Eastern Promises

Suzuki Bandit

Suzuki GSF1200N Bandit MkI

BMW R 1200 GS

Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen): Nice bike. Ural. Do not see them anymore. Anna (Naomi Watts): It was my dad's. Nikolai: How much do you want for it? Anna: It has sentimental value. Nikolai: Ah. Sentimental value, I've heard of that. From a later scene: Nikolai: Postmen used these in my village when I was a boy. Russian copy, BMW flat-twin. Same. (Note: the subtitles on my DVD said "BMW", although it sounds like Mortensen (playing a Russian) is saying "BMV". I don't know the Russian alphabet or how they pronounce certain letters) There is no info on the DVLA database for registration HGM347. It is "double-u" in English, I suppose? As I think that Germans pronounce it "V", it could be considered as the "right" pronunciation (to be confirmed, though). French people sometimes also say "V", but more generally "double-v" (as in French this letter is a double V rather than a double U ) In French-speaking Belgium the "W" is pronounced like "way" (same for Dutch-speaking I think, so in Netherlands too I guess) In Spain it happens the same, that letter for us is a "uve doble" (double v), but when we pronounce the car brand BMW we say BMV, i dont know why... but it is apparently a thing from just Spain, because once i was talking with a person from Latin America and he said it correctly (BMW), and not BMV like in Spain, and although the correct thing is to say it BMW whenever you happen to hear someone saying it correctly it sounds weird, that's what happened to me when i talked to this guy Yes, we say BMW as "Bee-Em-Double-Yoo" (some Yanks say "dubya"!). Or "Beemer". Funny, I always thought a local BMW shop was pronouncing it wrong on their commercials as "Bimmer" http://www.bimmersrus.com/ but I guess according to this they are right http://www.bmwccbc.org/misc/tech-and-trivia/bimmer.html When my dad used to have a BMW (years ago) he often referred to it as the "BM" (probably just to save time). Indeed "BM" is often used in French too... I don't think people in Britain say "Beemer" very much, I think that's more of an American thing. There's also jokes about what BMW stands for, some of them are a bit racist. Anyway, this bike is it really a Ural? Or something else?

Yes Just a non-conforming copy of a BMW. And this Ural must be around fifteen years old at the most ... What did he say? In France it is written "Béhème" The correct pronunciation is [ˌbeːɛmˈveː] which sounds like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/BMW.ogg and in long: Link to "upload.wikimedia.org" ... very enthusiastically spoken ... So is V and W pronounced the same? What about VW then? In Belgium it is vay-way [vewe], is it "vay-vay" in German? "Yes... just a non-conform copy of a BMW. And this Ural must be about fifteen years old at most"

VW is pronounced like "Faw-Vay" in German I even knew it, why did I forgot that? So if it's less than 15 years old, shouldn't it have the current Russian flag (instead of the USSR one)?

Sure, but the "automatic flag system" cannot guess which one to take Ural gets USSR because we have more old Ural than new ones.