[Dixielandjazz] Pronunciation

[Mattias Hallin]

8 sep 2008 kl. 19.40 Robert Ringwald wrote:

> I have always wondered what is correct.  I suspect the long O sound  
> is correct.

It is of course very difficult to say what would be the "correct"  
pronunciation of a name. The one used by the bearer is of course one  
that you could consider as "correct". However if by "correct" you  
mean how the name would normally have been pronunciaated in the  
language whence it came, my guess would be that Schroeder is  
originally the German name Schröder, as oe is a common substitution  
for ö in languages that do not have the umlaut. Actually, the letter  
ö (i.e. o with an umlaut) is originally a medieval shorthand for the  
letter-combination oe, so it even works both ways! As yet another  
aside, this is even more clear when you look at the Danish version of  
the letter (ø), which is of course a stylised form of the letter o  
with the letter e inscribed into it...

Any way, for an English-speaker to pronounce Schröder as the Germans  
do, a good approximation of the ö sound could be had by pronouncing  
it as u in church.

To some extent this is of course beside the point, as I imagine that  
the original post was about how americans would, or have tended to,  
pronounce Gene Schroeder's name, rather than how it would be  
pronounced in Germany...

Best regards,

/Mattias

---
Mattias Hallin · Brussels · Belgium · <cmhallin at algonet.se>

"Oh bury me thar! With my battered git-tar!
A-screamin' my heart out fer yew!"