Please check you kids' Halloween candy, everyone

Masimatutu@lemm.ee to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 1338 points –
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Mien Kalf can only be read as 'my calf' or a woman with the first name Mien and last name Kalf in Dutch. Mien being pronounced like 'mean'.

Mein is pronounced to rhyme with nine. The 'ei' only being correctly pronounced in American when saying Einstein, other -steins get mispronounced to rhyme with 'lean' (Weiner as Weener instead of whiner fi).

So we've got 'mein', to rhyme with nine, and Kampf, which might look like it's out of your comfort zone, but it's pronounced like comfort without the -ort.

Didn't intend for this to become a German pronunciation lesson using dictatorial literature, but there we are..

If Kampf is pronounced "comf" does that mean the English words, "comfy" or "comfortable" come from the German word for "struggle"?

Nah, not at all.

To be fair, it only really works with the american accent, where the 'o' in comfortable gets pronaunced a bit like an a. In British english it leans more to 'u'.

Comfortable is from latin 'to strengthen or to help'. Com (cum) Force (forte) (maybe the british pronounciation is more correct because of the latin 'cum' :).

German Kampf is related to camp, which would mean a military kamp, but also a battle. It gets translated to 'struggle' in English, but 'My Battle' or 'My Fight' would be more correct, albeit less litererary pleasing.

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