# Merc, Mercedes (in colloquial speech)



## Encolpius

Good morning ladies & gentlemen, it is my favourite car and inspired by this thread I am wondering what colloquial / slang word you have for that beautiful car in different languages. Thanks. Enco.

*Hungarian*: merci
*British English *: Merc
*Czech*: Medvěď, Méďa, Meďák ("bear")
*Russian*: мерин, мерендос


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## Frank78

German: "Benz" or "Daimler"


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## alfaalfa

Ciao,
in Italian no slang word: mercedes  /mer'tʃɛdes/


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## apmoy70

In Greek the brand is *«Μερσεντές»* [me̞r.s̠e̞n.ˈde̞s̠] (fem.).
In slang it's (1) *«Μερκέντι»* [me̞r.ˈce̞n.di] (neut), (2) *«Μερτσέντα»* [me̞r.ˈt̠͡s̠e̞n.da] (fem.), and (3) *«Μερσεντέ»* [me̞r.s̠e̞n.ˈde̞ː] (fem.).
(1) is the most common one, (2) is rarer, (3) is what older, working class men mostly, call it


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## Dymn

No colloquial name in Spain that I know of.

Spanish pronunciation: /meɾˈθeð̞es/
Catalan: /mərˈsɛð̞əs/ (Catalanized) or /meɾˈθeð̞es/ or anything between


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## Dymn

apmoy70 said:


> In Greek the brand is *«Μερσεντές»* [me̞r.s̠e̞n.ˈde̞s̠] (fem.).


Why /nd/? I though ντ was just an orthographic artifact to pronounce /d/ instead of /ð/.


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## Awwal12

Encolpius said:


> *Russian*: мерин, мерендос


Never heard of the latter, to be frank (sounds like something from "New Russian" slang of the 1990s). Normally I'd expect мерин (mérin, lit. gelding) or just мерс (mers).


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## Encolpius

Frank78 said:


> German: "Benz" or "Daimler"


Extremely interesting. Maybe something with -i in Switzerland or Austria, no?


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## apmoy70

Dymn said:


> Why /nd/? I though ντ was just an orthographic artifact to pronounce /d/ instead of /ð/.


It's never a /d/ in the middle of a word, always a /nd/. It's pronounced a /d/ only at the beginning of a word:
*«Ντύνομαι»* - - > _to get dressed_ is [ˈdi.no̞.me̞] but *«αντίσταση»* - - > _resistance _ is [an.ˈdi.s̠t̠a.s̠i]


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## AutumnOwl

Swedish: Merca (pronouiation ²mæʂa).
Finnish: Mersu.


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## alfaalfa

To be honest, I can't remember slang words for any car brand.
It only comes in my mind a quote from the movie "The Blues brothers":
"This stupid car. Where's the Cadillac? The Caddy. Where's the Caddy?" In the Italian dubbing, "the Caddy" turned into "la Cadi". Anyway, no one would say "la Cadi" unless you want to imitate John Belushi


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## Encolpius

Maybe the structure of Romance languages is the reason why you cannot form new slang words with suffixes. There are plenty of suffixes in Slavic languages (fewer in Hungarian) so they make use of it frequently.


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## סייבר־שד

apmoy70 said:


> It's never a /d/ in the middle of a word, always a /nd/. It's pronounced a /d/ only at the beginning of a word:
> *«Ντύνομαι»* - - > _to get dressed_ is [ˈdi.no̞.me̞] but *«αντίσταση»* - - > _resistance _ is [an.ˈdi.s̠t̠a.s̠i]


Then I take it that something like *άντε *is just an exception, right? Or as in this clip: Μερέντα , where Marilena at about 6:04 clearly pronounces *Μερέντα *as [meˈɾeda] ...though according to the Wiktionary it should actually be [meˈɾenda].


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## apmoy70

סייבר־שד said:


> Then I take it that something like *άντε *is just an exception, right? Or as in this clip, where Marilena at about 6:04 clearly pronounces *Μερέντα *as [meˈɾeda] ...though according to the Wiktionary it should actually be [meˈɾenda].


