Greeks in YouTube comment threads say the goddess after whom the shoes are named should be pronounced more like “neekee” (in threads in which they dispute ‘neekay’ as a mistake).
@glennf Learned German when lived in Switzerland 5 years, saw how every letter is used. But when friend bought a 1969 Porsche 911 (in 1969) we all pronounced it without the “e” like it was a French word 🙂
@huitema@bagder I grew up in Eugene, Oregon, so we knew how to say Nike the Nike way. But also took Greek history/art classes, so can honor the goddess with…er…somewhat closer pronunciation of her incarnation as victory.
@glennf Here in Germany, most people pronounce it so it rhymes with Mike. You can tell who consumes a lot of US media by who pronounces it like Mikey. Or who is from Greece and properly pronounces it nee-kay.
@uliwitness@glennf I remember when Apple previewed macOS Yosemite at WWDC, some of the German developers who were unfamiliar with U.S. place names pronounced it "Yo-sem-aight" which was…well, rather triggering for a person with the surname Cohen.
@uliwitness@glennf In fairness, a lot of Americans can't pronounce native-derived place names correct either.
I live in Massachusetts, for example, and a lot of folks from other regions say "mass-a-too-sits." For some reason that mid-word digraph is challenging.
@flargh@uliwitness My late, beloved mother in law could not say Snohomish, the county in which she and my FIL lived when they relocated near us. She would say shnow-HOME-ish. (It’s just snow-HOME-ish.) But she grew up northern Pennsylvania and there was a lot of dialect of there. She said “hamburg” for hamburger, too
@mikec415@flargh@uliwitness@glennf When in lived in California’s San Joaquin Valley I passed a road name Conejo. Like your road most folks pronounced it like cone-joe. 🤣
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