I’ve lived in an English speaking country (Canada) my whole life but I’ve always been more fluent (in writing, reading and speaking) in my parents’ language (Tagalog). I got the same phonics lessons as everyone else but I’d never realize certain letters like p and f or b and v were supposed to make different sounds. I always thought “seat” and “sit” or “berry” and “very” and “Betty” were homophones because they sounded exactly the same. I always knew I had a thick accent but at least I thought I heard sounds correctly.
I just learned /p/ and /f/ were different today when someone asked me to grab a fan but I grabbed them a pan. They were surprised I couldn’t hear the difference between “fan” and “pan” so they had to spell out the word “fan”. After that I looked up English phonology and learned that /b/ and /v/, /t/ and /θ/, /d/ and /ð/, /s/ and /z/ and other pairs of sounds were different. I feel my life’s a lie but now I know why my accent was so thick.
In some languages (e.g. German) the difference between b and v are pretty distinguishable, while in others (Spanish -my mother tongue-) are difficult to hear and they rarely change the meaning of the word. So even natives pronounce some words wrong, tho for me it is pretty clear that you gotta pronounce B touching both lips and V with teeth-lip
Well, to be fair, there is no unambigious relation between how a word is written and how it is spoken in many cases. Not in German and even more so in English.
For example, in German the v is sometimes pronounced like f and sometimes like w. The difference between e and ä is undistinguishable in many cases. Many germans, including myself, are having troubles not to pronounce ch like sch. And so on and so forth.
In addition to that, there is assimilation, so consonants getting pronounced differently due to the sound of a neighbouring consonant differs relatively strong, thus altering the consonant makes it easier to pronounce the word. In English this happens even among neighbouring words, making it even more difficult.
And there are dialects, tons of them. So if you have managed to get along thus far, I wouldn’t worry too much. I mean, the pan incident is a somewhat funny anecdote, isn’t it?
If it bothers you, then work on training your ear and pronunciation. I always assumed exposure was enough to acquire the ability to hear the sounds, but you prove that I was mistaken. I guess that is how people retain an accent. I believe that repeatedly listening to clear speech, paying close attention to the sounds, will train the ear. However it may take months or even longer. With German I find that I am gradually getting used to the vowel sounds. I believe anyone can master foreign sounds given sufficient time and effort. If we don’t pay attention, then we tend to replace the correct sound with one from our own L1 or the wrong one from the L2.
I did wonder about something that Obsttorte alluded to. In German the ich-laut does seem to vary slightly, thus in welche and milch it sounds more hissy than in ich for example, but maybe that is my poor English ear. That sound is my bête noire.
Nope. ch gets pronounced differently depending on the word. I can’t give you the exact rule, though, if there is one. I just do it the way it feels right to me.
In your example ich is indeed a bit more closer to the sound of a s or an z, which might be what you meant by hissy (based on some google research on the meaning of that word). welche and Milch is a bit closer to the sch sound.
Now that I think about it, maybe it’s whether there is a consonant or a vowel in front of the ch what makes a difference. (That’s not the case, ignore that).
EDIT: A google search showed me that ich and Milch should be pronounced the same. My dialect, my bad.
All rather baffling. I assumed that the German “ch” was always pronounced like the Scottish loch. But that is not necessarily so. Yesterday I was corrected for a mispronunciation of “Wir essen Kuchen in der Küche” where the kitchen most definitely sounds as if it is like “koosher”.
Presumably there is a German “rule” about various pronunciations of “ch”?
Basically if it follows a vowel that is towards the rear of the mouth, such as o and a, the ch sounds like in Scottish loch, if it follows a consonant such as n or l, or a vowel that is forwards in the mouth, such as i or ü, then it is the more hissy form that is made towards the front of the mouth. Essentially it’s very logical and follows from the place of articulation. Obsttorte will no doubt correct me if there are exceptions to this rule.
It gets pronounced like the ch in loch after a, o, u and au (hard ch). Otherwise it gets pronounced like the sh in koosher (soft ch). There are two exceptions, though. If the ch is followed by an s, so chs within the same syllable the ch gets pronounced like an k and the pronounciation might differ in loanwords.
Note that I looked that up. As stated earlier I do this by feeling, not following a memorized rule(like probably every native speaker and lots of foreign speakers will). Interestingly I found that the word ending ig gets pronounced like the soft ch, too. Well, I only do this if I am really drunk. So all rules aside, there are quiet some dialects in German so it is probably not important to strictly follow those rules, as for each rule there are for sure native speakers breaking it.
one interesting thing is English has one of the rarest sounds across all languages. The ER sound, like at the end of the word summer, appears in less languages than clicking sounds.
@LeifGoodwin I don’t know, whether the difficulty is just hearing the sounds or also speaking them. If welche is difficult to pronounce, maybe this little short video makes it easier to produce the German (e)ch sound. The sound is similar to the first sound in the English word huge (how it is pronounced in some regions). How to Pronounce Ich in German #A1German #shorts #germanpronunciation
Thank you, I have no problem saying ich the way she does. The problem is that most speakers seem to say ch after a consonant in words such as manchemal and Milch in a far more sibilant manner i.e. rather like the Welsh ll. I can do that by moving the ch forwards in the mouth. In fact that’s the only way I can pronounce it after a consonant. I am concerned as it’s not really the same sound.
