I love my wife’s accent. It’s cute — sort of ambiguously European — with a rare subtlety which likely stems from so much time spent in the United States and her years of being married to me; an American book nerd who experiences heart palpitations whenever someone misuses the homophones “there” and “their.”
But who doesn’t enjoy a good foreign accent? They sound cool and unique. More attractive, even. (Except for that God-awful Cockney English accent. Holy shit.) So I cherish what precious little remains of my wife’s German accent, and record it whenever she lets fly with a real zinger. Yes, her mispronunciations make me laugh out loud, but I do not mean to mock her; I truly enjoy the linguistic differences. (And this road goes both ways, I’ll have you know: My wife laughs her sweet ass off whenever I try to say “ice cubes” in German. The word is “Eiswürfel,” pronounced, “Ice-vuhr-fell,” but I can’t stop saying “Ice-TZWUHR-fell.” Makes her lose her shit every time.)
One remnant of my wife’s accent is still going strong, however, and that is her total disregard for the English <th> sound, as in “theater,” “weather” or “Thor, God of Thunder.” (And yes, I am a comic book dork, as well as a fantasy nerd and sci-fi geek. I loved the movie Prometheus. It rocked so hard I’ve been hassling my wife to watch it with me since 2012.) So it was with much glee that I wrote down my wife’s quote the other day, after she came home from a particularly arduous day at work and demanded immediate relaxation, saying:
“I want to watch a movie so hard. We could even watch a sci-fi. We could even watch your ‘Pro-mee-toys.’ “
If you would like to read another classic mispronunciation post, check this one out: My German Wife Gets Stuck in Traffic, Struggles Adorably to Pronounce the English Letter ‘J’
Oh God, My Wife Is German. 
My German husband is half British and has spent a fair bit of time in the U.S., so we have all kinds of fun with his accent, which, of course, I love. But the names thing – what MissConfig said. I’ve had to get used to him saying “Tsoysss” for Zeus, “TARE-mo-pühl” for the battle in “300” (we silly Americans say “Ther-MAH-poll-ee”, and “a-TAY-nah” for Athena. Sometimes I don’t recognize the person or place at first – like Xerxes = “Kzerkzes”. Egyptian names are fun, too. Ask your wife to pronounce King Tut’s full name, and then let her hear you say it in American. :-)
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OH yes, that should be fun.
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Yeah, ‘th’ is kinda tricky. I get it right most of the time, but sometimes the German in me does exactly that, yes… ;) I actually hate it when that happens, but native speakers keep saying it’s cute. ;)
By the way, the German word is “Eiswürfel” without the -n at the end, even in the plural. ;)
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