Wordplay 4   Since English is a Germanic language, it is much more likely that an English speaker would recognize the meaning of an entire sentence in another “sibling” Germanic language rather than another type of “cousin” language. Granted, a great deal of vocabulary within a sentence is recognizable in, say, French or Spanish, so you can get the gist, but it is more difficult to understand an entire sentence in them without special knowledge. In the past I’ve quoted Dutch examples such as these as an illustration:

Of course these sentences are contrived. Of course you’d need to study a lot more (but less than you’d think) to read a Dutch newspaper. But I would be hard pressed to put together entire sentences in Spanish or French as easily recognizable to English speakers as the above.

So the first Wordplay is in Dutch:

“speelden” (SSPAYL-duh), like German spielten, means “were playing”; “naar” is “near”. Given that it’s ultra-contrived that you’d have two players named Ping and Pong, and that you would say “pingpongde” in Dutch any more than you would say “pingponged” in English, I think the sentence is recognizable without translation from one Germanic language to another. Even with the hints given in this paragraph, do you imagine that an Italian or Polish speaker would recognize this Wordplay? I doubt it.

Here’s one in Spanish:

“Pancha” is the female version of “Pancho”. This tonguetwister plays around with two things. Just as you iron with an iron in English using the same word twice, here Pancha does the same in Spanish. Also, we flip between words starting in P- and PL-.

Brooklyn   Although I really want to spend time discussing topics pertinent to the Scandinavia trip next month, last time when discussing Red Hook I made some comments about Brooklyn, and may have even used the phrase City of Brooklyn. If I didn’t, then I’m using that phrase now. It is something that no longer exists. I’m sure non-New Yorkers have little concept about the background involved, because most New Yorkers themselves have been so brainwashed over the last century as to what was, as opposed to what is, that even they remain blissfully unaware that we had a pair of Twin Cities here that merged in 1898. This accounts for the degree of duplication of places and institutions we currently have in the City of Greater New York.

Since Manhattan among the five boroughs is the center of interest for visitors and locals as well, and since most people have an inkling that New Amsterdam was in Lower Manhattan, and New York grew north from there, which is true, there seems to be a notion that that’s the end of the story. Manhattan started as the center of everything, it eventually added four so-called outer boroughs, no other major city was really involved, and the brainwashing is complete. Nonsense. Here’s the full story, at least as I see it.

The arrowhead-like southern tip of Manhattan is indeed the location of Nieuw Amsterdam and thereby the birth of New York. But the western side of this triangular area, the one facing the Hudson where I live, was inhospitable to shipping and had river bluffs, still visible in the back of Trinity Church (landfill has increased the land area of this arrowhead). It was the other, eastern side, facing the East River, that was the “front door” to the town, which is memorialized by the South Street Seaport and its museum. (Since Nine Eleven, a private corporation called the Manhattan Development Corporation has run a free minibus service in a U-shape around this southern tip of Lower Manhattan. It leaves from my corner and I just used it the other day to go to a Members Preview at the Seaport.)

But that’s only half the story, the Manhattan half. This lower stretch of the East River has to be considered truly as the cradle of modern New York, since right across the river, the village of Breukelen was founded. The “front doors” of each developing city faced each other across this lower stretch of the East River, connected by ferries over the years, including the famous Fulton Ferry which connected Fulton Street, New York, to Fulton Street, Brooklyn. The building of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, which eventually replaced ferry service, connected City Hall in New York (only steps from the bridge) to City Hall (now Borough Hall), Brooklyn, just a few blocks from its end of the bridge.

By the end of the 1800’s, just before the merger, yes, New York moved north. Perhaps the built-up area stretched north to include between one-third to one-half of the island. Remember, the Dakota was built opposite Central Park in what was not much more than northern suburbs.

On the other hand, what had become the City of Brooklyn located in the northwest of Kings County was growing to the south and east. It swallowed up the City of Williamsburg north of it in Kings County. But still in the late 1800’s, perhaps only the northwest third of Kings County consisted of the built-up area of Brooklyn. So downtown New York and downtown Brooklyn faced each other across the lower East River, connected by the Brooklyn Bridge.

Today, the term “New York” means more than one thing (other than the name of the state, and county as well). It does refer to all five boroughs nationally and internationally, but much less so locally. Locally (and perhaps beyond as well), the term New York excludes the four outer boroughs and refers only to Manhattan, as does the term “the City”. It is normal for someone from the four outer boroughs (and the suburbs) to say “I work in the City” or “I’m going shopping in New York”, and that just refers to Manhattan. Context usually tells you if the speaker is referring to a five-borough New York or a one-borough New York.

But there was also a two-borough New York, or perhaps more accurately, a two-county New York. This information just is not common knowledge.

Just as Brooklyn in the late 1800’s was filling out Kings County to the southeast, New York was indeed moving uptown filling out New York County. But even though northern Manhattan was still semi-rural, New York nevertheless jumped not only the Harlem River separating it from the mainland, but also the county line.

What is now suburban Westchester County to the north, used to include the Bronx. Only in 1898 with the formation of Greater New York was Bronx County separated from Westchester. This explains why Westchester Square, where Westchester County was born, as well as Westchester Avenue, are not today in Westchester, but in the Bronx. At any rate, New York had jumped over the county line to include much of what eventually became the Bronx, so it was a two-borough, more accurately a two-county, city. This is obvious in the street system. A major north-south artery in Manhattan such as Third Avenue continues to be a major artery, Third Avenue in the Bronx. All the east-west streets continue as well on both sides of the Harlem River. Streets which reach into the 220’s in Manhattan correspond to Bronx streets from the 130’s all the way up to the 240’s. It is clear that the New York of that period had not only invaded Westchester (the part that became the Bronx) but was well on its way to go even further.

Therefore the mere one-borough “New York” referred to today only started with the change of 1898. Before then it was already almost the size of two boroughs.

So who gained and who lost in 1898 with the merger into Greater New York? Although the New York of that era “lost” the Bronx so to speak, it gained it back immediately, along with three other boroughs, for a net gain of area, to say nothing of prestige. The Bronx gained, by becoming its own county, and a borough independent of the New York that had been. Queens had been a rural area around the towns of Jamaica, Flushing, and Long Island City, and Staten Island was rural in general, so those two boroughs gained.

So who lost? The former City of Brooklyn. Instead of earning a degree of equality within the merger, or even secondary status, it was demoted to just another outer borough. Granted it had always been second in prestige and recognition. Brooklyn had been to New York what Cambridge still is to Boston, Saint Petersburg to Tampa, Oakland to San Francisco, Saint Paul to Minneapolis. But from second in prestige it moved to just another outer borough, and thereby a certain degree of oblivion.

