English questions

[Travis B.]

I certainly map the German eu diphthong to English CHOICE. When I say them, however, I do maintain more rounding towards the end of the German diphthong than the English one.

German eu maps almost perfectly to my CHOICE.

Do you think there is actually much German phonetic influence on your dialect?

Well, the NCVS is suspected to have developed under German influence, I've got a dorsal rhotic (except after coronals, where it is coronal-dorsal coarticulated), and a typical word found here is [ja]...

And how like modern standard German would the speech of the German settlers in Wisconsin have been?

Apparently a standard American German kind of developed before German finally went extinct in places like here in Wisconsin. One key detail is that StG rounded front vowels became unrounded front vowels, which is still reflected in traditional pronunciations of German names here.

[Travis B.]

One key note, though, is that StG /ɔʏ/ in names often traditionally maps to /ae/~/əe/, as found in Anheuser-Busch, Teutonia Avenue in Milwaukee, and the name Preussler.

[zompist]

Apparently a standard American German kind of developed before German finally went extinct in places like here in Wisconsin. One key detail is that StG rounded front vowels became unrounded front vowels, which is still reflected in traditional pronunciations of German names here.

In Wisconsin or the Midwest? Chicago has a Goethe street which is famously pronounced "gerta", which is an attempt at ö.

[Travis B.]

Apparently a standard American German kind of developed before German finally went extinct in places like here in Wisconsin. One key detail is that StG rounded front vowels became unrounded front vowels, which is still reflected in traditional pronunciations of German names here.

In Wisconsin or the Midwest? Chicago has a Goethe street which is famously pronounced "gerta", which is an attempt at ö.

Here is southeastern Wisconsin, I should note. As for Goethe, a usual pronunciation here would be /ˈɡeɪθi/ [ˈɡ̥eθi(ː)] or /ˈɡeɪti/ [ˈɡ̥etʰi(ː)]; normally "oe" is only pronounced /ɜr/ when it is combined with a following "r" (e.g. /ˈɡɜrkiz/ [ˈɡ̥ʁ̩ˤkiːs] for the placename "Goerke's corners"), even though this is not consistent since there is also /ˈbɔrnər/ [ˈb̥ɔ̃ːʁ̃ˤnʁ̩ˤ(ː)] for the "Boerner botanical gardens" (but I have also heard /ˈbɜrnər/ [ˈb̥ʁ̩̃ˤnʁ̩ˤ(ː)] for it too).

[anteallach]

One key note, though, is that StG /ɔʏ/ in names often traditionally maps to /ae/~/əe/, as found in Anheuser-Busch, Teutonia Avenue in Milwaukee, and the name Preussler.

I think that makes it unlikely that you have [ɔʏ] in English because of German influence.

[Travis B.]

One key note, though, is that StG /ɔʏ/ in names often traditionally maps to /ae/~/əe/, as found in Anheuser-Busch, Teutonia Avenue in Milwaukee, and the name Preussler.

I think that makes it unlikely that you have [ɔʏ] in English because of German influence.

The key thing is that people came to Milwaukee from all across the German Sprachraum, so it is really hard to say. Take my family for instance - my father is mostly descended from people from Pomerania, both German and Polish, yet there were family friends from Austria.

[Linguoboy]

Apparently a standard American German kind of developed before German finally went extinct in places like here in Wisconsin. One key detail is that StG rounded front vowels became unrounded front vowels, which is still reflected in traditional pronunciations of German names here.

In Wisconsin or the Midwest? Chicago has a Goethe street which is famously pronounced "gerta", which is an attempt at ö.

"Famously"? When I arrived here, Chicagoans were infamous for supposedly pronouncing the name in three syllables. I never heard this spontaneously IRL but I did hear more than one bus driver call out /ˈɡoʊθi/[*]. The /ˈɡɝtə/ pronunciation really only came to dominate after all stop announcements became prerecorded in 2003. (In cases when the pre-recorded announcements weren't working, drivers began to approximate the new normative pronunciations.)

I've always found it interesting that IME the pronunciation of German names in Milwaukee and St Louis shows more similarities than either does to Chicago. This is just the pattern one might see in a scenario where heavy post-19th non-German immigration to Chicago led to the development of innovative spelling pronunciations whereas Missouri and Wisconsin remained relic areas. There was migration between areas of German settlement (my maternal German ancestors, for instance, originally settled in Wisconsin before relocating to St Louis) but I'm not sure if it was frequent enough for koiné formation (though if the sources of migration were broadly similar, one would expect the resulting local koinés to be too.)

[*] For three years in the early 00s, I lived a mile north of Goethe and was routinely riding CTA buses past the Clark and Goethe stop.

