Achtung Baby
Any specific ones you have questions about?
If you’ll accept Austrian terms… I learned over Christmas the proper pronunciation of Grüner Veltliner. Since an initial V in German words is normally pronounced as F. Thus “viel” (many) = feel; vor (ahead) = for. So I’d assumed that the second word was pronounced FELT-li-ner, with a stress on the first syllable.
My brother’s Viennese girlfriend, whose father is a wine collector, set me straight. It’s pronounced with a V and the stress is on the second syllable, so: velt-LEE-ner.
(I won’t attempt to explain the umlauted U in Grüner.)
That’s the Spanish pronunciation ![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
I think it’s closer to Noah-la
Coño! Yu raight.
How about “Noo-eh-lah”?
I’m going by how Charles van Canneyt said it when I asked how to pronounce. Seemed closer to the name Noah. But I think you are probably right that it’s more of an eh then ah.
I get stuck on Auslese a lot. does one of those S’s make an “sh” sound? do they both?
only the first one makes a sh.
Um, no. It is pronounced OWS-leh-zeh. No “sh” sound.
A linguist here, maybe I can be of some help.
The double-L is pronounced the “Spanish way” after “i” in French, at other times as actual "L"s
I wish John could’ve explained the umlauted German u (ü), because that’s the first syllable in “Hudelot”; I’d pronounce it “ü-de-loh”. For people who really don’t know how to pronounce it, I guess it’s best to google some videos on how to pronounce “ü”, because there really isn’t that particular vowel in English (although it is voiced passingly in words like “new” or “dew”).
I’d pronounce the latter part of the name as “no-eh-la”. The “ë” means that the “e” should be pronounced separately as an “eh”; if it was written as “Noellat”, the “e” would get integrated as a part of the first syllable and then it would be pronounced as “no-la”.
So the whole name would be “Ü-de-loh NO-eh-la”.
And don’t forget the rhotic "r"s - no rounded English "r"s, everyone should try to sound as Scottish as possible when attempting to speak German! At least you get the Rs right. 
The V as a “v” (instead of “f”) might be an Austrian thing, because I’ve heard many Germans say it as “felt-LI-ner”. The “grüner” part might be more difficult, but I guess it would make sense if you thought of the first syllable as a very Scottish pronounciation if the word “grew” but cut short, or said as quickly as possible, followed by “-ner”.
This is pretty accurate, but from what I’ve heard, many Germans still, for some reason, make the first S almost “sh”, so occasionally you’ll hear it with a hushed “s” as “OWSh-leh-zeh”. But usually you’ll hear it as that “OWS-leh-zeh”.
Listening to Wine & War audio book for the past few days on the drive to/from work.
Author narrates the book and pronounced “Vosne” as “Bahs-knee”…that can’t be right, right!!!
I’ve pronounced it “Vone” (with almost a Germanic “Ffff” sound on the “V”).
My German speaking grandparents (hopped a cargo ship over here shortly after WWII), who were from the northern part of the country, would have pronounced the umlauted Gruner closer to “Groiner” whereas the lazy (their words, not mine) southerners would pronounce it closer to “Grooner”.
Lips parsed like you are going to say “oooo” but vacalize “eeeee” (kind of)
How about Soave.
It’s “soh-AHH-veh”. Keep the other vowels short, put some emphasis on the “a” and no diphthongs (i.e. it’s not “sow-AH-vey”).
I was just thinking last night I needed to dig this thread back up! was wondering if someone could do “Puilly-Fuise”
I could explain how that is pronounced as well, but perhaps you are more interested in Pouilly-Fuissé? 
The double-L here is pronounced as /j/, i.e. as in tortilla (torti_/j/_a or just “tortiya”), making the end of the first part sound something like “eww”:
PWA-eww füi-seh
The “fui-” part in Fuissé is a bit hard to describe accurately, unless you understand how “ü” is pronounced. It is something in the vein of “fyi-”, “fwi-” or “fui”.
I agree. But for an American English speaker who doesn’t know phonetic notation, I would approximate the pronunciation as pwee fwee-seh, where the E in seh is pronouced like “set.” Or, if you’re speaking a bit more slowly, perhaps closer to poo-ee fwee-seh. (If you try to say poo-ee, you’ll find you’re inserting a W between the two vowels.)
Never thought of that pwee. It looks really odd as a pronunciation guide and at first and sorta sounds wrong as well, but the more I try to say it out the more it actually resembles the French pronunciation! A good one.
The fwi-/fwee-part has the problem that it lacks the “ü” vowel sound (i.e. the one that is the first vowel in the diphthong “you”), coming across as too closed, but I guess it’s the closest approximation.
Yes, English and French vowels do not correspond very closely. And in most American and English accents, there really isn’t a ü. (In the north of England, they pronounce “butter” and “put” with something like a ü, but a linguist would probably tell me its something subtly different.)
Yes, as a linguist I can say that it is something subtly different.
At least I’ve never heard any English vernacular where they’d use the ü sound in those words!