It must be understood therefore that Brooklyn has an urban atmosphere that the other three “outer boroughs” never had, since they had never been cities. It is worthwhile to do some comparisons, all based on the status of cities in the second half of the 1800’s, and how three major urban centers embellished themselves.

New York (Manhattan-Bronx) established Central Park on the outer (northern) edge of its built-up area, and commissioned Frederick Law Olmstead to landscape it.

Brooklyn established Prospect Park on the outer (southeastern) edge of its built-up area, and commissioned Frederick Law Olmstead to landscape it, including the monumental Grand Army Plaza at its entrance, reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe.

Boston established parks on its outer (southwestern) edge, including the Fenway area and the “Emerald Necklace”, and commissioned Frederick Law Olmstead to landscape the latter.

New York town-house neighborhoods were established, including extensive blocks of brownstone and similar homes, and other significant architecture, including Greenwich Village, Chelsea, the Upper East Side and Upper West Side (the Dakota). All these neighborhoods have in modern times achieved landmark status.

Brooklyn town-house neighborhoods were established, including extensive blocks of brownstone and similar homes, including Park Slope on the gentle incline sloping down from Prospect Park toward the Brooklyn waterfront at Red Hook; also Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, and, on the high land facing Manhattan at the East River, Brooklyn Heights. All these neighborhoods are now landmarked. [Note: Brooklyn Heights has associations with Walt Whitman, who published Leaves of Grass there, Truman Capote, who wrote In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s there, and Norman Mailer. The abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher’s church still stands there.]

Boston town-house neighborhoods were established, most notably in Back Bay along Commonwealth Avenue, and in the South End. Most of these are now landmarked.

But the first two of the above three cities joined together in 1898, which results in an exciting degree of urgan redundancy in Greater New York. To compliment Manhattan’s cultural attractions, Brooklyn has the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). It is not a coincidence that at one time there were the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees all in one city. There is, as explained, a historical basis for it, since what had been each of two cities had claim to a team. And it is not odd that the New York Yankees are located in the Bronx. Remember, the Bronx was originally part of two-borough New York. Similarly, Brooklyn has the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, but the New York Botanical Garden is—you guessed it—in the Bronx for reasons already discussed (note Botanic versus Botanical). Brooklyn has the Prospect Park Zoo, and, aside from a small zoo in Central Park, the New York Zoological Gardens is located in—the Bronx, hence the common name Bronx Zoo. The Long Island Rail Road has a terminus not only in Penn Station in Manhattan, but also in the Atlantic Terminal Brooklyn (which was where the LIRR started). New York department stores before the merger, such as Macy’s and (the former) Gimble’s spread to Brooklyn, and Brooklyn department stores such as Abraham & Straus (A&S) spread to Manhattan.

I am not trying to malign the other “outer boroughs”. I’ve lived in every borough except Staten Island. I’m just trying to point out that Brooklyn is different for very special reasons, that it has an urban history on the level of Manhattan that the other three boroughs do not have, and the redundancy of institutions has a firm basis and is not a coincidence.

“What if’s” are always dangerous, but I’d like to propose what might have happened if New York (Manhattan/Bronx) hadn’t merged with Brooklyn in 1898. Brooklyn had been expanding, and continued to expand to fill Kings County. I think it would have eventually spilled over into Queens County, and today, barring the 1898 consolidation, Queens would be a part of the City of Brooklyn. Although Staten Island is not contiguous with Brooklyn, I think it, too, would eventually have been taken over. I base this on the fact that in recent times, Brooklyn congressional districts have “jumped” the Narrows to include parts of Staten Island. New York (Manhattan) had already jumped county lines to take over the Bronx. Since northward was the traditional direction of expansion, I think it might have been very possible that the City of New York might have taken a considerably larger piece out of Westchester County. What is now the City of Yonkers and the City of Mount Vernon, and more, could have been the northward extension of an expanding New York. I do not think it likely it would have jumped the East River to Queens. In this scenario, a three-borough Greater Brooklyn would have faced across the East River a two-or-more-borough Greater New York. But that is all conjecture.

Large cities cannot survive without a major transportation system including subways. The subway system in New York today is also the result of a merger of a Brooklyn and a New York (Manhattan) system, with the redundancy that follows.

There had been elevated systems Manhattan and Brooklyn going back to shortly after the Civil War. Those in Manhattan are mostly gone. The New York subway system as we know it however, opened in 1904, just over a century ago. A man named August Schönberg was behind the first one, except you won’t find that name in the records. He decided to make his name sound French, so translated schön to bel and berg to mont, and he is known instead as August Belmont. Belmont Racetrack on Long Island is named after him, as well as Belmont Avenue in Brooklyn. He laid a subway starting under City Hall Park up to Grand Central Station, where it turned west under 42nd Street to Longacre Square, just renamed at the time Times Square, and then turned north up Broadway to uptown (the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square with the falling ball started just at this time). Belmont called his private company the Interboro Rapid Transit Company (IRT). Meanwhile, a Brooklyn company had developed there, building new lines and acquiring old railroads. It was called the Brooklyn Rapid Transit company (BRT). Once again, we have the basis for redundancy because of the Twin City situation.

Greater New York established what was known as the Dual Contract system, to accomodate both companies. Belmont cut his original zigzag line into an H form, extending the east arm up Lexington Avenue from Grand Central (Lexington Avenue Line), and the west arm south from Times Square (7th Avenue Line), with the piece in between becoming the 42nd Street Shuttle. He closed his luxurious City Hall station and extended both his east and west side lines under the East River to Brooklyn. IRT lines also went to the Bronx and Queens. (The 42nd Street Shuttle is the shortest line in New York at 0.8 miles/1.3 kilometers.)

The BRT also took advantage of the merger of the two twin cities, became the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company (BMT), and ran lines into Manhattan. In Lower Manhattan its main line uptown had to be woven in between streets the IRT hadn’t already taken.

However in time, the companies began to suffer and couldn’t afford to build new lines, so the City started a third line, the Independent Line (IND). However, by the start of World War Two, the City took over the management of all three lines and merged them. A negative legacy of the Dual Contract system is that up until the takeover, you couldn’t transfer between the lines. For instance, both the IRT and BMT ran under Times Square, but to go from one to the other you had to go up to the street and down another entrance, and pay another fare. You can see today in the combined Times Square station where a wall had been removed between the systems and where there are 4-5 steps going down from one former system to the other.

The redundancy also had its advantages. Downtown Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn have many more subway lines than would have been built if two companies hadn’t been vying against each other. I’ve said that the two nearest subway lines to me are both called Rector Street. I can take the 1 train (ex-IRT) at Rector and Greenwich Street, or just a very few steps away the R train (ex-BMT) at Rector and Trinity Place. That redundancy wouldn’t have existed without the competition between those two companies, all based on the fact that there were two cities here.

