LL-L 'Names' 2006.10.23 (03] [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 23 October 2006 * Volume 03
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From: Luc Hellinckx [luc.hellinckx at gmail.com]
Subject: LL-L 'Songs'

Beste Gabriele,

You wrote:
> I have to confess to a few myself, especially as a young teenager... such as
> "Oh Lord, won't you buy me a mercy dispense" by Janis Joplin (sounded like
> some kind of indulgence to me). How was I to know they generally
> mispronounce "Mercedes Benz" in America?

In some way, "Mercedes" does stand for a kind of indulgence, as the
Spanish word "mercedes" means "mercy" :-D .

By the way, do German people really pronounce the name for Mercedes cars
in a Spanish way? Something like "Mércédès"? ;-)
Or should we rather adopt an Austrian accent since Emil Jellinek, who
baptized the car after his daughter's name, was primarily raised in
Vienna? Off the record, Nobel Prize winner for literature in 2004,
Elfriede Jelinek, seems to be his granddaughter.

Emil himself just said:

“The name of my daughter has certain publicity characteristics that
would be lost by using some other name. The name is both exotic and
attractive. It can be easily pronounced and it sounds good. You can call
these cars whatever you want, but the cars that I sell will be called
Mercedes!”.

Standard Dutch stresses the second syllable in this word, but we go for
the first one here in the South (aka Spanish Netherlands 1579-1713 and
Austrian Netherlands 1713-1794 :-D ).

Regards,

Luc Hellinckx

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