Think you know how to pronounce Porsche? Hyundai? Or even BMW? Think again ─ it seems we Brits get them incredibly wrong.
Car sales website Carwow decided to ask how the average Brit pronounces a car manufacturer before asking a native speaker and filmed the end result. Turns out, there is more to it than the letters suggest.
Even a simple three-letter name like BMW is actually pronounced b-m-vee, as Germans pronounce the letter ‘W’ as a ‘V’. Lord help anyone say Italian Fiat tuner, Abarth, as an Italian speaker says it is pronounced ‘ah-ba-ahrt’ and not like the thing you lie in to clean yourself.
Citroen, meanwhile, ends up as ‘si-troh-enn’, if you ask someone from France and not ‘si-trun’. As for Dacia, we already knew it was ‘da-chia’ but maybe some pronounce the ‘C’ with a ‘see’ sound. As for Hyundai, which we all pronounce wrong, ‘hey-un-deh’ is correct.
Mazda is another standout mistake we Brits make. The British bloke in the video says ‘maaz-dah’, which is a far cry from the two Japanese girls who say ‘ma-zu-dah’. As for Mercedes, no one is ever going to say ‘mer-tsay-dez- but apparently Germans say it like that.
The video also puts the age-old Porsche argument to bed. Us Brits say ‘puh-orsh’ (well, most of us anyway), but the German bloke says ‘por-shuh’ and we have no idea what to believe anymore. At least Ssangyong is easier than it looks (like Koenigsegg).
Although you can blame good-old fashioned British ignorance and laziness for the mispronunciation, it is worth bearing in mind some manufacturers such as Mazda use a different version depending on the region.
And let’s remember the sheer variety of accents Britain is home to. Can you really imagine someone with a thick Glaswegian accent saying Citroen the correct way?
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