Today a guy happened to look at the watch I was wearing and he exclaimed "oh look it says Homos."
LOL FML
What other funny stories do the rest of you have?
The common ones that I'm familiar with are ETA being spelled out, rather than the correct eytah pronunciation. And the rather confusing correct French pronunciation, jaay-jerrr vs the incorrect German yaygrr for Jaeger LeCoultre.
Jaeger is a tricky one. The French silkiness is correct but I'm guessing people assume the more forceful pronunciation on the 2nd syllable just sounds more masculine so it must be right. At an AD for JLC this year, the rep corrected me when I asked him what lines from "jay-jair" (my approximation of the Swiss/French accent) they had, he looked at my quizzically first and then replied, "you mean jay-gerr.". I grinned and said "uh-huh." Also that guy from Hodinkee, Ben says "jay-gerr" in one of his talking watches videos. When I was wet behind the ears about all the big brands, I thought you could just call it a "jag" like people call their Jaguar cars. Don't really care as long as someone understands the greatness of Jaeger-LeCoultre.
On WUS we see many close up wrist and sample pics. Some stranger glancing at your wrist does not have the luxury of a clear image or brand knowledge. I can see how a capital N can be seen as H at a glance.
That being said, I had heard a few people saying Longines as "Long'eens" and more commonly "Long - Ines" LOL, must be a Murica thing
Any time I read --- "Cuervo Y Sobrinos" --- in my mind it's just like a mumble that I skip over, luckily I don't think I'll ever have to say it out loud.
Great! I've been pronouncing ¼ of them wrongly.
Limes should be pronounced like the fruit. If you're gonna call yourself limes you're gonna go with key lime pie.
I slight variation on the theme, but I think this generally fits the thread:
I recently ran into an acquaintance, who "collects" Invictas (well, he has about 15, the very big ones). I looked at his latest watch, and commented kindly..... (I'm not a fan, but I'm not an *ss either).
Then he said to me, "I see you're wearing your Timex." I replied "Um, no, it's a Seiko" (it happened to be my 007). He said, "Oh yeah, right."
I'm not a Timex fan either, to put it mildly, admittedly biased because of having more than one too many children's Timex's during grade school.......
So I was none too pleased by his comment. But I considered the source, and got past it. Eventually.
I had such a hard time saying Jaquet Droz (yakè drō) at an AD I just gave up and went somewhere else and burned my stack on a Panerai. The dealer was somewhat incised that I could not nail the pronunciation, even worse, I had to explain to the war department how my PAM 372 was a 'dress' watch. Silly how mispronouncing a name can make even the seasoned watch collector feel like an idiot (not to mention how bad it can rub sales folks wrong too).
Oh, lest I forget, a women I sat next to on a Southwest flight a few years back asked me if I purchased my late 70's model NOS Rolex sub at Costco because she got her son 'a watch just like it for Christmas.' Unconvinced that our watches were different, I let her handle it, to which her reply was 'the one she bought was better-built and did not require a battery.'
Perhaps it'll never end. Maybe the only safe action is to keep buying Panerai, lol.
you LEESE nahr DAN (The last syllable is spoken with a short, nasal "a" with no real equivalent in English. The "n" is not pronounced fully, but cut off in the back of the mouth as soon as it begins.)
Universal Genève
Genéve: jeh NEV
Vacheron Constantin
VASH er ahn kon stan TAN (For last syllable, see note for "Ulysse Nardin.")
Not to quibble with Watchtime, but wouldn't "Wenger" be pronounced VENG-Ger (hard "g" on the second syllable - or perhaps VENG-er) and "Zenith" be pronounced ZEH-nit? That's if we're sticking to the native language of the watchmaker, of course -- or is my rusty German off by some measure?
So I'll admit it... Legit had no idea ETA was correctly pronounced Etta. Almost all my horological knowledge comes from reading, so whatever I come up with in my head is how I spew it. The only people I know into watches are at work and they all say E.T.A. as well, it wasn't until a few months ago I heard a sales person say "Etta" and in my head I was like "hmm... That's an odd way to pronounce it" not knowing we're the ass, haha
I've only fairly recently learned that it was "Ettah"not "E T A." I mean...why use all caps unless they're initials?
The ü umlaut is fairly hard for a non German speaker to correctly pronounce.
Well I feel stupid now. I would have gotten 3/4 of that list wrong and sounded like a buffoon doing so. Luckily I haven't really talked to anyone in person about watches and brand names. Good read though.
I was rendered speechless at the pronunciation of IWC as ew-ick. After a moment, I explained it was for International Watch Co. Don't remember much after that.
the only one that matters is easy, even for Americans
'Macallan'
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