[Comment on World Trade Center: the 1 line goes right under the WTC site, and the R line, which is one short block east, goes alongside the site. In both cases, however, the next station north at the WTC is still closed, pending reconstruction.]

There is another legacy from the fact of having had two subway systems because of two cities. August Belmont must have been a crotchety old coot. He very specifically didn’t want his system to ever merge with any other one, so, although the IRT was built to standard track guage, as were the others, Belmont had all his tunnels built unusually narrow, requiring narrower subway cars, and platforms corresponding to this unusual width. BMT tunnels and cars were always of a more standard width. When the City built the IND line, it logically followed what the BMT had already done. So the legacy is this: ex-BMT lines and ex-IND lines were always compatable. In the years since the merger, so many of those lines have been combined, that it can be difficult to tell sometimes which line had come from which system. All of these lines have LETTERS, such as the R train I just mentioned. The Billy Strayhorn song “Take the A Train”, popularized by Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, refers to a subway train in this system. (The A line is the longest line in New York at 31 miles/50 kilometers.)

All ex-IRT lines, being incompatible with the rest, do not connect with them, and are designated by NUMBERS, such as the 1 train I just mentioned. The Belmont legacy then sort of backfired on him. After the merger of New York and Brooklyn, his New York (IRT) system remains hobbled today, and is considerably smaller than what had been the Brooklyn system (BMT), which has been greatly extended by the addition of IND lines, which will continue to be the case. In this case, Brooklyn “won”.

[Note: it is a curiosity that, although it is impossible for ex-BMT/IND trains to fit into the narrow ex-IRT tunnels, in actuality the opposite is theoretically possible. The narrow ex-IRT trains could travel in the other tunnels, but their use there would be totally impractical, since there would be very wide gaps between the trains and the station platforms. This is another facet of the Belmont legacy.]

The narrow ex-IRT cars have benches up both sides of the car between exit doors, so one is always facing the people on the other side of the car. As I think about it, this is the only type of NYC subway car I can recall ever seeing in the movies or on television. Maybe that style is somehow more conducive to the narrative style. The ex-BMT/IND cars being much wider, in addition to seats along the side there are also back-to-back seats perpendicular to each side. The perpendicular seats on each side “point” at each other, with an aisle in betweeen, which gives you an idea of the width of these cars. I do not recall ever seeing this more common type of car in films or on TV.]

QM2 in Red Hook   This whole discussion on Brooklyn started of course with my reference to a formerly independent Brooklyn in discussing the QM2 docking in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Actually, this is another instance of the redundancy I was talking about. Manhattan had its piers all along the Hudson, and Brooklyn, too, had its piers just south of that, along Upper New York Bay. Brooklyn’s piers ran from the north, past Red Hook, almost up to the Narrows at Bay Ridge. In both cases, most former piers are being converted to park land, with the exception that Atlantic Basin is now the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, and the Manhattan midtown piers remain the New York Cruise Terminal. Given the previous discussion, I do suppose it is really a mark of the resurgence of Brooklyn, and of something closer to equality with New York (Manhattan). It’s also a guessing game as to which New York is referred to in the name “New York Cruise Terminal”. It’s certainly not New York State or New York County, nor can it be the historic two-borough New York (with the Bronx). That leaves just two possibilities, and it can’t refer to five-borough New York, since Brooklyn now has its own terminal, so “New York Cruise Terminal” clearly just refers to Manhattan, but it IS confusing, right?

You will not be surprised that, on April 15, I drove back to Red Hook for the first time since the time a few years ago when Beverly and I drove around lots of local neighborhoods we had never seen before. I’ve said that I live only a couple of blocks from the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, so from home to arrival in Brooklyn at the tunnel exit took just six minutes, plus another six minutes to drive through the streets of Red Hook. Red Hook still remains a somewhat scruffy, blue-collar, waterfront neighborhood, with residential areas dispursed with light industry, some of it defunct. The main street, Van Brunt Street (note the Dutch name) does have some up-and-coming restaurants I’ve read about, and the whole neighborhood is up for gentrification. Because of post-Nine Eleven security, visitors and sightseers can’t get beyond the fence around the area of the Cruise Terminal, but the QM2 was quite visible from the short distance involved from beyond the fence. In fact, since Red Hook is a low-rise neighborhood, the ship stood out quite impressively. I had a chat with several people of those crowded in the streets about ships in general and the QM2 in particular. Governor’s Island, across Buttermilk Channel, does not block the view of the Statue of Liberty from the terminal, although it must be a better view from high up on the ship itself.

It was such a beautiful spring day, and I knew I still had a couple of hours until the usual sailing time of 5:00 to 5:30, so I took a drive around Brooklyn’s landmark neighborhoods, up and down the hill at Park Slope near Prospect Park, through Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens, and even up to Brooklyn Heights. There tend to be more buildings in Brooklyn Heights that are apartment buildings, but the other neighborhoods had long rows of set-back brownstones and other town houses, most with flowering trees in front.

I was wondering where I should go to watch the departure. A few blocks south of where the ship was docked, but still in Red Hook, I drove down a side street, Van Dike Street (note the Dutch name) and found a small park, with a longish sightseeing pier into the Bay. The park and pier were only a couple of years old, a sign of resurgance in Red Hook. There were quite a few people waiting for the departure, and I again did quite a bit of chatting. There was an old industrial building to the right of the pier blocking the view of all of the ship except the very top of its funnel, but at 5:15, there were the three blasts of the ship’s horn, and the huge bow of the ship emerged from around the building. It was a gorgeous day for a departure, and the view extended down to the Narrows. Three fireboats showed up, each with eight sprays of water in every direction, but something must have gone wrong with the colors they were supposed to show. One sprayed only uncolored water, which appeared white, as in a fountain. The second one had blue dye on only one of its sprays. The third one was working fine, with two colors. A woman said, oh, it’s red-white-and-blue. I told her I disagreed. It was clearly an orange spray along with the blue and white, because those were the New York City colors (based on the Dutch House of Orange). On its first departure from Brooklyn, the ship took its time leaving, and it was easily ¾ of an hour until it sailed through the Narrows.

[Note: the long-delayed Queen Victoria is scheduled to have its maiden voyage in December 2007, and for the first time Cunard will have three Queens in service at the same time. The QV will carry 2014 passengers, or 77% of the QM2’s 2620. The QE2 carries 1791, or 68% of the QM2.]

