Military Channel Commentators

I laugh every time they are to say Maschinengewehr 42.   Matchinengyuer 42!!! Priceless!

And don't forget the other side of the world. Yamato (Yah-mah-tor with a silent "r" ) doesn't really sound like "tomato"

Any resemblance between the Military Channel (plus Discover Channel, et al) and views of history in general (or myself in particular) is purely coincidental. Too often I find Herodotus (484 BC - 425 BC), “In history, only some things happen when they should and the rest do not happen at all, but the conscientious historian will rectify these shortcomings.”

Chrisk-k

Why can't some commentators correctly pronounce some key German words?  I don't expect them to pronounce "Panther" as "pahn-ter" or "Tiger" as "Tee-gur." 

But some key WWII units need to be pronounced correctly. For instance, I get annoyed when a commentator says "wah-fen" SS instead of "vah-fen SS."

Heh.. You oughtta try living with a native German-speaker when they do that...  English is my wife's second language, lol..

Since they're speaking English to an English-speaking audience (generally), "Waffen", "Panther", "Luftwaffe", and "Tiger" are pronounced in English, or at least Anglisized....  Non-German speakers would be easily confused by "Tee-Gur" or even moreso by an English-speaker trying to pronounce "König-Tiger", no? ( "Ker-NISH-Tee-gur" is as close to a phonetic spelling as I can get, sorry)

Using the Anglicized pronunciations of Waffen-SS and Luftwaffe (I've actually heard the latter pronounced as "Looft-WAAF-ah, too) is just simpler...  "Pahnt-zuhr" is best left as "PAN-zur", IMHO..

At least on "Wings of the Luftwaffe", they get "Junkers" right, eh? As in "Yoong-kuhz" for you guys, (And I know there are some of you here) that thought it was the same as the Englsh "JUNK-erz", like when you're refering to a salvage yard full of junked cars) and they correctly pronounce the abbrieviaton of "Ju" as "Yoo", and not "Jay- Yoo", as in "Yoo-87, Yoo-88, and Yoo-52 (AKA "Tante Ju" ie. "Tahnt-teh Yoo" (Aunt Ju)..

So nah.. "WAH-fen"-SS and "Ty-ger" don't bother me..

Won't even get into the German military slang... That's a whole 'nudder thread, lol... "Gulaschkanone" and "Kettenhund" are the easy ones, lol..  You oughtta try "Kriegverlägerungskreuz" or "Feldküchensturmabzeichen"...

I took a few German & Russian language courses at my college only because I was interested in WWII .

Didn't take any formal courses, but was stationed in Germany for three years, married two different Germans, and was a WW2 German re-enactor and also took some Russian courses since the first half of my US Army career we were training to fight the sunzabassiges... Guess I shoulda took Arabic...

I took a few German & Russian language courses at my college only because I was interested in WWII    I'm glad I did.

You see that's another advantage for being a deaf I don't have to hear to all of this.  I just read the captions... thanks for making me feel good.

They can't even pronounce english related to aviation.  But, of course, we English speakers use a lot of French for aviation terms- aileron, nacelle, etc.   Still, seems like with a little effort these guys could look up pronouniciations that they are not sure of.

One guy in particular I just can't stand to watch.

They do seem to be getting a little better with their selection of movies anyway but could go so much further.

I hate when they show stock footage that you know came from one event,but apply it to the event they are talking about.

like the standard gun camera footage ,or the standard panzers advancing being applied to anything they happen to be talking about

Ha....get five people together and have them all say Tamiya!

Thad

Military Channel has a hard enough time getting facts straight as it is.....