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I have been learning German at school for 5 years now and my teacher (not a native German speaker, she is a native English speaker.) has always pronounced 'langweilig' as 'lang-wei-lig' (pronouncing the 'g' at the end.) But today I was practising for my German speaking and my dad interrupted me and said it was pronounced 'lang-wei-lich.' I looked it up and that was indeed the correct way of pronouncing it from the dictionaries I looked at.

I was wondering, do some regions pronounce 'langweilig' like my teacher or is she pronouncing the word completely wrong?

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  • According to my children, it's more "laaaaaaaaaangweeeeeeeeeeeilch".... – Stephie Mar 4 '17 at 16:04
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In German Standard German it is:

[ˈlaŋva͡eliç]

(ending like the pronoun ich)

In Austrian Standard German and in Swiss Standard German there is another form:

[ˈlaŋva͡elik]

(ending in a k-sound, which is the hardened form of g, see Auslautverhärtung)

[ˈlaŋva͡eliç] is allowed everywhere where people speak German, but in the south of German sprachraum (i.e. in Switzerland, Austria and southern parts of Germany) the variation [ˈlaŋva͡elik] is more common.

You can listen to this variation here: http://www.adaba.at/

  1. Enter "langweilig" in "Orthographische Suche" and klick on the lense.
  2. In the list above appears all words, that contain "langweilig", will appear, witch in this case is only one word ("langweilig").
  3. Click on this word in the list

Now you can see the phonetic transcription, and you can listen to 6 professional speaker. From each country (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) you can choose between a male and a female speaker.

I know the voices from the Austrian speakers, they are professional TV-moderators, i.e. educated speakers.

The phenomenon, that you noticed in the word "langweilig" appears in all words, that end with -ig:

Honig macht den König selig.

In Germany you will hear -ich three times. In Austria and Switzerland you would rather hear three times -ik at the end of the words.

Note, that this only happens at the end of a word. In ...

Königin

... the pronunciation as "Könichin" would be wrong.

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  • +1. BUT, in addition, the more north you go, the more g is pronounced j within words. – Janka Mar 4 '17 at 12:56
  • @Janka: wirklich [ˈlaŋva͡elij]? [j] nach [i] halte ich für schwierig auszusprechen, weil [j] selbst schon ein Halbvokal ist. – Hubert Schölnast Mar 4 '17 at 13:23
  • Nein, ich meinte die Könijin. Beatriss, de Könjin vonne Niedalan|ne. – Janka Mar 4 '17 at 14:30
  • Das südliche Standarddeutsch hat allerdings keine Auslautverhärtung. Die Form ist also entweder [ˈlaŋvaɪ̯lɪç] (nördliche Aussprache) oder [ˈlaŋvaɪ̯lɪɡ] (südliche Aussprache). – mach Mar 4 '17 at 18:35
  • @mach: Ich gebe dir grundsätzlich recht, aber z.B. der männliche schweizerische Sprecher spricht ein deutliches [k] und kein [g]. Tatsächlich beobachte ich zumindest im Osten Österreichs, dass sehr viele Sprecher eine abgeschwächte Auslautverhärtung machen. Man hört also einen Laut, der irgendwo zwischen [g] und [k] liegt. – Hubert Schölnast Mar 4 '17 at 18:44

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