Hot answers tagged pronunciation
23
In standard German pronunciation, this happens when (and only when) st is the first part of a syllable.
Straße -- Stra·ße -- /ˈʃt/
verstehen -- ver·ste·hen -- /ˈʃt/
Kasten -- kas·ten -- /st/
bester -- bes·ter -- /st/
fast -- fast -- /st/
I'll add that there are a few loan words that can be pronounced without the SH sound, e.g. Star, ...
22
I am not aware of the correct pronunciation, but as far as I know, in the Southern Germany and in Austria they say 'Kina' (/k/).
The other German say it as it is: 'China' (ch as /ç/)
Some region (for example where I live), some people say 'Schina' (/ʃ/), but they also say 'isch' instead of 'ich' or 'Mädschen' instead of 'Mädchen'. That is, we pronounce the ...
16
One possibility would be:
Eins durch (die) fünfte Wurzel aus a plus c (zum) Quadrat.
And
Eins durch (die) dritte Wurzel aus p.
So in general, you would use:
Zähler durch Nenner
for fractions and
x-te Wurzel aus
for the root part.
So your second guess was quite right.
-tel is normally just used for very simple fractions like ⅓ (ein ...
15
The OP seems to have a good background in syllable structure, but I'll give some background in that for those who might not.
This phenomenon is known as final obstruent devoicing. An obstruent is a consonant made by constricting airflow. In German, the relevant ones are (in IPA):
stops (a.k.a. plosives): /b,p/ /d,t/ /g,k/
fricatives: /v,f/ /z,s/ /ʒ,ʃ/
...
12
Definitely we Germans pronounce those "Xs" as /ks/.
And I doubt, that I understand /se:nɔngas/ immediately.
But after a short time I would learn to understand your way to pronounce this character. Though I think it depends on your audience.
I don't think it would be a great handicap in technical business talk (compared to knowing the vocabulary you are ...
12
In all languages including German spelling evolved over time with no fixed rules on ortography or spelling. Nevertheless people tried to find letters for phonetically similar sounds. In the family of phonetically related letters for the modern 'F' we can find the following, also relevant for "father", and "Vater" which have a common Indo-European root with ...
12
Pommes Frites is of French/Belgian origin and therefore pronounced (almost) as in French, with the typical German errors in speaking French. Germans pronounce either /pɔm fʀɪts/ (this is more common) or /pɔm fʀɪt/ (which is the correct French pronounciation).
Regional short forms are Pommes (pronounced /pɔməs/) and Fritten (/fʀɪtn/). In the short form
...
12
"Rules" for pronunciations are merely descriptive not prescriptive.
The pronounciation depends on the whole word.
The numbers up until 20 were more often used than numbers greater than 20 when the German language developed. That's why the pronunciation of "vierzehn" could develop more independently from "vier" than for example "vierhundert". So, the word ...
11
There are regional differences.
In Austria and the southern areas of Germany, you will hear
Honig like "Honik"
König like "Könik"
When I took speech and drama lessons half a life time ago, it was pointed out that these words actually rhyme with "ich", so /ɪç/ is correct.
Honig is pronounced like "Honich"
König is pronounced like "Könich"
wenig is ...
11
/mɪlç/ is Standard German. The other one is most likely the result of the speaker having an accent. Some German dialects, e.g. Swabian (however obviously not in this case according to the comments :-) ), often pronounce ch as the IPA sound /ʃ/. And native speakers with that dialect often can't drop that habit even if they try to speak Standard German.
...
11
I think it's true, and I think it's unfortunate, and I think I am as guilty as most Germans of this: An accent somehow labels you, and different accents come with different labels.
Of course, which accent provokes which response is an individual matter (although there are probably statistically valid general tendencies) which depends on both the listener ...
10
Laut Wikipedia ist "ſ" eine typografische Variante von "s", hat also nur eine andere schriftliche Erscheinungsform, aber keine andere Aussprache.
Weiter unten im Artikel gibt es allerdings Hinweise, wie "ſ" manche Doppeldeutigkeiten in der Schriftform von Komposita (und damit einhergehend auch unterschiedliche Aussprachen gleich geschriebener Wörter) ...
10
Die deutsche Wikipedia meint u.a. folgendes zum s-Plural:
Heute gehört die s-Endung zum Standard
der deutschen Pluralbildung. Sie wird
immer verwendet, wenn keine andere
Möglichkeit vorhanden ist (unter
anderem, wenn man das Wort nicht durch
Analogie zu anderen Pluralformen
einordnen kann), zum Beispiel bei
Akronymen und vielen ...
10
Ich komme aus der Stadt Salzburg. Wir sagen im Dialekt meist
Soizbuag
Personen aus Salzburg heissen
Soizbuaga
das g wird gesprochen.
Vorsicht: Die Stadt Salzburg trägt den selben Namen wie das umgebende Bundesland Salzburg. Das kann zu Verwechslungen führen.
10
Essentially, the letter "y" itself is no vowel in the German Language. The letter that are vowels in German are:
a, ä, e, i, o, ö, u, ü WIKIPEDIA
(On Wikipedia there is also mentioned É == ee, as in "Varieté" .)
