Q for those who know german.

[Darrell]

Yes, but with the middle "r" silent.
Or like the "o" sound in colonel, depends on who says it.

I thought it had a little bit of an "r" in it, perhaps you'd say it's aspirated? Sort of between "luhser" and "lurhser".

[Cobar]

You have to be careful with the translation because in Bavaria in 1838 they most likely would have been speaking one the Bavarian dialects and not standard Hochdeutsch.

I had not even thought of dialects. Family lore says it had something to do with banking.

Looks like it is still pretty different today LINK

[Vonz90]

You have to be careful with the translation because in Bavaria in 1838 they most likely would have been speaking one the Bavarian dialects and not standard Hochdeutsch.

I had not even thought of dialects. Family lore says it had something to do with banking.

Looks like it is still pretty different today LINK

This comes up with my last name, which is often thought to mean one thing (which actually sounds sort of silly) in Hochdeutsch, but being originally an old Saxon name it actually means something completely different.

These guys might be able to point you in the right direction.

https://stlgs.org/about-us-2/sigs-and-s ... st-group-2

[Erik]

Yes, but with the middle "r" silent.
Or like the "o" sound in colonel, depends on who says it.

I thought it had a little bit of an "r" in it, perhaps you'd say it's aspirated? Sort of between "luhser" and "lurhser".

No, there's no r-sound in it, it's a vowel. Though there might be some dialects where you might think you hear it, but it's not there.
If anything, in German it's pronounced very clearly as it's own vowel character, since it's not as common in German as it is in Swedish. Swedish tend to use it a bit more casually, and pronounciation differ a bit, while in German the character is emphasized a bit more when it is used. At least I get that impression when speaking or listening to German.

I don't know for sure about Germany, but generally speaking in Scandinavia, dialects rarely show up in written language. This is true even back in the 1700s or 1800s, when the local dialects were much stronger. Regardless of how you spoke, the written language was always the same.

The exception to that is of course names and places. Local words are often used for local places, and someone could have been referred to with a local name, and then took it as a real name. Occupational names (Smith, Shoemaker, etc) wasn't used much in Scandinavia, but I guess they were in Germany.

[Vonz90]

Yes, but with the middle "r" silent.
Or like the "o" sound in colonel, depends on who says it.

I thought it had a little bit of an "r" in it, perhaps you'd say it's aspirated? Sort of between "luhser" and "lurhser".

No, there's no r-sound in it, it's a vowel. Though there might be some dialects where you might think you hear it, but it's not there.
If anything, in German it's pronounced very clearly as it's own vowel character, since it's not as common in German as it is in Swedish. Swedish tend to use it a bit more casually, and pronounciation differ a bit, while in German the character is emphasized a bit more when it is used. At least I get that impression when speaking or listening to German.

I don't know for sure about Germany, but generally speaking in Scandinavia, dialects rarely show up in written language. This is true even back in the 1700s or 1800s, when the local dialects were much stronger. Regardless of how you spoke, the written language was always the same.

The exception to that is of course names and places. Local words are often used for local places, and someone could have been referred to with a local name, and then took it as a real name. Occupational names (Smith, Shoemaker, etc) wasn't used much in Scandinavia, but I guess they were in Germany.

Low German is basically a different language than High German and that includes in writing.