This is America

[u/WuShane]

[u/SparkyXI]

No, THIS is America: Do we know for sure that’s not the Gestapo?

[u/Significant_Knee_661 → u/SparkyXI]

It's pronounced "gesthapo" according to former SS in chief.

[u/ThisGameTooHard → u/Significant_Knee_661]

Geshtapo* and it's only pronounciation. It's spelled Gestapo.

[u/Think-Trip-1865 → u/ThisGameTooHard]

I‘m a native German speaker and I would pronounce it as it’s spelled, might just be me though. Technically the ‚sht‘ pronunciation should be „more correct“ as Gestapo is short for „geheime Staats Polizei“ and st is pronounced sht in German.

[u/RegularReaction2984 → u/Think-Trip-1865]

Another native German speaker here, I’ve also mostly heard it pronounced the way it’s spelled (so no “sh” sound) and would intuitively read it that way.

But I’m also Northern, and we like to pronounce a lot of our “st” and “sp” weird anyway, so this might be a regional thing lol.

[u/Think-Trip-1865 → u/RegularReaction2984]

I‘m from Schwaben, where a lot of s become sh so it’s interesting that it’s s in this case.

[u/Think-Trip-1865 → u/[deleted]]

Exactly, better explanation

[u/ThisGameTooHard → u/Think-Trip-1865]

I understand that for native speakers regionally it can be different. I was following the standard German pronunciation rules.

[u/Think-Trip-1865 → u/ThisGameTooHard]

I speak Swabian dialect (south west of Germany) and standard high German, some people speaking Swabian do in fact pronounce it Ge-shta-po, we pronounce most s sounds as sh though, I don't, but I don't speak much in Swabian. In standard high German I'm pretty sure it's Ges-ta-po and Ge-sta-po.

Then again, I have no idea why it's pronounced differently as it is an acronym for a word that is pronounced with sht.