In the last week, I’ve gotten to see much of what Brooklyn has to offer that Beverly and I hadn’t seen since the 1960’s. I took the subway to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which was celebrating Sakura Matsuri, the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival. The day was again beautiful, and the weekend crowds were so overwhelming that I decided to skip the 20-minute wait on line and went up to the table where they were selling memberships, with a guarantee if immediate entry. On those occasions when we had gone to Washington in the spring, the cherry blossoms there always seemed to be past their prime, but across the river at the BBG, all 200 trees (in 42 species) were just right. I’ve never seen so much pink all at once. The long walkway coming in from the entrance had all colors of azaleas along the sides. The lilacs were out, and in purple, “lilac”, blue, white, and who knows what else. The large tulip area had not only the standard-size tulip with petals about three inches long, there was a large number of giant tulips, whose petals were at least 4-5 inches long. I had never known much about peonies, but they were out as well, in red, white, purple, and others. One shrub had reddish-black blossoms. Many peonies were saucer size, maybe five inches across, but many others were almost the size of dinner plates, maybe 8-10 inches. Later in the week I went back to see the Brooklyn Museum next door, and stopped in to the garden again with my new membership card, but the cherry blossoms were just about gone, and the trees were already green. Right next door to that was Prospect Park, where I strolled before revisiting Grand Army Plaza at its entrance. I had found a highly-reated restaurant in Zagat located nearby in the gentrifying neighborhood of Prospect Heights, which pleasantly ended my day.

Coney Island   I don’t want to leave the discussion of Brooklyn without mentioning Coney Island, even though I haven’t been there in a while. I grew up in the Forties and Fifties seeing Coney Island in decline. We occasionally went to the beach there, but mostly went to visit the blocks and blocks of amusements, in a carnival atmosphere, and usually had a hot dog at Nathan’s (note that some people call hot dog buns coney buns). Today, decline has really set in, with vacant lots everywhere and perhaps only four blocks left of the carnival rides of another day.

Perhaps some people do not realize what Coney Island was in its heyday, from after the Civil War through the Depression. It was the Disney World of its day. It had seaside hotels and restaurants, similar to Tivoli in Copenhagen and the Prater in Vienna. Aside from the small amusement concessions, it had major special-admission parks, some of which were imitated around the world; they were Luna Park, Dreamland, and Steeplechase Park. These had animals, rides, lagoons, an imitation Venice, and all sorts of other activities. Repeated fires in their wooden buildings, the curse of Coney Island, plus the Depression put an end to this period. There was a popular song of the period “Meet me Tonight in Dreamland”. Some might erroneously understand it to refer to two people dreaming about each other, something like that other song “I’ll See You in my Dreams”, but that is not the case. The reference to Dreamland was specifically to meeting someone at Dreamland Amusement Park in Coney Island.

This was the era when built-up Brooklyn was only in the northwest of Kings County. The interest in people getting to the ocean at Coney Island was the basis for several railroads to build lines across the fields of southern Brooklyn, and furthered the growth of Brooklyn. These railroad lines were acquired but the BRT, later the BMT, and are the basis for the extensive subway service that southern Brooklyn and Coney Island enjoy to this day.

Lehrte   Since the discussion of Red Hook in the previous letter was tied in to the Berlin rail station situation, an update on Lehrte is also appropriate here. I had said that the Berlin Hauptbahnhof was built virtually on the location of the Lehrter Bahnhof, one of Berlin’s earliest stations, for a line that went to Hanover—almost. I wondered why the line stopped just short of Hanover at Lehrte, giving the former Berlin terminal its name. Friend and correspondent Jürgen in Germany has pointed out some historical points of interest. Of course nothing happens in a historical vacuum. Even given the removal of the border between Berlin and the former East and West Germany, I shouldn’t have forgotten borders from older periods.

Through most of the 19th Century, Germany didn’t exist. The area that later became Germany remained a conglomerate of kingdoms, duchies, and principalities. Berlin was the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia, and Hanover at this point was also a kingdom, but one that was friendlier towards Austria and England than it was to Prussia. Remember, the long period that the British royal house was the house of Hanover, including the Georges of American Revolution fame, and Prussia also fought a war with Austria. It seems that there was already a (still existing) rail line from Berlin leaving from the former Potsdamer Bahnhof on Potsdamer Platz southwest through suburban Potsdam via Magdeburg and Braunschweig, and passing through Lehrte just before arriving at Hanover. This new line, which has now been paralleled by the high-speed ICE (Inter City Express) line, was to be shorter, leaving Lehrter Bahnhof northwest via Stehndal and Wolfsburg, and tying in to the older line at Lehrte before entering Hanover. But because of hard feelings and the politics of the time, it was thought politically correct to call this new line the Berlin-Lehrte line, since that’s where it technically ended, it being the first intersection on Hanover territory, even though trains continued on the last stretch of the older route into Hanover. This way, it was not necessary to have to use the word Hanover at all, substituting the politically neutral name Lehrte. So it goes with politics.

Wordplay 5   Let’s try Russian again.

What’s the tonguetwister problem here? I see it as three-way: flipping K and P for one, while flipping U and I at the same time, and the reverse of the stress doesn’t help much, either.

This next wordplay in Spanish is not a tonguetwister, but a play on homonyms. You know that vino is wine in Spanish, but there is a homonym vino that means “came”. This deals with a wine shipment gone wrong:

One more in Spanish. As is so often the case, it runs once forwards, then again, but backwards. Pronounce each Z as an S.

Would this ever be a good exercise to practice rolling R’s in Spanish! But actually the tonguetwister is changing all those vowels within what is essentially a fixed framework of R+vowel+S+vowel. And what is this we have here, an Orthodox Latina?

Germanic Vowel Trilogy   This may sound dry as dust, but bear with me. If you like language, it’s quite easy. Anyway, while one’s eye may have become familiar with the written forms of French vowels in déjà vu and Spanish ones like in olé and just possibly with Portuguese ones as in São Paolo, what IS it with all this crazy stuff below? Wouldn’t you like to know?

Or in their capital forms:

You’re probably thinking, boy, if THAT doesn’t give little children nightmares, what would? But think instead: piece o’ cake. First, it can’t be too bad, since you see an old friend, Y, mixed in there (although not as you may imagine). Second, the capital forms are essentially duplicate variations, so dismiss them. Thirdly, almost everything else comes in pairs. Here’s our trilogy: (1) æ ä; (2) ü y and ö ø; (3) å

I also should mention that somehow in recent years some of these Germanic letters have become oddly fashionable in English, sort of as a type of graphic decoration, although it must be said, they are GROSSLY misused. The first time I remember this was when I saw the preferred spelling of the band Motley Crew as being Mötley Crüe. That spelling is just hollow decoration, and has no connection whatsoever to the reality of what those vowels are. Then I was surprised years ago when the respected ice cream Häagen-Dazs first appeared. I supposed they wanted to give some Euro-look to the name, which is totally a nonsensical fabrication. The vowel ä is not pronounced that way, in no language does the combination äa appear, and the spelling zs exists in one language only, Hungarian, and if you pronounce Zsa Zsa Gabor, you know what zs sounds like in Hungarian. This type of spelling is just being used as some sort of window-dressing, although it is window dressing that does seem to confer some cachet to the name. But now check out the reality.

