Yeah I agree its when she talks faster that her tone starts to revert to more German sounding. Also the english speaking girl she referred to had a weird accent herself. I can even repeat how she said pretzel!
@@rm2kmidi, if you as toddler doesn't meet the difference between two sounds, it gets "hardcoded in the decoder hardware", and it is almost impossible to hear the difference. Like Asians, where R and L gets confused. We have erection/election almost daily. We hope you enjoyed your fright/flight on Japan airlines.
The one thing that non-native English speakers struggle with the most is the slight aspiration that vowel sounds have in English. English is a breathy language, and some dialects are more aspirated than others. German, and most European languages, don't have this apsirated vowel sounds (which are very subtle), so a non-native speaker is easier to pick out due to the lack of aspiration. The word "attention" has very slight aspiration on the second and third vowels, but Trixie says the word without any additional puffs of air, making it sound neutral and flat, and that's maybe why it sounds weird to her, even though her pronunciation is perfectly fine and in line with some English dialects.
You and Dana are such a sunny spot in the world of UA-cam! And Trixie, you have such a sharp ear for words that you hear inflections where I don't. Your accent is charming, not an impediment.
I think there is as much difference between your "attention" and Dana's as between native speakers. I couldn't hear anything different. I also think foreigners, whose reference is often "BBC-english" are harsher on themselves than British English people, who are used to hundreds of accents and dialects, not only from different regions in UK, but also from former colonies.
@@DontTrustTheRabbit the BBC London news presenter's use a very formal and specific ( a word I struggle with as a Canadian 3nglish speaker born & raised)accent known as Royal English. Its very upper crust accent. Try listening to those from the north of England especially around Cornwall. That accent is near indecipherable sometimes. North and North east very different from the home counties.
Your English is actually very good Trixie. Don't forget that Dana speaks American, which to a non American actually sounds less like correct English than yours does sometimes. Keep up the good work, and don't fall into the trap of speaking American, as so many people do when learning English. ☺
This might help. To say "sat", it's simply like "at", but with an s in front. The a is short. To say "sad", its pronounced like "saad". "Said" is totally different. It's pronounced as "sed". The ai makes a short e sound. Again, if you ignore the American pronunciation and focus on English, which sounds to me more like German pronunciation than American, you will get it right.
The "o" in body is pronounced noticeably differently between British and American English. What I found in my staying in Germany is that it's usually easier for the German pronunciation to approximate to British English rather than the American, especially with typical American "aaaa" sound. Often with the T is also more typical British than American, although it is technically correct either ways.
@@Ozzy_2014 The only time I have ever seen or heard the word "bawdy" out loud in my entire life was reading Shakespeare. Unless I'm underestimating its use in the Commonwealth, non-native speakers need not fret about being misunderstood.
I thought that Dana was saying "bardy". The Welsh have bards, but "bardy"? Reminds me of how I told some U.S. students never to go into a rural pub in Australia and ask to use the "bathroom". Although the publican will know what they mean, they will play tricks and show them a room with a bath and shower. I told the students they would get great "street cred" by asking to use the "dunny". ("Dunny", the u pronounced like the u in "hug", is a colloquial term for a rural out house or National Parks "long drops"). I just couldn't get them away from saying "darny".
1. You pronounce "attention" perfectly. 2. Regarding clothes. It is actually the way you pronounce the "o" that starts your problem. You pronounce the "o" in German, meaning that the first half of the word sounds like "Klo" (the toilet). Try to pronounce the o like the o in "over" in British English. In general, you shouldn't try to adapt an american accent when your own is much closer to british, so instead of pronuncing "often", "body" and "said" in American English, use British English.
marbe166, agreed. She is pursing her lips to make the “o” sound like “Klo” and not relaxing her lips and opening the mouth slightly to give it the broader American “o” sound.
I could not hear a thing with attention and clothes (rhymes with close, don't listen to Dana, she's been in Germany too long). Nobody pronounces the th in clothes. I've never heard of such a thing. -Jan (degrees in linguistics and ex-speech pathologist, if it matters).
