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The graphemes <e> and <ä> share only the phoneme /ε/. In practice, do people make and notice the difference of the rest of the phonemes? Which problems, if any, would not bothering to make such difference lead to?

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    Man sollte die Menschen nicht mit ihren Engsten alleine lassen.
    – tofro
    Nov 21, 2017 at 7:28
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    E and ä are not phonemes.
    – David Vogt
    Jul 31, 2020 at 8:17
  • @DavidVogt What are they? Isn't it true at least that there exist phonemes that are represented by e and ä?
    – c.p.
    Jul 31, 2020 at 18:36
  • @c.p. Well, they're letters (or graphemes). In this case, the distinction between grapheme and phoneme is relevant in so far as <e> (angle brackets indicating a grapheme) stands for /e/, /ε/ and /ə/ while <ä> stands for /ε/ and /εː/. But your question seems to be about /e/ and /ε:/.
    – David Vogt
    Jul 31, 2020 at 19:05

6 Answers 6

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In standard pronunciation, short "ä" is [ɛ] and short "e" is [ə], [ɛ], or [e], where the last one occurs in foreign words ("Methode" [meˈtoːdə]) but rarely in native ones ("lebendig" [leˈbɛndɪç]). That means that most of the time, there is no audible difference between short "ä" and "e". For instance, the vowels in "nässer" and "besser" are the same, namely [ɛ].

Long "ä" is [ɛː], long "e" is usually [eː], so the long vowels are clearly distinguished.

Dialects often differ. Many North Germans, for instance, will consistently replace [ɛː] by [eː], and if I remember correctly, there are South German dialects that make a difference between short "ä" and "e".

For non-native speakers: Replacing short [e] by [ɛ] is unproblematic. Short [e] is rare, there is no risk of semantic ambiguities, and many people will simply not notice it. Replacing long [ɛː] by [eː] or vice versa can lead to semantic ambiguities ("ich sehe/ich sähe"). It will be noticed and it is considered as non-standard, but it is also common among native speakers, so I think that you will be understood.

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    Would it be possible to give a recipe to correctly pronounce [ɛ]? I mean, to pronounce "ö" I was told to open the mouth as if I wanted to say "o" but then pronounce an [e]. Same for "ü" ([y]): mouth as for saying "u" but then say [ɪ]. With some practice this works. But I got no rule for "ä" so it just sounds as [e] when I say it.
    – c.p.
    May 18, 2013 at 16:09
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    [ɛ] is the first vowel of the diphthong in English "bear" and the vowel of French "être" or Italian "è". Does that help? Try to find a mouth position in the middle between [e] and [a].
    – Uwe
    May 18, 2013 at 16:23
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    Since this is about standard pronunciation, it should be noted that [leˈbɛndɪk] is nonstandard; the standard pronunciation is [leˈbɛndɪç].
    – chirlu
    Oct 21, 2015 at 2:20
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    As a Swiss, I disagree that nässer and besser sound the same. The ä sounds different from the following short e in nässer as well. And I would pronounce both e in lebendig the same. Oct 21, 2015 at 13:51
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    @RalphM.Rickenbach That's why I said "dialects often differ".
    – Uwe
    Oct 21, 2015 at 14:15
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The distinction is trained, not natural.

As a professional linguist, I can tell you that [ɛ] (both long and short) is a highly controversial vowel and the careful distinction between [e] and [ɛ] in modern often stems from the phenomenon called HYPERCORRECTION, i.e. people simply assume that because ä and e occupy different letters of the alphabet, they must have two distinct phonetic values. This is far from correct.

Similar to English, German works with a tense (long) and lax (short, more relaxed) contrast. Vowels have a long and short version, where the short one is usually pronounced slighty more "open" and "relaxed" (or centralised, to use a phonetic term). "Käse" has a long vowel and hence is pronounced [ke:zə], nett is short, therefore [nɛt]. That´s really it. 100% of Germans who pronounce Käse as [kɛ:zə] do this due to hypercorretion. With other words, the context of the sounds usually "colours" the ä or e, i.e. the e in "Bären" sounds slightly different than the e in "Käse" due to the following r.

Finally, the German pronounciation of the e and ä highly depends on the regional variety of the speaker (there is no one "correct" variety).

One very final thing: DUDEN is by no means always correct, and the folks who write it are by no means the most competent / knowledgable linguists in Germany.

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    Welcome to GermanSE, and thank you for your answer. Since the statements in your second paragraph are debatable, could you please provide a source?
    – Philipp
    Nov 21, 2017 at 7:24
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    Ende Abs. 2, "e in Bären", "e in Käse" - soll das nicht jeweils ä sein? Nov 21, 2017 at 15:57
  • I think the reason why Bären sounds different from Käse is because people try to avoid ambiguity between Bären and Beeren.
    – arved
    Dec 22, 2020 at 15:09
  • +1 for a profound answer. I can't, but I would like to give another +1 for mentioning that Duden is not always correct. In fact, some online resources like Wiktionary or DWDS are often more trustworthy than Duden. Dec 23, 2020 at 8:57
8

Phonologie ist eine Vereinfachung; die Wirklichkeit ist komplexer. Nehmen wir mal das Wort "Käse". Wo ich herkomme (Lüneburger Heide), spricht man den Langvokal in Käse genau wie in leben, nehmen oder Klee. Im Westen und Süden wird aber ein Unterschied gemacht.

Wer Deutsch als Fremdsprache lernt, kann sich eine Variante aussuchen. Egal welche.

