-1

I just saw a British made documentary about Heinrich Himmler with mostly native English speakers being interviewed. What struck me was that everyone (?) pronounced Third Reich with a "hard" C (=k) while they pronounced Heinrich Himmler's name with a soft C (in other words, the pronunciation was reasonably near how Germans would have pronounced it).

Until now I have always thought that native English speakers simply couldn't pronounce -eich as it should be pronounced but obviously that's not true so why do they always mispronounce "Third Reich"?

The people in this program were professors, PhDs and similar so well educated and should be aware of how "reich" should be pronounced.

Glorfindel
  • 14,499
d-b
  • 1,293
  • 2
    Heinrice Himmler? I don't think that's quite right. What do you mean by "soft c"? In English, that's an "s" sound. – nick012000 Dec 17 '19 at 11:57
  • 3
    'Should'? Should all Anglophones pronounce 'Paris' the way Parisians do? The French even spell the English capital 'the wrong way'. But that's not why many voted for Brexit. Vive la différence. Usage drives acceptability. How do Anglophone pronunciation guides say 'Reich' is usually pronounced by Anglophones? (I've just checked in Macmillan; they give different prevailing pronunciations in the US and the UK!) And 'third' is not very German, either. Dritte? – Edwin Ashworth Dec 17 '19 at 12:03
  • 1
    I've just checked in Macmillan; they give different prevailing pronunciations in the US and the UK! @EdwinAshworth: ahem, that's weird: the voice in British version pronounces according to the US transcription and vice versa. – Artyom Lugovoy Dec 17 '19 at 12:25
  • The Scottish word loch is familiar to most English people, but I expect many of us pronounce it lock when talking quickly, not because we don't know any better but because the correct sound doesn't come naturally to us. – Kate Bunting Dec 17 '19 at 12:52
  • @KateBunting, yes, but we used to be able to pronounce it correctly. Most English words that contain "gh" originally had those two letters pronounced with that same "ch" sound. – Ray Butterworth Dec 17 '19 at 14:29
  • I've closevoted as POB, but this could also be considered a duplicate of Pronunciation of “Einstein”. Where the vast majority of Anglophones enunciate /st/ instead of /ʃt/, even though they'e quite capable of reproducing the consonant cluster Einstein himself would have used. On the other hand, as a lecturer I listened to recently on Youtube pointed out, we simply *can't* pronounce Huygens "authentically", so there's no point in even trying. – FumbleFingers Dec 17 '19 at 15:13
  • There are lots of "adopted" words in the English language that are not pronounced as they are in the country of origin. Consider "Paris France". – Hot Licks Jan 16 '20 at 16:15
  • @HotLicks Do you have examples where "r" is pronounced "the French way" in English? That is the core of this question. – d-b Jan 16 '20 at 20:53
  • @d-b - Your question does not mention the "r" sound. – Hot Licks Jan 16 '20 at 22:13
  • @HotLicks No but your comment about Paris and France does. – d-b Jan 16 '20 at 23:42
  • @d-b - But the "r" sound is not the point. How do you think the French pronounce "Paris France"? – Hot Licks Jan 17 '20 at 00:26
  • @HotLicks I speak French and have lived outside Briançon for several years so I know how it is pronounced (emphasis on the second vowel, different R) but you are missing the point: if there were a French word "laris" English speakers would pronounce that in a way that rhymed with Paris (emphasis on the first vowel, same R in both cases), not according to completely different rules for pronunciation.. – d-b Jan 17 '20 at 07:23
  • @d-b - Every reference I find says that the French pronounce "Paris" as (to the English ear) "Pare-ee". – Hot Licks Jan 17 '20 at 13:53
  • @HotLicks Yes? What's your point? – d-b Jan 17 '20 at 23:34
  • @d-b - The point is that English pronunciations are not expected to match pronunciations in other languages. So how something "should" be pronounced in only loosely related to how it's pronounced in the source language. – Hot Licks Jan 17 '20 at 23:37
  • @HotLicks The point here is that in one case the pronunciation is similar to the native pronunciation and in another case, that has the same native pronunciation, the "English" pronunciation is completely different. RTFM. – d-b Jan 18 '20 at 10:05
  • @d-b - What manual?? The point is that English is completely inconsistent when it comes to pronouncing foreign words. – Hot Licks Jan 18 '20 at 13:36
  • @RayButterworth No, "we" didn't pronounce "gh" the same as Germanic "ch". Our ancestors who spoke Old English did, and that was a very long time ago! – CJ Dennis Jan 19 '20 at 00:47
  • I believe pronunciations may have been different between the previous E. Germany and W. Germany, I was taught 'Ich' the German word for "I" with a strong "K" Recently (10yrs ago), an ex E. German thought it sounded super harsh as they almost said 'ic' the way we pronounce the 'ss' in tissue (tishoo)/ It may be that the hard K sound (in Reich) was akin to speaking 'proper English. The 'ish' being a more modern twist. –  Mar 03 '21 at 23:54

2 Answers2

3

Reich has been in the English language for over two centuries, and thus has had time to assimilate to English pronunciation.

The OED ("Reich, n.") includes citations as early as the 18th and 19th centuries:

1762 P. Murdoch tr. A. F. Büsching New Syst. Geogr. IV. 4 The Empire [Ger. das deutsche Reich] is differently denominated as well by Germans themselves as by others. It is called the Reich [Ger. das Reich]..by way of eminence, as also the German Reich [Ger. das deutsche Reich].

1852 Times 6 July 6/4 It was the old court of appeal of the Reich, remarkable in its time, even among other courts, for its majestic slowness of procedure.

So it had two centuries to standardize its pronunciation to stay in line with other end-[ch] sounds. Greg Brooks categorizes these in his Dictionary of the British English Spelling System (available for free in PDF) as pronounced /k/ (irrespective of position), and examples include

aurochs

broch, loch, pibroch, Sassenach (when pronounced with /k/ rather than Scots /x/)

stomach, triptych, pentateuch, diptych, distich

cromlech (in some dialects it's /x/ rather than /k/)

as well as all the fun words where it doesn't appear at the end, like Christ, chianti, schooner, and masochist (p.283-4).

Meanwhile, German names (Brooks notes Schumacher; you note Heinrich) tend to keep phonemes closer to their language of origin, especially if the person is not native English-speaking. For example, Brooks says that Schumacher keeps the /x/ from German (p.286). For Heinrich, educated speakers may pronounce someone's name from Germany with /x/ (I've heard that pronunciation), but note that transition to /k/ has been ongoing for people who emigrated from Germany some time ago. For instance, here is how one person insists the [ch] in the name "Michael Heinrich Horse" be pronounced: /k/. (YouTube)

Community
  • 1
TaliesinMerlin
  • 40,528
  • What's more, people nowadays pay more attention to approximating the native pronunciation. Just think of instances where names were translated completely. For example, Georg Friedrich Händel – George Frederick Handel or John Lackland – Johann Ohneland. – Cacambo Jan 20 '20 at 07:14
0

This is speculation; I don't have any solid evidence for it (except for the first sentence below).

The word Reich was fairly rare in the English language before the 1930s (See Google Ngrams). During World War II, I suspect people made no effort to pronounce German words correctly — possibly anybody who tried to pronounce it correctly would have been open to accusations of being a Nazi sympathizer. And after the war, the incorrect pronunciation was already too well established for it to change.

Peter Shor
  • 88,407