It is important to remember that we are wired to speak our native tongue shortly after birth through interactions with our parents and others. Those cognitive and language structures can be bypassed or set aside, but they don't disappear. They will reassert themselves when we are distracted or inattentive. Also, I really enjoyed your facial expressions in this video.
Even if you're self-conscious and putting in extra effort to say these words you struggle with, they sound perfectly fine to me as a native English speaker. Your pronunciation is nearly on a native-speaker level.
Attention: Every single time you said "attention" sounded perfectly fine. Clothes: I can't say this elegantly with the "th" either -- I just say "cloze". Vowels are a continuum, so even IPA (whose whole point is to record exactly how someone sounds when saying words) gives up on transcribing them *perfectly* [I learned just yesterday]. You might want to look up "Simon Roper" on UA-cam. He's English and does a lot of videos about linguistics & such. I think his videos might reassure you about your vowel sounds (and he also talks a lot about how English & German came to be the way they are). "Introduction to IPA and Regional Accents" and "The Great Vowel Shift" might be particularly helpful in this regard. Also, even native speakers don't always say words perfectly the same every time -- that's why languages drift in pronunciation over the centuries.
I'm from Pennsylvania we pronounce often with d sound instead of a t sound. We have a lot of German and we also have a lot of Eastern European people that settled here.
Great video. I love the collaboration with Dana. Typical as a German you are somewhat of a perfectionist and much critical of your own accent. You should know that you speak English more clearly than that of most people in Texas, so don't sweat it! You managed to pronounce each word correctly, usually on the third example. Know that many American's drop the T in often, change the t in butter to d, and say "cloze" instead of "clothes". Also children learning to talk will often say "cloves" before "clothes". The refinements you're looking for in your pronunciation are highly advanced above most native speakers.
Trixi, your "attention" is fine, I didn't hear a difference. And secondly your accent is beautiful (I know that sounds odd). And lastly : I don't think I have EVER pronounced the "th" in clothes. Your English is a LOT better than you think, don't sweat the small aspects. Even if you think it's a big deal, you can be happy in knowing that we native English speakers have more troubles pronouncing words than you do! 😉
Trixie, I agree with the above statement, and have to add, at least to my ears, you have LESS of an accent than many Americans. There are some Americans who to me, as a native speaker, are almost unintelligible because their accent is so thick.
The official version is with the t. The hardest thing about english is that english speakers are lazy and will turn off-ten into off-tuhn and then into off-fuhn or will turn separate into seperuht into sehpruht
I honestly have never heard "often" pronounced without a "t"; it sounds oddly childish to me though I come from an area of the US with a rather peculiar accent (objectively speaking).
Pronouncing the 't' in "often" sounds odd to me. It would be like saying the 'L' in talk. Or like someone who hasn't heard english spoken but is trying to read it phonetically. Hard to believe someone has *never* heard the silent t version, considering it's standard. Maybe it's regional.
Just want to join the “I’m American and pronounce the T in often” club. From CA and we definitely pronounce the T, though sometimes it sounds more like a D if we’re talking fast.
Think pronouncing the T in "often" is more of a generational thing with modern-day Americans. Grew up in 1960s-1970s and was taught that the T in "often" was S-I-L-E-N-T. Then WHY is that letter in that word?!?!?!? UHG?!?!?! Noticed that the T was being pronounced a lot more in late 1990s and into the 2000s, though ALL generations seem to either pronounce the T or not.
From the Northeast here, and I've both dropped and pronounced the "t". Dropping the "t" happens more of'en in causal speech or when someone's taking fast.
Often, sorry to use that word, we use our native alphabet to pronounce words in a different language and this usually doesn't work in every instance. Your pronunciation is absolutely flawless in English, I'm not kidding. Also, I have noticed in a few videos you say words in English with a perfect southern US accent. Like when you said "sad" in this video and "love" in another video.
Attention sounds good to me! I’ve been listening to you since the beginning and I don’t even hear your German accident?! To you and Dana stay safe and healthy!