[anteallach]

At least if Wikipedia is to be believed, Pennsylvania Dutch also has unrounded front vowels corresponding to the Standard German front rounded vowels (as do a lot of German dialects) and /aɪ/ for /ɔʏ/.

[Travis B.]

What I do find interesting is that StG final /ə/ universally became /i/ here, rather than being dropped or being pronunced as /ə/ (with the exception of a few notable names such as Porsche), but StG medial /ə/ remains as /ə/ in present-day pronunciations.

[zompist]

"Famously"? When I arrived here, Chicagoans were infamous for supposedly pronouncing the name in three syllables. I never heard this spontaneously IRL but I did hear more than one bus driver call out /ˈɡoʊθi/[*]. The /ˈɡɝtə/ pronunciation really only came to dominate after all stop announcements became prerecorded in 2003. (In cases when the pre-recorded announcements weren't working, drivers began to approximate the new normative pronunciations.)

It's not a new pronunciation. I've just spent some time Googling, and can't find any scholarly study, but plenty of attestations of "gerta" as what people called it when they were growing up. Also plenty of "go-thee" and other decidedly non-German pronunciations. I'd ask my Dad but he's gone.

If you think it's recent, where do you think the CTA came up with it? Foisting approximations of front rounded vowels on Americans is a weird thing to start doing in 2003... nobody's trying to call Lake Zurich /lek tsyrɪç/.

[anteallach]

What I do find interesting is that StG final /ə/ universally became /i/ here, rather than being dropped or being pronunced as /ə/ (with the exception of a few notable names such as Porsche), but StG medial /ə/ remains as /ə/ in present-day pronunciations.

The Pennsylvania Dutch Wikipedia article says that happens there "only with feminine endings" and gives en gudi Fraa as an example.

[Travis B.]

If you think it's recent, where do you think the CTA came up with it? Foisting approximations of front rounded vowels on Americans is a weird thing to start doing in 2003... nobody's trying to call Lake Zurich /lek tsyrɪç/.

As for <z>, it is almost universally mapped to /z/ and not to /ts/ here except in the words pizza and Nazi.

[Linguoboy]

If you think it's recent, where do you think the CTA came up with it?

From...the dude?

We were using the approximation "Gerta" for the Genius of the German People in high school in St Louis, despite the fact that if there'd been a student of that name, he'd probably have been called /ˈɡeɪθi/.

[zompist]

If you think it's recent, where do you think the CTA came up with it?

From...the dude?

When have Americans ever cared about correctly pronouncing non-English names? This is the same town that puts an /s/ in Des Plaines.

Here's a post from 2001 showing that the "gerta" pronunciation is old, at least back to this guy's youth. Also that it's been a shibboleth for all that time.

I can't find any discussion of when "gerta" started. I still think it's someone's attempt at the German pronunciation, and we have enough Germans that it's not surprising (Germans were the largest ethnic group in Chicago till 1900 or so).

[Moose-tache]

"er for ö" is a common approximation in America, not just for proper nouns. I once heard an American say merbel as the German word for furniture. I think it's just natural. It's a pretty weird, indistinct, central-ish vowel, and what else would we use to approximate the sound if we're mapping German onto American English? Yeah, yeah, early borrowings just use the FACE vowel, but modern speakers encountering a German word for the first time would not accept this as a match.

The real question, and I mean this 100% seriously, are there any Chicagoans who pronounce Malört "muh-lert"?

[Raphael]

and what else would we use to approximate the sound if we're mapping German onto American English?

The churn vowel?

[Linguoboy]

The real question, and I mean this 100% seriously, are there any Chicagoans who pronounce Malört "muh-lert"?

Not IME (and I know quite a few Malört drinkers and end up talking about it several times a month). The usual pronunciation is /məˈloɹt/, with the umlaut simply ignored.

[Travis B.]

One thing I should note is that <ö ü> are treated as simply allographs of <o u> in America, as demonstrated by the infamous "heavy metal umlaut", whereas <oe> and <ue> get special pronunciations in many cases (as you all must know).

[Moose-tache]

and what else would we use to approximate the sound if we're mapping German onto American English?

The churn vowel?

Yes, that's the one.

[Imralu]

"er for ö" is a common approximation in America, not just for proper nouns. I once heard an American say merbel as the German word for furniture. I think it's just natural.

Yeah, I heard [ˈbɪɾə ˌʃɻ̩ːːn] from more than one American in Berlin. (One was loudly exclaiming to her friends that she had lived there for, like, five years and, like, you don't even need German and rattled off the five or six phrases of German she knew.)