For many of us, our window to the world of guns is books, magazines, and the internet. Unfortunately, when you see a word or a name that you aren’t familiar with, you tend to do what you learned to do in school, sound it out in your head. This has lead to a plethora of often mispronounced words and names in the firearms community, and it makes us all look like rubes.

My personal opinion on pronunciation is that in order to not look like a jackass, you should be sticking with the pronunciation that is local to where you are.  Asking to see the “Heckler and Coke USP” at a most gun shops in the US is likely to get you into an argument about how it’s “KOTCH” or “KAAATCH” not Coke.  In the end you will likely walk away frustrated and embarrassed.

Head over to thefirearmblog for the rest of the article, and audio of some German guys pronouncing the words – HERE