The "o" sound in body is somewhat different between typical American speakers and typical British speakers. I hear Dana saying "baady" rather than "body". I think the German short "o" sound is more similar to how British speakers say the word.
definitely! she pronounced body in a perfect british accent when she spelled it "boddy" on the screen. as a british person, i cant pronounce the american "o" as used in body either
You're right the British short o phononeme is more similar. It's as back, but a little lower. The British aw is the exact same basic sound, just a bit longer. So British "caught" would rhyme with German "Gott". But American "tock" would sound more like German "Tag", with a tad bit of rounding (depending on region)
I really enjoy your videos. Firstly, you are 99.9999% there with everything. Please don't sweat it! You actually pronounce body as bawdy. It is so subtle, which is another word like often where we drop the T! Thanks again for all the hard work you do on these videos.
When you say body like “boddy” it sounds English to me, as a native British person :) I also pronounce said as “sedd” and often like “offen” in German.
Great video! As a native English speaker currently studying Russian (early days), the word currently giving me the most trouble is чувствующий отвращение - disgusted. I can say it syllable by syllable fairly well, but if I try to say it at normal speed, my tongue tries to tie itself in a knot about halfway through. Your English is great and I love that you share your frustrations even as a very advanced English speaker. It's great motivation for those of us who are earlier in our language learning journey; there are a lot of days that I need a reminder that it's okay to get frustrated, and that it's possible to find some words/aspects frustrating and still love the language!
You can say "often" however you want, with or without the T. I've lived in the US and now in Canada and I've heard people interchange them, so you're fine.
First time comment Trixi. Been watching you and Dana for about three years. You sound Crystal clear to me. It been really improving over time too. Keep the videos coming!
Dana does have a certain American accent. So although her "attention" sounds different than yours, it does not mean that yours is wrong. In fact, a lot of Americans pronounce it as you do. Concerning "clothes", it is the same thing - e.g. there are a lot of regions where the "th" is entirely dropped (saying "closss") - though where I come from, we pronounce it like Dana does. So hey, cheer up.
I come from the Midwest, where we have particularly strong vowels. 1. I pronounce the "-tion" in "attention" almost like a German "-chen", but with an even smaller whisper of air. 2. "Clothes" is one of those words that even native speakers only pronounce with like 90% consistency. Sometimes the sounds just don't come out properly, and it ends up sounding like "clodes" or "cloze". 3. The "u" in "hug" or "up" is said with a neutral mouth, and I can feel my throat around my Adam's apple vibrate. 4. "Body" is one word that immediately identifies me as a Midwesterner when I'm abroad. Those of us with strongly regional accents, like Michigan's governor Gretchen Whitmer, pronounce it "bahdy" with the corners of the mouth drawn back. Most speakers of BE pronounce the "o" shorter and rounder. * Bonus: "allergisch gegen" heißt "allergic TO" 5. "Often" is another word where you have to decide how Midwestern you want to be. I might say "ahfen" (almost exactly like Affen), but "awfen" is more General American. And if you really want to emphasize that word in the sentence, Americans will pronounce the "t", like Dana did. (This is actually true of a lot of words with commonly dropped sounds in connected speech, like "something" or "remember".) 6. "Sad" and "sat" have identical vowel sounds, but "said" is a different vowel. If you can pronounce "Edward", you can pronounce "said word" ;)
Her pronunciation of "often" is very telling of where she grew up. I very rarely ever hear anyone pronounce it the way she does "offen". It's "off-ten" even in American English.
Trixi, your English is so good and your German accent so mild that you really have almost nothing to worry about. That said, if you want to work on improving it, I have made an observation about people who believe they are speaking comprehensible English but whose accents make understanding difficult -- and ever-so-slightly, this applies to you. It's the soft vowels they (and you) need to master. The /a/ in cat, the /e/ in ten, the /i/ in sit, the /o/ in fog, and the /u/ in (your favorite) hug. Beat down the temptation to use the stronger German vowels and try for the less distinct sounds typical of American English (and English in southern England; northern England is very different which is why both Shakespeare and the Beatles can rhyme "love" and "move".) If you can get the vowels right, that will help some of your other issues, like "clothes". As for German words that bother me, I struggle to hear a German speaker's different pronunciations of "her", "Herr", and "Heer". I believe I learned fairly good German in school, but my excellent teacher did not emphasize that in German the long vowels literally take longer to pronounce.
