I'll try to refrain from taking my usual potshots at the German language on this one, but you may have noticed that the city where we currently live has multiple, conflicting and yet altogether entirely correct spellings. That is due to the Umlaut (those 2 points above the letter u) in the "true" spelling, Nürnberg. But because most folks do not have European keyboards, the standard agreed-upon spelling is to change the "ü" to "ue" when writing on a keyboard... except that in this case, the consensus is that the alternate correct spelling is in fact "Nuremberg," which is how pretty much the rest of the world spells it, and I can not for the life of me find out the exact reason why. For what it's worth, the city website is www.nueremberg.de (that's with the "ue,") however typing in nuremberg.de will redirect and get you to the same site-- so both spellings are OK in the city's eyes. On a similar note I still can't figure out how folks make the leap from the German "Köln" to "Cologne" (that city's own tourism website is Koeln.de, the proper "alternate" spelling). But, like everything else, just note the exception, memorize it, and move on. That's my daily view of the city from my school window, at the southwest corner of the Altstadt. Now that the class is in its second phase, it has doubled in size and has moved to a larger classroom at the back of the building, the view is much better-- a couple weeks ago, we had awesome views of the city bus corral and transit mall. I much prefer this one. Once again, those are the city walls in the foreground, the moat has been drained and is a biking/jogging path and small park, and the Kaiserburg (castle) is in the upper left hand of the pic.
1 comment:
The pronounciation for this great city is ENTIRELY different than Nurenberg or Nuremberg etc. If there are umlauts over a character I was taught to pronounce it very differently than the typical a or u etc., think about it .
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