Zagorath

I do wonder if there might be a difference between the phonemes and the realisation, the way there was in German according to the German commenter.

But also, even without that, stress undoubtedly changes the perception of the vowel (not nearly as much as in English, but certainly not nil), as does an r after a vowel.

I took German in primary school (0.5 or 1.5 years, I forget which), Spanish and Korean in late primary school/early high school (3 years), French (5 years) and Vietnamese (1 year) in high school. Of these, I can hold a very basic conversation in French and have good enough grammar to put together fairly sophisticated sentences, very slowly, using a dictionary; and can read the Korean script (the same way someone who speaks Turkish but has literally never heard a word of the language can “read English” because their language uses the same script) and barely any more than that, in any of those languages.

I blame the fact that I changed languages so much for my poor skill in all of them. (Though a lack of will or immersion certainly has a fair amount to do with it, too.)

mercedes

In English’s defence, it’s not an English word. It’s a German company named after a Spanish name. And at least to my ear, the Spanish and German pronunciations also have 3 different Es. One helpful Redditor also provided an IPA guide to the German pronunciation, agreeing with my ears:

mɛrˈtseːdɛs

The “e” in the middle is long and stressed.

Edit: I would also say, that most of the times it is even pronounced like this:

məˈtseːdɛs

But I can’t even begin to justify the letter c sounding like /s/, /k/, and /ʃ/.

Edit: Who the hell is taking this seriously enough to downvote?

amarynthia@sh.itjust.works and Passerby6497@lemmy.world

Anyone whose “ghosts” isn’t at zero, as an adult, is someone I’m not going to be trusting on any subject.

Ditto “aliens”, if we interpret it as “extraterrestrials that have been to Earth”.