This is an old e-mail discussion I had with Amritas about the translation of the title of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix into German. The following is a letter I sent to a German friend living in Austria.
There's some dispute with some people I'm talking to about the German Genitive form of the English word "Phoenix".
LEO/Canoo lists it as having a "-es or -s" ending which is fair enough, except the German translation of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" into German is Harry Potter und der Orden des Phönix (no ending on the genitive-declined "Phönix").
He responds:
To answer your tricky question: I would say
- ".. des Phönix" sounds much better than ".. des Phönixes" or even ".. des Phönixs". I claim the latter is wrong, phonetically. The language reference, der Duden, is saying "des Phönixes"
- You could also argue that the full sentence would look like ".. des Vogels Phönix" where 'Vogel' has been dismissed
- As always there are some variations you can choose from as the internet proves:-)
Neil (an English speaker who knows German) adds:
Definitely some web ponderings on this from [here]:
Allgemein gilt es ja jetzt als beschlossen, dass der Titel des 5. Bandes : Harry Potter and the Order of the Phönix heißen soll. Der deutsche Titel würde dann ungefähr so lauten: Harry Potter und der Orden des Phönixes.
[Also] this one is interesting as they don't mention the title being wrong but they do correctly use the genitive for the phrase "Eines Nachts wird Harry von den Mitgliedern des Ordens des Phönixes abgeholt".
Amritas chimes in:
My guess was that the aberrant behavior of the word is OK because it's a loanword and the phonetic sequence [kses] might sound awful (cf. what Marcel said, which confirmed that suspicion of mine).