How Do You Pronounce Porsche?
It's been answered before, but we'll answer it again: here's how you pronounce "Porsche."
Written by Andrew Kidd
Reviewed by Kathleen Flear
It’s a question that’s plagued many a pedant’s contributions to any discussion about the German automaker and its lineup. At a glance, it looks like it should be pronounced as one syllable as it's spelled: Porsche. But as enthusiasts, German speakers and the German luxury automaker itself will tell you, it’s pronounced with two syllables: PORE-shuh.
Why do you pronounce it that way?
The reason the Germans pronounce this extra syllable (and as should you) is because the German language has no silent letters.
This means the “e” at the end of Porsche should be pronounced. It’s unlike in English, where the “e” on the end of words like “share,” “care” and “there” are silent and serve to only inform how the preceding letters are pronounced.
The question has apparently plagued the automaker enough that the folks at Porsche released a video demonstrating the proper pronunciation of its name.
It’s unlike another German luxury automaker, Audi, whose name is based on a Latin translation of the founder’s name, August Horch—which doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as cleanly.
A history of getting it wrong
English speakers have a long, storied history of mispronouncing names that originate in languages other than their home dialect.
It's not really a big deal for someone to mispronounce the name of a German luxury car brand—especially one that is doing well enough to start investing in solid-state batteries for advanced electric sports cars.
But at a human level, it can be troubling for non-native English speakers in general who come to English-speaking neighborhoods, schools and workplaces only to be told their names are "too difficult" to pronounce.
As Xiaoyan Huang writes in
The Washington Post
, she’s experienced strangers trying to push her to adopt a "westernized" version of her name—"Cheyenne"—to make it easier for others to address her. In one case, she declined but a fellow alumnus at her university insisted on calling her "Cheyenne" (which itself would be an appropriation of an indigenous American name).Huang noted that when she arrived in the U.S. in the ‘80s for college, her name essentially damned her to the bottom rung of the campus social ladder.
"When one’s name started with ungainly consonants like “X” or “Q,” everyone knew you were from the mainland. We carried the scarlet letter of unpronounceable names. So in those initial years, I walked around campus feeling desolate not only socially and financially, but also linguistically."
Why is pronouncing things correctly a big deal?
Because it's common courtesy. You wouldn't want someone calling you Bob for short unless you asked them to—right, Robert? It's no different when it's a non-western name.
Not saying that you should care if Ferdinand Porsche and his namesake automotive company get their feelings hurt; corporations aren't people.
But it's a great opportunity to stress that, for living people, names matters. A name is a part of one's identity.
To be expected to erase that and replace it with something else for the sake of convenience for others is like being asked to give up a part of yourself. And as Dale Carnegie said: "A person's name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language."
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