Germanic Vowel Trilogy I: Ash   We have to clarify what we’re talking about. It is ultra-common to confuse actual vowels with vowel letters. We use the Latin alphabet. Latin had five vowel letters to match its five vowels. Spanish and other languages (see Rosa Rizo above) also has five vowels to match the five vowel letters. No problem. But many languages have a lot more vowels than five to correspond to the five vowel letters. They either use new letters, modified letters, or letter combinations. However, I have no intention of going into that in detail.

You may be shocked to find out, if you didn’t already know, that, depending on which version of English you’re referring to, English has about fourteen vowels to be spelled with the five vowel letters we’ve taken from within the Latin alphabet. If you doubt this, just look at the pronunciation guide in any dictionary. The only thing different here is that I’m asking you to look at the situation from the standard linguistic standpoint. If you’re used to describing how a “letter is pronounced”, please attempt to disabuse yourself of that. It’s the other way around. It’s how a spoken vowel is represented by a vowel letter.

æ ä   That background established, let’s talk about one of the most common of all the vowels in English, ash (or æsh), as in the word “cat” (or “cæt”). There has existed since Old English times a special letter to spell this vowel. The only problem is WE DON’T USE IT! Considering the lack of vowel letters for our fourteen vowels, that is incredibly amazing, but perhaps way back, English speakers wanted our writing to look more like Latin.

[I have to make a special note here. This letter IS used in English in a “classical mode” for alternate spellings, especially in Britain, for words like encyclopædia, nebulæ, Athanæum, and a number of other words of classical origin. You will however note that in each of the three words just cited, the letter æ is used to represent three totally different vowel sounds, none of which is the æsh in “cæt”. I am not at all referring to these spellings of learned words, but rather to the traditional sound existing in Old English and other Germanic languages.]

How common is æsh in English, even though we don’t use the letter to spell it? Well, let’s use the letter and see. The fæt cæt chased the sæd ræt. Sæm from Mæssachusetts mærried Mæggie from Tællahæssee. Ælice ræn æfter the ræbbit, but found the Mæd Hætter. I could ræmble on, or you cæn supply your own exæmples.

Yes, it distresses the eye, but primarily because we’re not used to it. I’m also not suggesting we start using it, either (English needs a lot more spelling reform than just that), any more than I was suggesting that Brooklyn secede from Greater New York. It’s just to imagine what Might Have Been.

Let me just compare these two vowel letters, A and Æ. A is used in most languages just for the sound in the words father, watch, arm, wallet. In the question “What læmp?” you hear two different vowels and see two different vowel letters. But in the standard spelling the æsh wears a mask, as it were, and hides its identity visually: “What lamp?” We still have two different vowels, but spelled, deceptively, with the same letter. It’s similar with “Tarzæn” versus “Tarzan” or “Art ænd Ænn” versus “Art and Ann”.

Bottom line: æsh is one of the most common vowels in English, but the use of the corresponding dedicated letter is suppressed to the point of nonexistance.

Moving across the Channel, Dutch does not have ash, but German most definitely does, or did, anyway. The oddity here is that, amazingly, the actual use of ash in German has died out, but A LETTER FOR IT REMAINS! It is exactly the opposite of the situation in English. The letter used in German is ä, which can be called A-Umlaut.

Only in pedantic, forced speech is there a difference in modern German between the words Ehre and Ähre, with the second one sounding like ash. Most speakers pronounce both words as homonyms, with the first vowel rhyming with the E in cafE. (When the vowel is short, it’s like E in men, such as Männer, which means “men” and whose first syllable rhymes with—surprise—“men”.

In recent years, quite surprisingly, the traditional German liqueur Jägermeister has become very common in the United States. It’s first syllable is pronounced YE-, rhyming with cafE. Another one is also well known, the one with flecks of gold leaf in it, Goldschläger, where the –lä- rhymes once again with cafE. I’ve talked about attending the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz. You should now be able to pronounce that.

On to Scandinavia. Swedish has ash, and like German uses ä for it, but the situation in Swedish is slightly mixed. First example are the two huge lakes in the center of the map of Sweden Vänern and Vättern. Almost always it sounds like an E--think cafE--when long as in Vänern and short as in gEt in Vättern. If you see an ägg on a Swedish menu, you should know what that is. I say the situation is mixed, because when ä is followed by an R, THEN it represents ash. The word for “here” is här and rhymes with the first syllable of the English name Hærry; “there” is där as in Dærren. In any case, when traveling in Sweden you should know how to pronounce Vänersborg, or Lake Mälaren near Stockholm.

As for Danish--it uses the letter æ. The only thing is, Danish has lost the ash sound, so it turns out that æ corresponds instead to the vowel in “gEt”, as in the town Holbæk near Copenhagen, or the island of Æro.

But Norwegian—hællelujah—uses both the letter and sound for ash, as in the towns of Hægeland or Svolvær.

Germanic Vowel Trilogy II: Kiss Vowels   I have always avoided technical terminology when explaining something since using complex words for a new concept is always the kiss of death. So I will continue that kiss metaphor and refer to what we’re working with now as kiss vowels. Anyway, one remembers graphic images much better. I’ll also refer to yawn vowels and smile vowels, because those words describe the situation perfectly.

I will only quickly refer to the yawn vowel A (in cAr), which we talked about earlier. You can’t say fAther’s cAr without yawning twice. (You will also note I’m talking about the vowels themselves, not the vowel letters. Instead of using the International Phonetic Alphabet, I’ll use letters of my own choosing.)

The smile vowels are a little more subtle to notice. Say skI, and you can’t help smiling slightly. Say cafE and the same thing happens with the last vowel. It is important to note that these two vowels have many spellings in English, so if I say skI, I mean that vowel, which can also be spelled as in “me”, “see”, “mean”, “lien”, and so on, just as the vowel in cafE can be spelled as in “late”, “play”, “main”, and others. So our two smile vowels are as in skI and cafE.

Finally two kiss vowels we are all familiar with. When you say rUde or nO you just have to pucker up each time. Again, that U can be spelled as in “too”, “blew”, and so on, and that O can be also spelled as in “oak”, but it’s not the variant spellings that are the point. The two kiss vowels we are all familiar with are as in rUde and nO, no matter how else they may be spelled.

Now comes the new point. English has lost any trace of two kiss vowels that all the other Germanic languages have, without exception, and oddly enough, so does French. It would seem to be worthwhile to know what they are, how to pronounce them (it’s simple), and how they are spelled in the various languages mentioned. Both involve taking the two smile vowels, and surprisingly, puckering up to change them into kiss vowels! Let’s do one at a time.

