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We live in the German State of Baden Württemberg. The English speakers among you may be amused to hear that this state is now rebranding itself as "The Länd" to make the name easier to pronounce.

@thelaend

thelaend.de

4:01 PM · Nov 10, 2021

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I should probably explain why I think it's funny. Most Germans pronounce the English "æ" (as in the English "land") like the German "ä". These two sounds are in fact not pronounced the same way, though this took me literally 3 decades to notice.

Sabine Hossenfelder

@skdh

Nov 10, 2021

I would bet that if you randomly picked 100 Germans from the street and asked them to say "pan" and "pen", the vast majority would pronounce both as "pän". (I still get this wrong, despite all my attempts at weeding out the problem.)

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and

So... The German word for land is "land"... The German word for lands is "länder" and Baden Württemberg is changing their name to "The Länd" to help English speakers. Not confusing at all!

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and

I skipped Baden Württemberg in my last road trip, but I heard very good things about it.

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and

I'm amused. Mind you, the ä is slightly easier to achieve for us than the ü.

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and

Has anyone seen this advertisement outside of "The Länd". Seeing it all over Karlsruhe is like sitting in the cinema and beeing shown the trailer for the movie you paid for and are about to see in a couple of minutes...