Grumbkow: how does French get into it? The 1722 will is written in Rokoko German. If FW spells it "Grumkau", this to me suggests this is how he pronounced it. To clarify, if I myself see a "-ow" ending, I would pronounce it with an a long ohhhhh in German. "kau" otoh is pronounced in German with the vocal the way English speakers pronounce "how?" Conclusion: the man himself was adressed with the "au" (German)/"ow" (English) sound by his contemporaries.
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. ;)
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Re: still catching up
Grumbkow: how does French get into it? The 1722 will is written in Rokoko German. If FW spells it "Grumkau", this to me suggests this is how he pronounced it. To clarify, if I myself see a "-ow" ending, I would pronounce it with an a long ohhhhh in German. "kau" otoh is pronounced in German with the vocal the way English speakers pronounce "how?" Conclusion: the man himself was adressed with the "au" (German)/"ow" (English) sound by his contemporaries.
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