ü y   Say ski. Continue to say it, but change the smile to a kiss. You have now said the nonsense word skü. It is essential that you practice the difference, so do ski-skü-ski-skü several times. There are different ways to spell this vowel depending on the language, some using the special letters Ü or Y, some using a familiar letter, the simple U, which can be deceptive to the learner. I’ve chosen the letter Ü as my standard here. It’s helpful, since the spelling Ü indicates that the smile vowel I has taken on the kiss quality of the vowel U. Keep practicing ski-skü-ski-skü while you check out the spellings in different languages.

German: I am surprised that it’s become fashionable in English in recent years to use the German word über in English sentences, not by itself but as a prefix for English words, such as someone being über-rich or über-boring. However, do not pronounce this word as oober to rhyme with goober. Practice using a nonsense word: iber-über-iber-über.

Try saying the cities of Lübeck (li-lü-li-lü); Düsseldorf; Tübingen; Osnabrück; Saarbrücken, Überlingen. This vowel appears short in München (Munich), so practice min-mün-min-mün, also in the city of Münster, where the cheese comes from.

I refer the reader back to Reflections 2002 Series 5, where I point out that in the German version of My Fair Lady, Eliza is asked to pronounce the “Rain in Spain” line, in which she regularly misprounces as an I in her Berlin dialect all the words having Ü. Reread that, since it’s appropriate here. It is also worth mentioning, to show the relationship between I and Ü, that these two are considered valid rhymes in German, so the word IHN rhymes with KÜHN. I am trying to point out that Ü, despite the fact that it looks like a U, is instead a variation of I.

There is a minor point to be made here, but you’ll see the significance in a moment. There is a handfull of words in German where Y represents Ü. The words for type, system, Egypt (all of which have the letter Y in English as well), spelled Typ, System, Ägypten, are pronounced TÜP, züsTEM, eGÜPten. The reason for this is that the letter Y was borrowed into the Latin alphabet from the Greek alphabet, where, as upsilon and looking somewhat like a Y, it represented ü. As a matter of fact, upsilon was pronounced üpsilon. [Note: Ü can be called U-Umlaut. German speakers call Ü just that, Ü. It is of interest that German speakers call Y Ypsilon, and do pronounce it Üpsilon, as in ancient Greek.]

Scandinavian: Moving to the three Scandinavian languages, the situation becomes VERY EASY. They all use the vowel Ü. And they all spell it the same way, that way being Y, just like the German variation I just mentioned. So the Swedish town of Ystad is pronounced Üstad, the Danish town of Nyborg is pronounced Nüborg, and the famous old Hanseatic section of Bergen, Norway’s second city, is Bryggen, pronounced Brüggen.

[Something that Beverly and I found cute is worth mentioning here. When we traveled in Sweden, we found that the short forms of common male names in English were quite commonly used for children in Sweden, such as Billy, Tommy, Bobby. That would be fine, except they were quite regularly pronounced Billü, Tommü, Bobbü. We usually suppressed a smile when we heard that, since that apparently goes for every Tom, Dick, and Harrü.]

Dutch: The only major Germanic language I’ve left out so far is Dutch, not because it doesn’t have this sound, but because it doesn’t use a special letter such as Ü or Y. In Dutch, every time you see the PLAIN letter U, it’s really an Ü. This can be deceptive to the learner. Therefore Utrecht is pronounced Ütrekht, and in Flemish Belgium, Brugge (Bruges) is pronounced Brügguh. Since the letter U is taken over by the sound Ü, how does Dutch spell the U (OO) sound? That’s what that special spelling OE is for, as in soep and groep, from which English gets the spelling for shoe.

French: It is a surprise that French, an Italic language, has taken these kiss vowels from the Germanic languages, German specifically. Why is an interesting story for another time. Just like Dutch though, French deceptively uses the letter U for the sound of Ü, so a ballerina’s tutu is pronounced tütü, menu is pronounced menü, the town of Saumur is pronounced Somür, the French version of the Flemish city of Brugge is Bruges, pronounced Brüzh. If you use the expression déjà vu, understand that vu is pronounced vü (practice vi-vü-vi-vü). Here are two French names that work wonderfully as a pronunciation exercise. Say the name Lili, then pucker up, and you’ll end up saying the name Lulu (pronounced Lülü). If you wonder how French writes the SOUND U (OO), it does something similar to what Dutch does, but instead of using OE it uses the spelling combination OU as in soupe and groupe, which is similarly borrowed into English as soup and group.

The city of Brussels is pronounced differently than in English in the languages we’ve been discussing. Note the spellings of its name, its two local languages being last:

Even allowing for the usual oddities of French spelling, note that all four versions are pronounced exactly the same (other than French being stressed on the second syllable instead of the first), and particularly note the variations of the Ü.

[Note: As a comment on English spelling, note that U, as in rUde, has alternate spellings, all in combinations with O+vowel: OE, OU, OO. The unique spelling shOE is Dutch. The spelling of tOUr is French. The spelling of sOOn is original to English.]

ö ø   Just as the smile vowel I was the source that Ü was based on, the second of these kiss vowels is based on the smile vowel E. Say cafE. Continue to hold that last vowel, but again, change that smile to a kiss. You have now said the nonsense word cafÖ. Keep practicing fe-fö-fe-fö until it feels comfortable. Again, there are different ways to spell this vowel, depending on the language. Some use Ö, some Ø, others, use the combination EU (occasionally OEU). I’ve chosen Ö as my standard. It’s again helpful, since the spelling Ö indicates that the smile vowel E has taken on the kiss quality of the O. Keep practicing fe-fö-fe-fö as you check out the spellings in the various languages below.

German: The spelling Ö is used. However, the most common use you one would come across with this sound is not Ö but instead a spelling aberration. The most famous German author is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and the spelling of his name is not standard. Although spellings may be updated over time, people’s names are not. With Samuel Pepys we do not update the spelling to Peeps. With Goethe, a regularization of the spelling of his name would make it Göte. At least we can use that spelling as a guide to pronunciation. Practice ge-gö-ge-gö and you’ll be able to say Goethe (Göte). Other common names that come to mind use a short form of the vowel, so for Köln (Cologne) practice kel-köl-kel-köl, also Göppingen, Mönchengladbach.

Scandinavian: There are two possibilities to spell this sound in the Scandinavian languages. Swedish follows German and uses Ö. The major island of Öland is off the Swedish coast. Sweden’s second city is Göteborg (Yötebory), its third city is Malmö. I’ll be traveling on the Göta Canal (Yöta). Another important city is Jönköping (Yönshöping), and similarly there is Norrköping and Linköping. Between Sweden and Denmark is the Öresund (sund is “sound” as in Long Island Sound).

