In the norse legends Thor possesses a hammer named mjolnir. How does one pronounce this?
I think the nir part sounds like near, but am unsure what the mjol bit sounds like. Any scandinavian/icelandic dopers (or anyone else) out there that can help?
You might find thesetwo Wikipedia articles interesting, take a look at the “alternate spellings” section on the second one, that might help you research how to pronounce it better. I also foundthis, and this as well.
In Danish it’s Mjøl-ner. (http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mj�lner) ”ø” is a vowel you don’t have in English. It’s usually transcribed as “oe” but sounds nothing like either “o” or “e”.
From wikipedia: “Ø is particularly difficult for English-speakers. It is pronounced by rounding the lips as in “oh”, while producing the “e” in “met”. It is the same sound as the German umlaut ‘ö’ or ‘Ö’ and almost the same as the vowel in French ‘feu’.”
I also asked this question of a native Norweigan, ultra-Nationalist, lingual purist, Norse Mythology buff friend of mine, about 10 years ago. He said it’s myool-nuh.
I’ll trust him until someone proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that he’s wrong.
Heh, one time I was driving around with my wife and a friend and we saw some random store with an ö in the name. Someone asked how it was pronounced, and I uttered what I like to think was a reasonable approximation, but they made fun of me. It sounds silly to us native English speakers.
Well, if you pronounce “fucked” with the first syllable like the French word “feu” or “je” (think of “je t’aime”) you are pronouncing it incorrectly. The correct pronounciation for “ø” is indeed just like the German umlaut “ö”, which sounds like the vowel in the french words “je” or “feu”. In other words, your pronounciation of “fucked” may be seriously “feucked up”!