rapidroy wrote:
I recall a member here saying that the As is pronounced Az in Hans' homeland, that's the way I would pronounce it to avoid the stupid insult.
Actually, you are absolutely correct, rapidroy!
In Austria, due to the inflection of their Germanic accent, it would be properly pronounced something a bit more like Ahz-pe-gu. The 'r' would be silent and the 'e' would sound more like what we know as a shortened soft 'u', sort of. Same applies to Hans, it'd be pronounced 'haawnce', not 'hands'. (English is sooo weird!)
I, also, don't particularly care for the 'ass' pronunciation because some people are so childish, they giggle and poke fun. ("Hahaha, he said ass!") Morons!
In fact, I actually wrote the phonetic 'az' pronunciation (just like you said) in my first draft of my post, but changed it in deference to American ways of sounding out words since the OP asking the question is from the USA.
Besides... if you think Aspies get teased now, think of the punches-in-the-noses we'd get if we tried to offer up the truly accurate (Austrian) pronunciation of the name to a general public that thinks Survivor and Big Brother is "reality" TV.
(To you readers from elsewhere on the planet, those are both unbelievably low-brow amercian 'hit' tv shows.)
By the way, just for the record, it is absolutely not my intention to insult Americans by any of the above comments. I'm just calling a spade a spade. Hey, I'm an Aspie.... it's what we do!
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