"Rechts." I can't for the life of me get that word out of my face correctly. My wife (aus Hamburg) delights in my struggles to pronounce that damnable word.
@@DontTrustTheRabbit I have the same problem with the very basic word "ich". We don't have an equivalent in American English. Sometimes I say "ick" -- which isn't right -- and sometimes I say "itch" -- which also isn't right. The best I can do is say "i" followed by blowing air off the roof of my mouth.
@@LG123ABC haha that's great "ick" is the Berlin dialect for "ich", so to put it in JFKs words "Ick bin ein Berliner", so you don't speak with an english accent just with an specific german dialect XD
@@LG123ABC Can you say "shit"? Discard the t , switch the sh and the i. Now say "ish" with the exact same pronounciation of the two parts as before. Good enough. Trust me, I'm german.
You already know this, but different regions within the same country use different pronunciations. I’m from Texas (which has a variety of accents within itself), and I say the ‘t’ in ‘often.’ And it seems you are attempting to “read” the words In your mind before saying them. This is great for spelling or reading to yourself. However, as I teach my children to read and spell, English has so many words that you can’t “sound out” and come up with the correct spelling. Also, being identifiable as a non-native speaker is a gem. It gives character to your personality. It alludes to your intelligence for mastering another language or more. Plus, it provides a point of conversation when meeting new people. This could help advance a conversation beyond small talk, which I hear Europeans generally dislike. It’s our culture, go to the grocery store and strike up a conversation with someone and you could make their day.
You can learn to say the th sound. I had to learn it as an adult even though I am a native English speaker. I learnt from my singing teacher. I say often, not offen. First time I have ever heard offen. Please stick with often.
Zunächst einmal liebe ich deine Show und genau wie Dana habe ich Schwierigkeiten mit dem Satz "Ich erinnere mich" und mit dem Wort "Hören unter anderem” keep up the good work♥️
If it may help at all for pronouncing the vowel sound in “said”, “said” also rhymes with “dead” and “fed.” That being said, Trixie, I think you’re doing better than you think!
Hey, Trixie! Been away for awhile but so glad to see you still here! Attention is exactly correct, and to tell you the truth I'm not hearing the incorrectness in your pronunciation of any of the words. Also, don't forget that English was originally a Germanic language (with a hell of a lot of loan words). You're so adorable, thank you so much for being you! Always lifts the spirits.
Sometimes even german people sound, when they are talking about "Kirche" as if they were talking about "Kirsche". I think it is the difference in dialects.
As an American listener, your pronunciation of "attention" is perfect and I see no issues. "Clothes" is a word that most native English speakers struggle with so it's not just you as a German. In America most people simply pronounce it like "Close" and let it be obvious from the context what they are referring to. I have always pronounced the "T" in often and in my experience about half the people in America do and about half don't. As your favorite "dirty old man" subscriber, I'll try to avoid any remarks about your blouse which I of course love, but much love to you sweetie! Liked and subscribed as always. Many thanks.
To this native English speaker, you absolutely *did* say "attention" and "body" correctly. So maybe to your own ear it *sounds* wrong and you're self-conscious of it. But I assure you, you said them right. 👍
Maybe it's just in my head, but every time I use the word there's something that feels unsatisfying to me. :D
4 роки тому+3
@@DontTrustTheRabbit It is *mostly* in your head. There is, if you listen *VEEERY* carefully there's a slight hint of… accent, but really, it's nothing to write home about.
I think that vocabulary is much more important then pronounciation. When talking to native english speakers, I never got a complaint because my pronounciation is not perfect. I remember, that in the first years I tried very hard to pronounce english like an American (although I learned British English in school, I mostly had to deal with Americans during my career), but later just stopped worrying, because nobody ever seemed to care.
Haha, at least in America, pronouncing “clothes” is closer to “close”, as in “close the door”. Emphasis on the “th” sound is unnecessary. The context is enough to differentiate “clothes” vs. “close”. You can almost always substitute the word “clothing”, but it can come across as too formal.
