I was watching Patterns of Force the other day and smiled when I caught William Shatner's slip in using the old (inaccurate) pronunciation of Nazi. I don't know how true this is, but appearantly quite a few soldiers during WWII said "Nazzie" while others correctly used "Notsy". The only other time I've seen television acknowledge this was in an episode of King of the Hill when Cotton Hill (Hank's WWII veteran father) used this pronunciation.
Nazzie Germany
- Thread starter AC84
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In terms of "authenticity", the Germans themselves would have used "notsy" - and many actually did, despite the abbreviation sometimes being considered a less than polite way of saying NSDAP.
Since the Ekosians weren't really Germans, John Gill would have had an easier time selling the concept by using the catchy nickname than by trying to first explain that the Ekosians would have to think of themselves as "Deutsch", or worse still, as "Socialists" or "Arbeiters".
Perhaps Gill told these folks that they were to call themselves Noble Aryan Zeonist Exterminators?
Timo Saloniemi
Since the Ekosians weren't really Germans, John Gill would have had an easier time selling the concept by using the catchy nickname than by trying to first explain that the Ekosians would have to think of themselves as "Deutsch", or worse still, as "Socialists" or "Arbeiters".
Perhaps Gill told these folks that they were to call themselves Noble Aryan Zeonist Exterminators?
Timo Saloniemi
That's what I thought of immediately I saw the thread title.
Doesn't Shatner pronounce Enterprise as "ennerprize" sometimes though?
Well, yeah, but if you give an English speaker "Natzi", he pronounces the "a" like in "hat", and it comes off sounding like "Nätzi"...
...Whereas the "o" in "not" sounds pretty much like the German "a".
But try and describe to an English speaker what an "ü" or a "y" should sound like, let alone "ch"! And German is one of the simplest languages to pronounce... The English discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation seems to hobble people in that respect.
(Then again, the speakers of simply pronounced languages are sometimes at a disadvantage, too. I'm constantly surprised by how for example Arabs never need to struggle with the weirdest European names, having such a broad selection of native sounds to choose from that they can effortlessly pronounce Finnish or Gaelic names alike, then write them down so that a fellow Arab can repeat the flawless pronunciation without ever having heard it.)
Timo Saloniemi
...Whereas the "o" in "not" sounds pretty much like the German "a".
But try and describe to an English speaker what an "ü" or a "y" should sound like, let alone "ch"! And German is one of the simplest languages to pronounce... The English discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation seems to hobble people in that respect.
(Then again, the speakers of simply pronounced languages are sometimes at a disadvantage, too. I'm constantly surprised by how for example Arabs never need to struggle with the weirdest European names, having such a broad selection of native sounds to choose from that they can effortlessly pronounce Finnish or Gaelic names alike, then write them down so that a fellow Arab can repeat the flawless pronunciation without ever having heard it.)
Timo Saloniemi
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Uh, no it doesn't. Not to me at least (these things are probably heavily dependant on one's own language). The sound, to me, seems pretty much the one in the English word "one", which is very distinct from both "not" and "hat".
Ah, but isn't Finnish spelt almost completely phonetically?
Which is actually an extension of Mel's 2,000 Year Old Man routine, about how Churchill said it that way and everybody stopped fighting the Nazis and went off looking for those "Narzies" he kept talking about
Depends on one's accent, I guess. I have a hard time seeing how the German "a" could sound like the vowel in "one," which in my accent rhymes with "fun." I guess there are some accents in which "one" could sound like the word "wan" (or the name "Juan" as often mispronounced by Americans -- indeed puns based on "Juan/one" are fairly common).
In a typical American English accent, the short O sound in "not" is a lot like the default A sound in a lot of Indo-European languages, or like the sound that British people tend to render as "ar." Americans would tend to write it as "ah." There is a distinction between the short O and the "ah," but it's a subtle one to American listeners.
Or concerned, even.
As I tell my students, "I was just testing you." 
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