Don't be confused, languages are prone to changes, and usually the change starts from the young people. There's this tendency as of late, of the young people pronouncing the clusters -ντ- and -μπ- as the stops /d/ and /b/ respectively, and avoid the nasal completely. The standard pronunciation however, stubbornly remains /nd/ and /mb/. I have no problem embracinɡ it. What I find crinɡeworthy, is the pronunciation of the ɡeminate -γγ- as a straiɡht /ɣ/ (as it's unfortunately the case lately with the interjection _pardon_: «συγγνώμη», which has become instead of the standard /siŋˈɣnomi/ the abomination /siˈɣnomi/ 🥶)


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## סייבר־שד

apmoy70 said:


> Don't be confused, languages are prone to changes, and usually the change starts from the young people. There's this tendency as of late, of the young people pronouncing the clusters -ντ- and -μπ- as the stops /d/ and /b/ respectively, and avoid the nasal completely. The standard pronunciation however, stubbornly remains /nd/ and /mb/. I have no problem embracinɡ it. What I find crinɡeworthy, is the pronunciation of the ɡeminate -γγ- as a straiɡht /ɣ/ (as it's unfortunately the case lately with the interjection _pardon_: «συγγνώμη», which has become instead of the standard /siŋˈɣnomi/ the abomination /siˈɣnomi/ 🥶)


Thank you for the explanation! I edited my previous post to add the link to the video I mentioned.


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## elroy

I've never heard a short form in Palestinian Arabic, but Volkswagen is shortened to ڤولز /volz/.


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## symposium

Encolpius said:


> Maybe the structure of Romance languages is the reason why you cannot form new slang words with suffixes. There are plenty of suffixes in Slavic languages (fewer in Hungarian) so they make use of it frequently.


There's plenty of suffixes in Romance languages! In Italian Cadillac can become cadillacchina, cadillaccuccia, cadillacchetta (diminutives and endearings), cadillaccaccia (pejorative), cadillaccotta (pejorative but endearing) and you can combine those, like: cadillaccucciotta, cadillacchinaccia etc. We can easily make words longer, but we don't really have a thing for making words shorter and we just don't have nicknames for car brands. We love very long words.


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## Encolpius

I dare to stay compared with Slavic languages your number of suffixes is still low.


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## symposium

It's not a contest, but I dare you to prove me wrong! Cadillacchinottucciarellinacciottellacinettacciona

There, I've combined a few suffixes, it is a comprehensible (albeit silly) word, try and add more Slavic suffixes to Cadillac! 
I'm kidding, though, I don't want to start a linguistic war!


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## Awwal12

Encolpius said:


> I dare to stay compared with Slavic languages your number of suffixes is still low.


It doesn't really seem to have much to do with suffixes, at least directly.
From the two Russian shortenings, мерс and мерин, neither contains any suffixes whatsoever: one is a simple truncation and another is a replacement with a similar shorter word (with a suitable meaning as a bonus).
Мерендос (мериндос?) also looks like a mere distortion of меринос (merinós "the Merino", from Sp. los merinos), but again, I never heard it before.


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## apmoy70

I just found out that a BMW car is a *«μπέμπα»* [ˈbe̞.ba] (fem.) - - > _baby-girl_


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## סייבר־שד

You know, it's funny, I was about to say that in Mexican Spanish we would only ever call it a *Mercedes*, but after racking my brains for a while, I seem to remember, in a rather vague way, admittedly, an old friend of mine from junior high school calling such a car a *Meche*, which, as you may know, is a popular shortened form in Spanish used to refer to women named Mercedes.


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## Roxxxannne

Merc in the US is? (certainly was) short for Mercury, not Mercedes.
For other cars:
Beemer for BMW
Hummer for Humvee
VW (Vee Double U) for Volkswagen
Chevy for Chevrolet


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## Frank78

Roxxxannne said:


> VW (Vee Double U) for Volkswagen



That's the official abbreviation.



Roxxxannne said:


> Hummer for Humvee



A Humvee is always the original military vehicle. The civilian H1,H2 and H3 are Hummers.


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## AutumnOwl

Swedish:
Volkswagen - Folka (folk - Volk = people)
Citroën - Cittra


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## Roxxxannne

Frank78 said:


> That's the official abbreviation.
> 
> 
> 
> A Humvee is always the original military vehicle. The civilian H1,H2 and H3 are Hummers.


Well that goes to show how much I know about car nicknames...


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## DearPrudence

In French: une Merco \mɛʁ.ko\


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