How do you pronounce Manlicher?
Also, one n or two? I’ve seen both.
I’ve had one for years (used to have a C&R license), but I’ve never known how to pronounce it.
Huh, I’ve always said “Man-Licker”, and I’ve never gotten the look from other gun guys, but then again until I got something from HK I said “Heckler and Kotch” instead of “Cook”.
If it’s pronounced the normal German way, there are two sounds that aren’t found in English and so might be hard for you to pronounce: “a” and “ch”.
The “a” is not like the “a” in the English word “man”, but more like a shorter form of the “a” in the English word “father” – but if you pronounce it like the “a” in “man” you’ll get away with it.
The “ch” is like the sound in “loch” as pronounced by a Scottish person.
I googled and found several forums that asked the same question. They came up with Mahn-leak-air
The middle syllable is more like English “lick” than English “leak” – and the ending consonant there is not a /k/, even though some English speakers use that because they find it the closest available sound.
Is that the “a” as in bahn?
What relatively common german word has the “ch” sound?
I spent some time in Germany, but did not pick up much German, as I was mostly driving a Hummer or APC around the US military training areas. (I just learned the most important phrases: Ein hefe weissen bitte, and Wo ist de bahn?) 
Google shows 164 hits for Mannlicher clip vs. 19 for Manlicher clip, and similar ratios for Mannlicher vs. Manlicher. From this I’d assume that “Mannlicher” is correct.
As Giles noted, the German “a” is pronounced as ah. While that sound is found in English, the German “ch” is not. It’s a palatal, somewhat hard to describe clearly, but I would say produced with the back of the tongue pressed toward the top of the back of the mouth and a fair amount of airflow. Start by pronouncing “k” but then don’t let the tongue actually touch the roof of the mouth. It’s also sort of like pronouncing “k” when you’re drunk and slurring.
Yes.
Ich.
Actually the ‘a’ in English “man” is likely more nearly correct. Given typical German orthography and and phonology, the original spelling was probably “mannlicher” with an umlaut over the “a”–which is pronounced more like the ‘a’ in English “man”. Come to think of it, IIRC it’s somewhere between the vowel in “man” and “men”.
Of course, how the owner of the name pronounces it trumps all, but others can’t always be blamed for mispronouncing a name if the owner’s pronunciation is way off base. (Don’t get my started on Mary Gauthier (pronounced go-SHAY)) .
Interestingly, english ‘h’ followed by ‘u’ is almost identical to /ch/, though /ch/ is one of the sounds in German that we usually think don’t occur in English.
Actually there are two /ch/ sounds, the “ach-laut” and the “ich-laut”. The former is like the final sound of Scottish “loch” and is truly absent from Standard English.
Good point. Hadn’t thought of that.
True. I was trying to keep it simple. I should have said “the ‘ch’ in this word…”
/Mann/ -“Hey, Mon”, like a Jamaican
/lich/- similar to “lish” but with an afterthought of LeChaim (Hebrew- 'To Life")
/er/- er… umm…
Cool, I think I get it now. The closest I can come phonetically would be monlischer, with the mon as in monacle or Jamaican mon. Sound right?
You beat me to it!
If the “a” had no umlaut, yes. If, as Spectre of Pithecanthropus suggested, the “a” had an umlaut, menlischer would be closer.
Yea, with an umlaut it would sound like “main-lisch-er”.
You can get away with pronouncing the German “ch” like an American “sch”, as there are some dialects of German that don’t emphasize the gutteral.
I agree that the word looks as if it should have an umlaut but it doesn’t.
One thing that’s important is the length of the “a”. In German there are two versions of the vowel in “father”. One is short and the other is long but otherwise they are exactly the same. In this case it should be the short version.
Yeah, I wanna say that word has an umlaut, too, since there is a perfectly good German word, ‘männlich’ (“masculine, manly”). Its pronunciation is something like “MEN-lish”, with that last ‘sh’ sounding something like the ‘h’ in ‘huge’ — sort of an ‘h’ and a consonant ‘y’ (as in ‘Yoda’) pronounced at the same time.
But, if it doesn’t have an umlaut (and I have no idea if it does or not), you’d be better off saying ‘MON-lish-er’, the vowel in ‘mon’ being something like ‘bahn’, but ‘clipped’.
… there is always Cinnabon.
The a is the o here.
The rifle is indeed a Mannlicher (and a Mannlicher was used to kill J. F. K)
I would not reccomend you pronounce it Mann as the Jamaican “Mon” - that’s also a egionalism and may sopund different from different people. Try this:
“Mahn”. It’s a little drawn out and softened, bt it’s distinctly an soft A sound, not an O in any sense.