How does one pronounce Copenhagen?

Is it Co-pen-hay-gen, or Co-pen-hah-gen?

Please help me settle a little bet.....I vote for the latter.

Thanks!

The first one is to be considered as correct in my oppinion. Co-pen-hah-gen is more like said in dutch or german I think.

Interesting question...

Regards
Patrik

You say to-MAY-to, I say to-MAH-to......

I say CopenHAYgen myself.

Kohb-n-hav-n

I think both are correct and both are not the same as the Danish way of saying it.

I say "copen-hah-gen" and "colo-rah-do" but I buck the rule by saying "nev-aa-da", not "ne-vah-da" (for Nevada).

Beat me to it.

I started to write that you I believe you lost your bet on the American pronunciation of Copenhagen, but looked it up and dictionaries show both pronunications. The first one you list appears first though.

Well... when it comes to a place name, what is the definition of "correct pronunciation"?

If you live in a small town whose inhabitants all speak the same language and that has not been discovered by international tourism, then the answer is simple - the correct pronunciation is whatever pronunciation is used by the town's inhabitants.

But how about national capitals and major tourist destinations that are called different things in different languages? Is it Warszawa, Warsaw, Warschau or Varsovie? Is it Munich or München? Is Berlin "bur-lin" or "bair-leen"?

As for Copenhagen... here in England we say "Copen-haygen", and that's also how my Scandinavian friends pronounce it when they speak English. But I don't think there is any right or wrong pronunciation in English because it's just an English rendition of a Danish name. And the Danish pronunciation is quite different!

I like "shippenheim" myself.

Surely "see-pee-aitch"

I always pronounce it "Coe-pen-hah-gen" because that's the way Danny Kaye pronounced it in the song "Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen" in the Hans Christian Andersen movie. Funny how things like that stick with you.

I agree with those who say the Danish pronounciation is irrelevant. Unless you're going to be consistent and say "Paree," "Mehico," "Yerushalayim," "Mahskva," and all the rest, pronounce it as an English speaker would.

A friend from Copenhagen told me that the locals call it Copen han... They are very lazy speakers and abbreviate the words wherever possible. When I was there I did refer to it as Copenhan and never had a problem with the locals knowing I was talking about the town.

Yes, but how do English speakers pronounce Copenhagen and Moscow? CopenHAgen or CopenHAYgen? MosCO or MosCOW?

Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City?

The problem with pronouncing it "Coe-pen-hah-gen" is that the city had some "visitors" a few years back who do that, who still insist on spelling the city's name "Kopenhagen", and at the time referred to the country it is in as "Region Nord".

In addition they used the Hotel d'Angleterre as their HQ and thus have forever given me a reason never to stay at that establishment.

At least they left DK with an extra airport in Karup!

If the "hav" above sounds like 'how" then it looks right to me.

I would add that there is a glottal stop between the "how" and the "n" syllables, meaning that the "havn" does not precisely rhyme with "town".