However, both Danish and Norwegian use the letter Ø for the very same vowel, so if you cross the Öresund from Sweden, you’ll find it spelled Øresund on the Danish side. Danish towns are Tønder, Rudkøbing, Ringkøbing, and Købe, and most spectacularly, Copenhagen appears as København. (Copenhagen is a little different in Swedish: Köpenhamn, with Kö- being Shö-.)

[Note: I’ll bring this theory of mine up only because of the importance of Copenhagen. My theory: köpa (shöpa) in Swedish means “to buy”, similar to German “kaufen”. I can’t help thinking that the three Swedish towns mentioned earlier that end in –köping must have gotten their names originally from having been market towns. It must be similar with the Danish towns above ending in –købing. Therefore, my unsubstantiated conclusion is that København/Köpenhamn could reasonably be translated as “Merchant’s Harbor”. [We once took the ferry to Oslo from Frederikshavn in northern Denmark, and I’ll be stopping on a ferry in Mariehamn in the Swedish part of Finland this summer, so I’m confident that –havn and –hamn each refer to “harbor”.]

Norwegian cities with this vowel are Bodø and Tromsø; near Oslo is Gjøvik (Yövik). Also, Norwegian seems to be the only one of the languages we’ve been discussing that seems willing to challenge you, as a learner, such as in the name Karlsøy, which has two kiss vowels next to each other. Those that want to chicken out, will rhyme it with “boy” and get on with their business; those with a sensitivity to language with work it out: cafE + skI, or E + I, and adding a kiss will result in Ö + Ü. The name is pronounced Karlsöü.

This summer I’ll be sailing in the Sognefjord, the longest in the world. It is at its deepest near Høyanger. Pronounce it. There are two small side fjords in Norway that are each on Unesco’s World Heritage List. I’ll be seeing them both. The one off the Sognefjord is also the narrowest fjord in Norway, the Nærøyfjord. In the name Nærøy the reader hits the trifecta, three “new” vowels, but by now, readers should be able to accomodate themselves quite well, I hope.

Note that in the languages involved, the names of the vowels we’ve been talking about is the same as their pronunciation. However, Ö can be called O-Umlaut and Ø can be called O-slash.

Dutch: Dutch again does not use any special letter. It uses instead the spelling combination EU. Therefore, when talking about Brooklyn, we can now see that the original Dutch town of Breukelen is pronounced BRÖ-ke-le. There is also a Terneuzen and in Flanders, a Meulebeke.

French: The only non-Germanic language in our group that has this is French, and I find it odd, that, just as French and Dutch avoid special letters for Ü and both use U, the same thing is with Ö: French uses EU just as Dutch does, although in some words in French it’s spelled OEU instead. The Meuse River is the MÖZ. If you order a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine, -neuf is –NÖF and du is DÜ. If you’ve always fumbled with the name of the actress Cathérine De Neuve, the end is pronounced NÖV. Two common French words with the alternate OEU spelling are the word for heart, coeur (KÖR) and for sister, soeur (SÖR).

Germanic Vowel Trilogy III: Skål !   This last one is really easy, because there are no new vowels involved. There is a new letter involved, though, and it’s only used in the three Scandinavian languages. If you’ve ever toasted someone by saying “skål”, then you’ve already gotten some introduction to this letter. The only thing is, the spelling of that word in English is usually distorted to “skoal”. In any case, the letter Å corresponds to an O plain and simple. It’s usually long, as in skål. When it’s short, it’s as in song. As a matter of fact, the Swedish word for song is indeed the same as English, but spelled sång. It’s easiest if you look at it this way: think of a statue on a pedestal. When you look at Å, the A part is the unimportant pedestal. It’s that “statue” of an O on top that counts. This letter can be called A-ring.

There’s a good reason why this letter exists, and we can use the example of two guys sitting on a bench. A third person comes up, and the two guys each move over one place. This is what happened with three Scandinavian vowels. Centuries back, a new vowel developed, sort of a smile-U. I’m not going to go into detail about this, but this new smile-U developed in words already spelled with the letter U, and “took its place on the bench”. Well, the standard kiss-U (OO) moved down the bench and took the place of the O. This latter point needs a bit of discussion.

You may recall that I said that the Swedish word for “mother” is mor, but pronounced MOOR, just as farmor is FARmoor. Almost always in the Scandinavian languages, when you see an O it’s the sound OO that it corresponds to. (But this is not always the case; Stockholm is pronounced just as you’re accustomed to.) I had said that when we got engaged in Sweden, we celebrated New Year’s Eve in Värnamo. This city is pronounced VÆR-na-moo. The common name Johan is pronounced YOOhan, and (Ingemar) Johansson is YOOhanson.

It is amusing when non-Scandinavians learn of the original pronunciation of the name of the Swedish actress Greta Garbo. It’s GAR-boo, I’m afraid. And are you ready to hear how people say Oslo? When we took a side trip there that Christmas we got engaged in Sweden and came back to people asking how we liked OOSS-loo, I didn’t know what they were talking about. OOSS-loo?

So on that bench the vowel smile-U took over the seat with the letter U painted on it, the familiar kiss-U (OO) vowel moved over one and took the place with the letter O on it, so the vowel O moved over--and fell off the bench. There was no letter for it. In time, the new letter Å was developed for the use of the vowel O. Så there’s the story.

As in that last sentence, there’s nothing new here, you just have to get your eye used to seeing Å. To do that, let me use it a bit more in English. Rå, rå, rå your båt. The flowers grå, and the winds blå along the råd. We must gå.—Så gå. Use the år to rå the båt. Edgar Allen På stubbed his tå. You get the point.

But wait. I’m incorrigible. I just tricked you into learning a whole series of real Swedish words.

The Swedish word for “so” is the same as in English, but spelled så. The Swedish word for “go” is also the same, but spelled gå. Here’s the above dialog, in perfectly valid Swedish:

The Swedish word for “toe” is the same as in English, but spelled tå. There is a word blå, but it means “blue”.

The word är looks like “are”, and it does mean “are”, but also means “is” and “am”. It quite uniquely has a “silent R”, so it’s pronounced E (as in cafE).

The Swedish word for “boat” is the same as in English, but spelled båt. Although there is a Swedish word grå, it means “gray”.

There is a Swedish word år, but it means “year”.

There is a Swedish word rå, but it means “raw”.

There is a Swedish word på, but it means “at” or “on”. There is a word råd, but it means “council/counsel” or “advice”. Rådhus, like German Rathaus, means literally council house, so is the City Hall. Both –en and –et mean “the”, depending on gender.

