How to Correctly Pronounce German Car Brand Names

But today, the video is not about the cars themselves, but about how the German car brands are pronounced in their native language.

We had full confidence in the way we pronounced Mercedes, BMW or Porsche. But the video shook that to its core, as Germans spell things differently.

Obviously, we are not going to repeat everything Thomas says, as it's only a 4-minute video that you can watch quickly. So we are going to point out just the most interesting facts.

Firstly, the guy is talking about German cars while sitting in a Japanese car, the Lexus RC F Carbon, which is a BMW M4 competitor. That reminds us of an earlier story we published about how you should pronounce Japanese car names.

The way the letters are spelled in German is completely different, so companies like BMW and AMG suffer. However, even with familiar names, there are subtle differences. Mercedes has a little bit of "z" in it, and the accent is on MERcedes, not in the middle of the word.

Car connoisseurs laugh at the people who say "Porsche" like they do "porch," the bit that sticks out of the front of houses. However, almost nobody notices Volkswagen is spelled badly almost everywhere in the world.

"Volks" means people and is pronounced in a similar way to folks because they are kind of the same word. As for the "w," you're not supposed to think of wagons because it's pronounced as a "v." So the right English word is something like Folksvagn. As for the VW abbreviation used by everybody, it's spelled Fau Vee in German.

Editor's note: Something many people forget is that Mercedes' "Class" is called "Klasse" in Germany. Also, a wagon body style is called a Touring.