Written by Dyami Millarson

A few quick Google searches made it utterly clear to me that no one on the internet so far has addressed this question of how Goesharde, given its unusual German spelling with ,,oe”, ought to be pronounced, whether in German or English. Goesharde is a historical German placename that occurs in the following Frisian language names: Northern Goesharde Frisian, Central Goesharde Frisian, Southern Goesharde Frisian (all of these are North Frisian endangered languages that I wrote about here, here and here). That is how Goesharde has entered the English language. Goesharde may be pronounced as Gōsharde [ˈgoːsˌɦaɐ̯.də] or Gösharde [ˈgœːsˌɦaɐ̯.də] in German. The British English approximate pronunciations may be [ˈgəʊsˌhɑː.də] and [ˈgɜːsˌhɑː.də] respectively. In the latter case, it is the same as how the German loanwords foehn and loess are pronounced in British English: with the [ɜː]-sound as heard in fur.

Etymology may help to understand the pronunciation of oe. Goesharde corresponds to Gooshiird in Frisian, therefore oe corresponds to oo according to the Frisian phonology. However, Goesharde corresponds to Gøs Herreder in Danish, so oe corresponds to ø.

When the spelling with oe is found in historical and modern texts, it doesn’t reveal the underlying pronuncuation, but spelling variations may help to do so. See a list of spelling variations below.