Two comments here: all this above has far many more words with Å then usual, since that’s what I’m trying to demonstrate here. The letter actually comes up just a bit less frequently. More important, you’ll have noticed I haven’t translated any complete sentence in this section. The worthy reader is thereby given the opportunity to “pick up” a language informally. Just follow the clues, and collect them. Remember, Beverly was plunged into a Swedish environment for several weeks in 1957 when she met her Swedish relatives for the first time, she not knowing Swedish, and they, at the time, not knowing English. Beverly came out a winner. You can, too.

I remember looking in a Swedish dictionary and seeing the placename Monaco. Apparently it’s one of those words in Swedish where O really is O, so the pronunciation next to the word was listed as “månakå”. That will give you an idea as to how strong the Å is ingrained. It’s been used in Swedish since the 1400’s. During this time, though, both Danish and Norwegian used the archaic spelling “AA”, so they spelled på as “paa”, but this AA spelling was still pronounced O. We’ve talked about names maintaining old spellings, such as Pepys and Goethe. If you’ve heard of the Danish philosopher Søren Kirkegaard, his name maintains an archaic spelling. The word for “churchyard” would be spelled today kirkegård. That last syllable rhymes with the English word “gourd”. [Note: do realize that the English words “yard” and “gard(en)” are essentially the same; we keep them both with slightly different meanings.]

The special letters we’ve been discussing are not part of the German alphabet, any more that French vowels with accents on them are part of the French alphabet. In German A and Ä, for instance, are both alphabetized as A. In the Scandinavian languages, though, it’s quite different. Z is not the last letter in these alphabets. In Swedish, after Z comes Å, Ä, Ö. It’s just a bit different in Danish and Norwegian, though, where Å developed later, and ended up at the VERY end, where after Z come Æ, Ø, Å. (In all these alphabets, Y comes in its usual place.) Therefore, in dictionaries, indexes and phone books, words starting with these letters will come at the end.

Swedish has been using Å since the 1400’s, while Danish and Norwegian hobbled along with AA for the same O sound. It wasn’t until during World War I, 1917, that Norway officially adopted Å, and not until after World War II, 1948, that Danish did. In both these countries, AA still remains as an alternate possibility, especially in Denmark, since the spelling change is still relatively recent. Actually, there’s been a fuss over place names in Denmark. Danish cities and owns like Aarhus, Aalborg, Aabenraa, Faaborg, and Grenaa all became, with the spelling change, Århus, Ålborg, Åbenrå (a double!), Fåborg, and Grenå. But not all the cities liked the change. Those first two are major cities on the Jutland peninsula. Århus accepted it just fine, but Ålborg protested. Later, an adjustment was made for the Å or AA spelling of city names to be decided locally. (As stated earlier, historical people’s names remain the old way, but that’s also true about contemporary people’s names.) I suppose Ålborg, which now prefers Aalborg, wasn’t happy about moving from the very, very beginning of the alphabet to the very, very end.

Another problem arises with this spelling situation. One of the reasons I’ll be stopping in Norway before the cruise gets there on this trip is to visit Flåm, for a number of reasons. The town has a marvelous website, and consistently uses the spelling Flåm, yet the filename for the website says “Flaam Flam Flåm Norway”, clearly so that search engines can find the website, including non-Scandinavians who would write in Flam and pronounce it who-knows-how.

There’s just one tiny inaccuracy in what I’ve said. There is one variation where Å is used outside of Scandinavian languages. The scientist Anders Jonas Ångström has had a unit of length named after him used to measure the size of atoms, the Ångström unit (the first syllable rhymes with song, or sång). The international symbol for this unit, from his name, is Å, so this is a possible use of Å outside of Scandinavia. In practice though, the symbol degenerates to a simple A, which also counts for this unit. (Did you remember to pronounce Jonas as YOOnas?)

Closing the general topic of all these vowels and vowel symbols, it should be mentioned that outside of the Indo-European world, there are other languages that have these vowels and use these symbols. I understand that some varieties of Chinese have the Ü vowel. Even within Europe, the Uralic languages Finnish (Ä Y Ö) and Estonian (Ä Ü Ö) have them; their distant relative Hungarian has Ü and Ö. The Altaic language Turkish also uses Ü and Ö. The point here is that, although within Indo-European, these vowels are typical of only Germanic languages (plus French, which borrowed them), they are not unheard of elsewhere. Actually, if you listen to a Scotsman speaking English with a thick Scottish accent, you’ll hear the word good being pronounced GÜD.

A last comment involves respellings. Many languages borrow words, often from French. English seems to hold in great reverence the written form of the borrowed word and will fight to maintain that spelling, going to the extent of deforming the sound of the word.

A case in point involves going to eat dinner in Sweden in a restaurang. This borrowed version attempts to maintain the original French pronunciation. French “menu” is meNÜ. It’s respelled Menü in German, and meny in Swedish, to maintain the original French pronunciation. English keeps the French spelling but changes the pronunciation to MENyoo. The French word liqueur is pronounced liKÖR. In English, the spelling is maintained, and the word is changed to liKOOR, or even liKYOOR. In German it’s Likör and in Swedish likör.

Bureau in French is büRO. English maintains that spelling but changes it to BYOOro. German spells it Büro, and Swedish, perhaps startingly to the untrained eye, spells it byrå. [Note: English, not having Ü or Ö does change those vowels, but it’s curious that English changes both Ü and Ö to the same thing, OO. The end of déjà vu moves from vü to voo, and the end of masseur moves from –sör to –soor.]

Wordplay 6   These are from French, two tonguetwisters, and one a homonym play. A perfectly normal sentence in English “Have you been to Tahiti?” (Spanish: ¿Ya estabas en Tahiti?; German: Warst du schon in Tahiti?) appears in French as:

Even if you stretch it apart it’s still hard to say (or understand): (a tü ete a taiTI)

That’s the way it was on the tonguetwister website. It then occurred to me to make it more challanging still. You may know that the capital of Tahiti is Papeete. If you’re not sure how to pronounce that, DO NOT assume that Peter is now a father and address him Pa Pete. The word is correctly written Papéété, indicating that it’s pa-pe-e-TE (E’s as in cafE). (Wouldn’t this word be a great exercise to practice E to Ö? It would become the nonsense word Papöötö!) Anyway, let’s extend it to: Have you been to Papéété in Tahiti?

Even when separated, we still have the heavily vocalic: (a tü ete a papeete a taiTI)

Remaining in the Pacific, let’s say we know someone called Lili from Honolulu. She has a tutu made of tulle. Have you seen it?

My last one, a play on homonyms is my favorite of all. Here is a perfectly possible sentence in French.

Both est and et are like E in cafE. Note that only English uses the word “a” when telling what someone is, but not other languages.

Say this to any French speaker, though, and they’ll stare at you. It sounds EXACTLY like what you’re saying is: