Does it rhyme with “floss?” Or “gauze?”
I’m not sure myself, but wouldn’t use either of those pronounciations. I’d go for something like “Hars” but without the ‘r’. I think I mean a long ‘a’ sound.
Neither, in my family (Great-Grandma and Grandpa Haas). We pronounce it with an “ahhhhh” sound. In the Chicago dialect, it’s closer to the vowel sound in “pond” than anything else I can think of. The “s” is a soft “zzzz”.
I’ll tell you how journalists said it, when talking about the Newman-Haas racing team. Start with a laugh, hah. The S is like in pass, moss, and miss.
A family in the local area has the name Haase, and that is pronounce as Hah-zee. It seems to suggest what the last two said, since minor variations occur in names after immigration. My mother’s father changed his last name slightly to be more Americanized.
The ones that I know rhyme with “oohs and aahs”.
Depends on why you need to know.
Given the wide variations in dialects in Germant and Austria along with the wide variations in dialect in the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, I suspect that you could find enough variants to make your head spin.
With my Midwest/Great Lakes German ancestry, I read it with the vowels rhyming with the first syllable of father and the final s pronounced like pass. (Rhymes withthe first syllable of gospel in my dialect.) However, I know some folks from the German communities of Southern Indiana/Northern Kentucky who would use the same vowel but sound the s as a z.
If you are trying to inmpress a prospective employer or client, try to locate someone who knows them, (like their receptionist), and simply ask.
If you are having a fight at the kitchen table over the “right” way to say it, you are lost.
Haas machine tool company, rhymes with aahs with zzz on the end.
In the US, it’s usually Hahs, with the “s” as in loss. The golfer Jay Haas, recently of the Champions Tour, pronounces it that way, as does his son, Bill, who plays on the PGA Tour.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know if the name has a single generally accepted pronunciation in Germany?
Yes, it’s /haːs/. The a is the same vowel as in “father” but explicitly long. The * s* is voiceless as it always is at the end of German syllables.
I would have thought the name was Dutch and pronounced like the double ‘a’ in Den Haag, which would be ‘ah’.
Same with former major league pitcher Moose Haas and actor Lukas Haas . Pronounced just like “Hoss.”
It is indeed Dutch, it means ‘hare’.
Chefguy is also correct about the pronounciation.
The double “a”, though, indicates strongly that it’s of Dutch or Plattdeutsch origin. IIRC the rule about terminal ‘s’ always being voiceless in German also applies in Dutch, but I’m not sure.
In America, Continental language names are almost always Anglicized, and not always in a consistent manner, so unless you hear someone pronounce the name who is in a position to know, it’s usually anybody’s guess.
I’m curious as to why you might thought that a word with a double “a” might be pronounced with an “o” vowel.
Give 'em a break. It’s easy for us (southern) Brits, where “Haas” is simply pronounced the same as “pass”. That is not true of most, if not all, American accents, in which there is no direct equivalent of that vowel.
I thought that, too. Interestingly it might not be true for most cases. This map shows the relative frequency of the name in Germany and indicates almost the exact opposite (and while the name is reasonably common in Germany, it is even more common in Austria.)
Yes, I know. That was not really intended as an answer to the OP, only to Terrifel.
:smack: Well, Terrifel’s last post.