Smile When You Say That

Many years ago (we're talking 7th Grade), my best friend and I played game after game of Avalon Hill's Battle of the Bulge, shamelessly speaking of German PanzergreNAYders and VolksgreNAYders in our Arkansas drawls. We weren't sure what to make of "Kampfgruppe Peiper." Eventually we learned of our imperfect pronunciation and mended our errant tongues. Since it is quite a popular word in this issue, I looked up the pronunciation of "Walcheren."

According to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, it is:

WAL' khuh ruhn

However, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language renders it as:

VAL' khuhr-uhn

USN reader Chris Janiec was kind enough to ask his Dutch liaison officer, CDR Frits Hellendoorn, RNethN, to decide the issue for us. He pronounces it with a "Y' sound rather than a "W" sound. I'll take the word of a native Dutchman over contradictory American dictionaries any day.

Another problem for an English-speaker might be the KH, which represents a "veral fricative" (as opposed to a "palatal fricative"). For me, this information only created a problem worse than before. The English language doesn't have veral fricatives. It is pronounced as in the German word ich, but that doesn't help if one doesn't speak German, does it? Substituting an English 'k' sound is probably close enough.

If Walcheren now makes you nervous, you can always call the hex by its town name: "Vlissingen." The dictionaries shoot pretty straight on this one:

VLIS'ing uhn

The only trick is to put the accent on the first syllable, not the second.

If you don't like that either, or if you're hopelessly anglophilic, you can always say "Flushing," the English name of Vlissingen. Flushing sounds just like it is spelled and might have direct connections to what you would like to do with all this pronunciation stuff, anyway. We can always just call the place 16A:0727.

Operation Infatuate The Battle of Walcheren Island: November 1-8, 1944

Introduction and Rules
Allied Order of Battle
Axis Order of Battle
Pronounciation
Europa as History
First Walcheren Campaign 1809
The Real Battle
Rules Questions