Moreover, they WIKI article says that the letter "y" can be accounted as a vowel, since its pronunciation is often like the German "ü". In ...
9
The IPA would be [ˈblɔk(ˌ)ɛlʲtəstə]. Primary stress on the first syllable, with the second syllable optionally taking secondary stress.
In fact, as a general rule, in compounds it is the first element (or root) that gets the primary stress. See for yourself: Autobahn, Wohnungstür, Herbstwetter, Kontrollflußgraph, etc. More notable ...
9
The /r/ is pronounced differently by different speakers. The three most common pronunciatons for /r/ in German today are (ordered by frequency of occurrence):
voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] (splattne's sample)
uvular trill [R]
alveolar trill [r]
There are other, rare and locally limited pronunciations, among them a retroflex approximant [ɻ] similar to the ...
8
Ohne es zu wissen oder eine Regel zu kennen, kann ich mir die Herkunft als entscheidenden Faktor für die Aussprache vorstellen.
Miete kommt direkt aus dem Deutschen (mittelhochdeutsch).
Karriere kommt vom französischen carrière, mit minimal eingedeutschter Aussprache
Familie kommt vom lateinischen familia, wo die Endung bereits aus zwei Lauten ...
8
Dadurch dass das runde s nur am Auslaut vorkommt, gilt natürlich die Auslautverhärtung, weswegen man es gewöhnlich nicht als /z/ sprechen konnte sondern immer nur /s/. Genauso wenig ist (standardsprachlich) die Aussprache als /ʃ/ möglich, da Kombinationen /ʃt/ und /ʃp/ nicht über Wortgrenzen (u. Ä.) gesprochen werden.
Für das lange s lässt sich eine ...
8
There are two different pronunciations for "ch" in standard German.
/χ/ (as in Bach, wach, lachen)
/ç/ (as in ich, Mädchen)
Your question is about the pronunciation variations of /ç/. While there is just one standard pronunciation, in some dialects, though, the sound is differently spoken. In some regions the "ch" in words like ich, Mädchen, ... is ...
8
Historically, the German language underwent two major sound shifts (Grimm's law and High German consonant shift, a.k.a. "Erste Lautverschiebung" / "Zweite Lautverschiebung"). However, neither sound shift encompassed the whole "Sprachraum" (language area), effectively dividing German accents into three major areas, depending on which of the sound shifts ...
8
As it would be more logical to pronounce this compound loanword from Greek stressed on the first syllable of "meter" this is not the case in standard German where the second syllable will be emphasized:
paˈʀaːmetɐ (IPA) - Parameter
Listen also to this sound file found on Wiktionary: Parameter
The following dictionaries list it emphasized on the ...
8
Did you read the Wikipedia article yet? The newsreaders you hear on Deutsche Welle all speak standard German or at least they are supposed to. As a learner of German residing abroad, you should aim for "standard German" pronunciation. Most movies made in Germany have their actors speak standard German except when dialect is indicated by the script. Your ...
8
This is a very good question. I can only state assumptions. I think it evolved as a quirk because it's easier to pronounce. For example, the word 'fünfzehn' (15) is sometimes pronounced 'fuffzehn', and the word 'zwanzig' (20) is sometimes pronounced 'zwanzich' (very common in northern Germany).
Try to slowly pronounce the word 'vier' with a long 'i' and ...
8
It's from Latin,
servus
meaning slave, servant.
So when someone greets you,
Servus!
it meant originally "[I am your] servant" but it is nowadays only a friendly greeting, like "Hi!" in English.
Think of old-fashioned sign-offs in English letter-writing:
Your obdt. & humble servant
You will hear "Servus!" much more often in southern ...
7
This is a form of a phenomenon called hypercorrection.
The problem is that the sound [w] does not exist in German and indeed there are many German speaking people who are unable or unaware to pronounce this sound and use [v] instead. This is what makes the traditional German accent. (Mainly spoken by people who learned English rather late or only know some ...
7
Ich bin aus Österreich (geboren in Graz, lebe seit 15 Jahren in Wien) und habe bisher noch keine regionalen Unterschiede bei der Sprechgeschwindigkeit bemerkt. Sehr wohl gibt es aber individuelle Unterschiede. Beispielsweise war der ehemalige österreichische Bundeskanzler Bruno Kreisky ein extremer Langsamsprecher. Nachrichtensprecher im Radio sprechen ...
7
A vowel is really primarily a type of sound rather than a letter. But the letters used to represent vowels can also be referred to as vowels (Vokalbuchstaben in German). In both English and German, Y sometimes represents a vowel and sometimes a consonant.
It looks like Y was originally introduced into the Roman alphabet solely for the purpose of ...
7
For both 't' and 'l' the tip of the tongue is in the same spot (on the speaker's alveolar ridge, to be precise).
When 't' is followed by 'l', German speakers leave the tip of the tongue in that place, merely narrowing their tongue to go from one sound to the other. Thus, the release of the plosive 't' is very close to that of 'k' in this case.
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