ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (02/26/85)
>The K does stand for KOECHEL (umlaut o), and does not, I repeat, does >not, contain the letter R, although too many people who should know >better have pronounced it "koerchel" for God knows how long. It is also >not pronounced "kershel", which is the other most common mistake. English does not contain the phoneme written in German umlaut-o, sometimes respelt `oe'. In case the author of the above remark is unaware: 1) Not every English speaker can accurately reproduce the sounds of German. 2) The English pronunciation of `ur' in `fur' is the closest our language has to this German sound. 3) Speakers of languages containing the umlaut-o sound frequently use that sound to reproduce English's `ur' in `fur'. If the author of the KOECHEL flame had wished to be constructive, s/he might have pointed out that the `ch' resembles the sound of `h' in `huge' more than it does `sh'... -michael