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April 3

"A Eurospar" or "an Eurospar"?

I just translated the article Entresse from the original Finnish article. The article contains this text:

The S-Market grocery store that is now a part of Entresse was originally a Eurospar store of the SPAR chain.

Should it say "a Eurospar store" as (to my understanding) "Eurospar" is pronounced "yoo-ro-spar" in English? Or "an Eurospar store" as "Eurospar" is pronounced with an /eu/ diphthong in Finnish and (to my understanding) in the original Dutch? JIP | Talk 00:53, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your understanding is correct, and a native British-English speaker (like wot I am) would always say "a Eurospar", and similarly for any words starting with a "y" ("yoo") sound in English. However, if I were in an English-language conversation with someone whose language used the /eu/ sound, and if I chose deliberately to use that pronunciation in the conversation (as I might, just as I insist on pronouncing Lidl as "Leedle", not "Liddle"), I would use "an". Other English speakers might (and do) judge me to be a poseur, however. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.123.235 (talk) 06:40, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, in the original Dutch, eu is a digraph, but not a diphtong. It's pronounced as /ø/: /ˈø.ro.spɑr/. PiusImpavidus (talk) 12:30, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

For me, "An Eurospar" just looks wrong. ~~But weirdly, "A European language" is fine.~~ And I'm a native German speaker. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:02, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If "an Eurospar" looks wrong to you, presumably you'd write "a Eurospar". But then, I'd expect "a European language" to be fine for you as well. BTW, Switzerland was the first country to see a Eurospar shop. --Lambiam 11:16, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Aaahrg! I should not write things too late in the day. You are completely right. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:43, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]