounce this one.

Overall, the main differences with the above names are mostly a matter of the American flat accenting VS. the richer German accent but other than that the pronunciations are really identical. So, it seems like your experiences in the US differ from my experience just as a regional issue or maybe some of the people you are most experienced with have just never heard the word pronounced so they go with what makes sense (Porsche I think is the biggest example of this one). I think someone else may have mentioned this but some of these also come from the way we are taught to pronounce it by American advertising. Aldi ads for example definitely pronounce it (ALL dee)


Thanks for sharing!

I love this video. So much wonderful information included. Not just a pronunciation lesson, but also a cultural and historical lesson. Thank you for sharing.

As a non English speaker I found this interesting to watch until the end. Probably because of the way you explained this so beautifully 😊 Anyway we Dutch people (from the Netherlands also known as Holland but we prefer The Netherlands) we pronounce the brandnames the same as our German neighbors with one or two exceptions.