Wichtig zu wissen ist, daß sogenanntes Hochdeutsch, welches als Fremdsprache gelehrt wird, eine künstliche Sprache ist. Natürlich sind nur die deutschen Mundarten. Deswegen sind alle dialektalen Färbungen und Abweichungen immer und ausnahmslos historisch richtig, während sogenanntes Hochdeutsch immer nur eine künstliche Buchrichtigkeit besitzt.

Die eine phonetisch definierte korrekte Aussprache gibt es daher nicht. In der Praxis machen die zahlreichen Varianten keinerlei Probleme. Außer in einer Phonetik Klausur an der Uni, wo mir mal für meine angeblich falsche Transkription von Käse ein Punkt abgezogen wurde. :)

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In der Debatte über die Ähnlichkeit von Ä und E in der Aussprache darf ein populäres Beispiel nicht fehlen: Der Unterschied zwischen Lerche und Lärche. Die eine sitzt auf der anderen, das Tier auf der Pflanze.

  • Engste != Ängste
  • Äcker != Ecker (landwirtsch. Nutzfläche, Früchte der Buche)
  • Bällen != Bellen
  • überfällt != überfellt (Er überfällt eine Bank, sie überfellt ihren Sessel)
  • Hengst != hängst (am Satzanfang auch letzteres großgeschrieben)
  • Eugen != äugen (Vorname/luken)

Da sich doch einige Beispiele finden habe ich zwei Skripte gegen ein Wöterbuch laufen lassen (utf-german):

for wort in $(grep "Ä" utf-german); do mitE=${wort//Ä/E}; egrep -iq "^${mitE}$" utf-german  && echo $wort" "$mitE; done 
  • Bällen Bellen (Hunde auf Bällen sollten nicht bellen)
  • Märkte merkte (Sie merkte, dass die Märkte anzogen)
  • Wälle Welle (Gegen des Meeres Welle errichten wir irdene Wälle)
  • Ähre Ehre (Des Bauers Ehre ist seine Ähre)
  • Ängsten Engsten (Stell Dich mit Deinen Engsten Deinen Ängsten!)
  • Äthanol Ethanol (nur unterschiedliche Schreibweisen für das Äquivalente)

Beispiele in Klammern von mir zugefügt.

Mit einer Suche nach kleinem ä ufert die Suche aus.

Manchmal ist die Aussprache ähnlich (Bällen, bellen), manchmal sehr unterschiedlich (sähen, sehen), oft sind die Worttypen so unterschiedlich, oder die Bedeutungen so fern voneinander (rächen, rechen), dass eine Verwechslung beim Hören ausgeschlossen ist.

Auch populär und Basis mancher Kalauer: Gewähr, Gewehr

Auch

  • Weinschänke, Weinschenke

wird mir ausgespuckt, aber letzteres halte ich nur für einen Missgriff der jüngsten Rechtschreibreform, die Weinschänke von ausschenken abgeleitet sieht, nicht von der Schankstube die nicht zur Schenkstube mutiert ist.

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  • Du irrst dich. Vor 1996 war ausschließlich Schenke korrekt. Jetzt sind es beide Formen. Ich meine, dazwischen wäre einmal ausschließlich Schänke korrekt gewesen, aber das hat sich ja ständig geändert. Die Rechtschreibreform hat sowieso einige ä/e ver-»etymologisiert«; Wechte, aufwändig, einbläuen, Quäntchen, … bei denen der Vokal wohl stets kurz war (sont hätte sich das nicht gelohnt, es wäre ja anders ausgesprochen worden).
    – Jan
    Oct 25, 2015 at 1:17
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    Ich vermute, dass das Nomen „Schank“ von „schenken“ abgeleitet ist, nicht andersherum, so wie bei „aufwenden“ und „Aufwand“: Das Nomen ist das Ergebnis einer Handlung.
    – Philipp
    Nov 21, 2017 at 7:20
-2

According to Wikipedia:

"It is debated whether [ɛː] is a distinct phoneme or even exists."

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    Not a good answer: The question is about the pronunciation in practice, not about the theoretical phoneme status. (Not a good section in the Wikipedia article either; I had to throw in some “[not in citation given]” tags, though not for the particular sentence you quote. It also seems the author of that passage had trouble understanding the difference between the current status of the phoneme system and how it came up centuries ago.)
    – chirlu
    Oct 21, 2015 at 2:15
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As a trainer for Judo, I am confronted with many children not able to pronounce Käse correctly and destinct from something that would have to be spelled "Kese" (kesa-gatame as a japanese name is connected with "Käse-gatame" by them), so the practice becomes more and more "anything goes".

It may help to consider that "ä" like in Käse, if pointed out and correctly pronounced clearly, in fact has something to do with the letter "a", not "e", and therefore can also be pronounced with an open mouth like a stretched "that" [æː].

I think it is just wrong to take [ɛː] instead of [æː], especially considering the confusion with other phonetics and that the letter "ä" developed from and can still be replaced by "ae", e.g. if the layout of your keyboard or the font does not have it.

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  • No, I think it is wrong to consider using [æ] for German ä since it will be understood by most Germans as /a/. Note that Bavarian (but also Finnish) distinguish between a front /a/ and a back /a/ so that the vowel qualities of jaa and naa are different; the front /a/ is quite close to [æ] but pretty far away from [ɛ], which is the accepted German way of pronuncing ä. (In Finnish, of course, ‘front a’ is written ä)
    – Jan
    Oct 21, 2015 at 13:46
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    According to Duden Volume 6 Das Aussprachewörterbuch, the standard pronunciation of Käse is ˈkɛːzə
    – user9551
    Oct 21, 2015 at 14:02
  • I hope you don't pronounce the "s" in "kesa" like the "s" in Käse.... Nov 21, 2017 at 22:08

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