Mostly from me being both unclear and unrigorous. I was assuming that as a native speaker of a Huguenot/Brandenburg French whose French is known to have influenced his German, FW, when trying to represent a word that may not have a fixed spelling and that he's probably heard more than he's seen, may have defaulted to a French spelling even when writing in German. In which case I don't know whether it's like English "ohhhh" or "how". However, I should have acknowledged that the possibility that he's consistently using German spelling (if he's writing a lot of 'au's in a German text, he may simply just keep doing that) is the obvious one, in which case you're most likely right: we have a Grumbkau and not a Grumbkoh.
Speaking of which, something that's been bugging me for a while if we ever meet in person is that my pronunication of most proper names in my head is either straight up English or is some kind of hybrid French+English or German+English, and some names I just haven't settled on a pronunciation for (Suhm being a noticeable one: English because I'm speaking English? German because he was German? French because he communicated with Fritz in French? Even "Diaphane" is a bit different in English and French. :P)
I'm quite sure there will be moments when you'll have no idea who I'm talking about, particularly if there's a 'th' or an umlauted vowel and I'm blithely plowing my way through the word as though it were English. (Like, after two semesters of German I know how German is pronounced, in theory. But then there's the part where 1) my mouth won't do all those things, 2) even when it will, I have to consciously stop and remember how it goes. (My wife and I, who talk about paleoanthropology a lot, are currently trying to switch from the traditional English pronunication "Neanderthal" to "Neandertal", and it's hard.)) So I'm incredibly self-conscious, and warning you ahead of time. ;)
Re: still catching up
Mostly from me being both unclear and unrigorous. I was assuming that as a native speaker of a Huguenot/Brandenburg French whose French is known to have influenced his German, FW, when trying to represent a word that may not have a fixed spelling and that he's probably heard more than he's seen, may have defaulted to a French spelling even when writing in German. In which case I don't know whether it's like English "ohhhh" or "how". However, I should have acknowledged that the possibility that he's consistently using German spelling (if he's writing a lot of 'au's in a German text, he may simply just keep doing that) is the obvious one, in which case you're most likely right: we have a Grumbkau and not a Grumbkoh.
Speaking of which, something that's been bugging me for a while if we ever meet in person is that my pronunication of most proper names in my head is either straight up English or is some kind of hybrid French+English or German+English, and some names I just haven't settled on a pronunciation for (Suhm being a noticeable one: English because I'm speaking English? German because he was German? French because he communicated with Fritz in French? Even "Diaphane" is a bit different in English and French. :P)
I'm quite sure there will be moments when you'll have no idea who I'm talking about, particularly if there's a 'th' or an umlauted vowel and I'm blithely plowing my way through the word as though it were English. (Like, after two semesters of German I know how German is pronounced, in theory. But then there's the part where 1) my mouth won't do all those things, 2) even when it will, I have to consciously stop and remember how it goes. (My wife and I, who talk about paleoanthropology a lot, are currently trying to switch from the traditional English pronunication "Neanderthal" to "Neandertal", and it's hard.)) So I'm incredibly self-conscious, and warning you ahead of time. ;)
Bleckwenn: https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/BV004108770