The late football emperor Franz Beckenbauer probably received more honorable obituaries than he scored goals. Even his art of language, which was colored by the old Giesingen milieu, was thoroughly appreciated. However, according to the Bund Bavarian Language language association, an interesting aspect of Beckenbauer’s linguistic cosmos remained unnoticed. It’s about a phenomenon that has persisted in some regions in Bavaria. In the course of language development, the Middle High German double vowel “iu” quickly became “ui”. That’s why older people in the Bavarian Forest and Werdenfelser Land say drui instead of three and nui instead of nei (new, Middle High German: niuwe). “This is ebbs Nuis,” they shout, or: “Franz hod a nuis car.” And the devil (Middle High German: tiuvel) becomes a duife.
Beckenbauer also used this UI variation. For example, when he spoke of “Nui York” instead of “Nju York”. However, the linguist Bernhard Stör restricts that this pronunciation has nothing to do with the idiom in Werdenfelser Land. The Giesingen elementary school students didn’t learn English back then, so they didn’t notice the letter “j” in the English word new and instead ignorantly said nui.
Conversely, when speaking, Beckenbauer got used to the word Spui, which was common in Giesing. Rather, he said spill (“good that the spill is over”). This was probably the fault of his manager Robert Schwan, who forced his protégé to use High German pronunciation that was intended to suppress the Giesinger idiom. The result didn’t always sound perfect.
A consequence of the compulsive sugarcoating could also be Beckenbauer’s famous phrase “go out and spuits Fuaßboi”. The directional adverb sounds a bit strange here, but correctly it should mean: going out or going out. In order to clarify whether Beckenbauer really said it or whether the journalists misrepresented the saying, one would need an original sound, which will hopefully be found in the archive.