Peace Ninja exactly, “clothing” is a word best set aside for poetry and snooty folks who are referring to their $1000 garments. We’re pretty allergic to pretentiousness. Articulating every consonant in informal contexts makes everyone around go “WTF!? I didn’t know we were polishing our pince-nez’s and monocles at the caviar shop!”.
Hallo Trixi.. I am U.S born but, I was raised by my Deutschen Grandparents when I was very Young.. But now that I am older, I have been told by my friends that I have a slight German Accent when speaking to them. Meaning that I still use the " V" sound when I say a word with the letter " W" in it; And I use the " F " sound when I say a word with the letter " V" in it. So It seems that, I too have the same problem trying to say even the most simple word in Englisch. lol.. I just want to thank you for your funny but, Informative Videos. And by the way, I love you Accent!!
Attention sounds perfect! Clothes is perfectly fine to say as "cloze", the th can be dropped as Dana said! Hug is a tricky one, i'm not entirely sure how to explain it, but you didnt sound much off at all. Body, you sounded great, like "bawdy" is how i say it and im native! Often is actually originally without the T, believe it or not, though i, among many others, perfer to say Oft-en with the T. Said, i didnt understand your struggle until you said Sat and Sad. I think of Said as Sed. Sat is more like S-AHHH THERES A MONSTER-T. Sad is the longer of the three, sad is almost the same as Sat, but think of that soft D, i know, its so difficult when you are used to the hard rigid D from German, but think of it like you are about to say the word "die" and that soft D will roll right out. "sa-die" then drop the ie and "sa-d" and then finally "sad". Great video Trixie! I'd love to see more things that we can help you with, alongside more vocabulary words? Maybe something around the B2-C1 level that can make us sound mmore native when its used often in sentences? Thanks, have a nice day :)
Really? I'm pretty sure she is well past THAT point, and already knows HOW to pronounce these words. It's more about expressing her frustration with them when using them in conversation, and her "germanisms" slip out. Knowing how to pronounce something isn't the same as actually executing it flawlessly when you're speaking a second language.
I always thought of XOXO as hugs and kisses, but 'X" is the hug(crossed arms) and "O" is the kiss(pursed lips). As far as difficulties in making certain sounds, I find the German "R" tricky. I want to roll it at the tip of my tongue, like Spanish, instead of at the soft pallet. I am geting better, some days I get a good one and feel quite accomplished, but it is not consistent yet. I am still having a small struggle hearing the umlaut sounds in some plural words, specifically the ü in words like: Mütter und Brüder. This was a great video. Vielen Dank
Moin Trixie, da war, der Sonntagmorgengruß von Trixie! Ich hoffe, ihr habt Ostern genießen können. Mit kleinen Kindern macht es ja doch auch in diesen Zeiten mehr Spaß, als mit einem großen Teenager. Weiterhin alles Gute und immer genug Klopapier im Schrank! XD
With regards to the T in "often", it depends on which dialect of English you normally speak even within the larger groupings of "American" or "British" English, etc. That being said, I normally speak with a Western New England accent, and the swallowing in the T sound in the middle of words is very common. It will be fully voiced at the end of words however. When it is in the middle of words, it tends to come out quite like an H sound. For example, you would say "Please siT on the chairs over there", but "He is sihhin on the chairs over there". Also in this accent we tend not to voice the G at the end of a word.
Great video!!! Long time ago I stopped worrying about my German accent. It shows where I am from. And why should a German accent not be justified as you see distinctive accents among native speakers? And who wanted to miss the German commercial with the guy from Italy: "...Isch 'abe gar kein Auto."? Or the french lady saying: "...die Bier, die so schön geprickelt 'at in meinem Bauchnabel"? Accents are wonderful. They tell where we are from. They should be appreciated. Did you ever listen to Dana saying "Bayerischer Rundfunk"? No German native speaker can do this more adorable as she does. You both shouldn't worry. A brilliant/awsome topic for a video though.
