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The Ferengi in Star Trek typically pronounce the word 'human' as 'hew-mon', at least in the original English audio. I know that international markets have Star Trek episodes with dubbed audio, e.g. in Germany, but I've never watched any of those episodes.

I'm curious whether this 'strange' pronunciation of the word human has counterparts in other languages, and if so, what are they?

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  • Amusingly Barry B. Longyear used "hue-mun" as an alien pronunciation in "Homecoming" more than a decade earlier than DS9.
    – DavidW
    Feb 11, 2021 at 19:45

1 Answer 1

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On Netflix, I looked at a scene in the episode "Little Green Men" (around 20:20) with the audio and subtitles set to different languages :

  • The three of us and millions of primitive hu-mans. (x)
  • Wir drei und Millionen primitive Menschen.
  • Noi tre e milioni di umani primitivi.
  • Trois Ferengis et des millions d'humains primitifs.

(x) English version : subtitles as stated, pronounciation the classical hew-mon

German version : definitely regular pronounciation of "Menschen"

Italian and French : pronounciation of umani/humains sounds pretty normal to me

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  • That's a smart way to get access to the dubbed audio! Thanks. I'll wait a little while to see if anyone comes up with an additional language, otherwise I'll accept this answer
    – dennis_vok
    Feb 10, 2021 at 8:21

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