Your pronunciation of "attention" sounded good to my American ears. With "often", both pronunciations common in the US. I know I use both. Which one typically depends on the how stressed the word is in the sentence. I will usually drop the "t" in often when it is unstressed in the sentence. In general in English, we are lazy speakers with our words, especially with hard consonants. For example many times a "t" will turn into a "d" when it is between vowels, in an unstressed syllable, or at the end of the word. Sometimes "t" becomes a glottal stop and isn't pronounced at all. In my region of the US, it is common for the "t" in "it" to be dropped completely and the word is just stopped sharply with a glottal stop. Most don't even realize that they're doing that. I only became aware of it when I was speaking to a German exchange student back in high school because he would make sure that he pronounced every consonant exactly, and I noticed he came across very stiff because of that. Keep practicing because you are far better than you realize. Your accent has become very subtle and easy to miss without extended listening.
Your english sounds more 'British english' with a strange accent, not American. Be happy with that. I notice that your pronounciation changed a lot since you started this vlog. And your English speaking is way better then Danas Deutsche Sprache. Sorry Dana. Have a nice weekend.
As a linguist, I have some advice on 3 of the words. 1. Often - pronouncing it with or without the T are both equally acceptable (but with the T is more correct) 2. Clothes is hard even for English speaker. It helps if you relax your mouth de-emphasize and shorten the end. Ironically, the less you try, the easier it is and the better it sounds 3 Attention - it helps to pronounce by splitting the end. Pronounce like attent-shin. This helps in 2 ways, 1 it simplifies the saying, 2 it is stronger and, interestingly enough, more attention getting Hope this helps! P.s. your pronunciation as a whole is great, just offering helps if you are curious and interested
If you could say it perfectly, you would lose your German accent, which is absolutely AWESOME! I had a German friend who one time went to ask me to write down something. Her German came in and she said "remember this on paper". It seams that is the literal translation for German (I don't know any German). I thought it was one of the funniest things she'd ever said, and I loved it! I looked forward to when we worked the same shift at work. AWESOME! Don't change! These idiosyncrasies are very endearing.
Try saying "off-ten"and you got it!! There are so many regional accents in Britain that many words sounds very different. We do not have a "hooch deutsch" equivalent, but I suppose Oxford English is good enough.mThat being said Tixie you speak exceptionally clearly, much better than many english speakers!! Mervyn
I just started making videos in German (mother tongue is American-English) and someone shared your video with me to see the same struggle I have in the opposite direction! 😂 I don't want to say it makes me feel good to see you struggle, but I am going through the same with my German every video! The last biggest problem I was having was saying the difference between "Staat" and "Stadt" in my last video?? I hear no difference!! 😆 But I really would say that the words you were saying, particularly "attention" and "body" sounded 100% accent free (or American accent) perfect! 😊
Kind of. We have several words that many to most people pronounce differently, than they are written and meant to be pronounced. For example: the letter ä is often pronounced as e. Mädchen -> Medchen (or as Heidi Klum says: Meeeeeeetchen), Käse -> Kese. And 'er' in the end is often pronounced as a short, unstressed a. So hardly anyone says leiser, heiser, weiter, we say something mire along the line of leisa, heisa, weita. But I guess those are examples for changes, that occur in a language over time, not actual instabilities to pronounce them?
As a matter of fact, when Trixi pronounced "Attention" I always understood "A tension". I also made a list of words which sound (at least to me) the same but have very different meanings: meet- meat; their-there; for-four-fort; hear-here; flower-flour; steel-steal; wait-weight; hole-whole; night-knight; know-no; hour-our; peas-piece; spies-spice; rain-reign; plane-plain; one-won; deer-dear; beet-beat; sea-see; eyes-ice; rite-right; height-hate; steak-stake; mail-male; by-buy; morning-mourning; cite-site-sight; witch-which; break-brake; week-weak; daze-days; sell-cell; maize-maze; lead-led; core-corpse; whether-weather-wether; bear-bare; strife-strive; cattle-kettle; pane-pain; flesh-flash; pray-prey; wet-vet-whet; seem-seam; leaf-leave; decent-descent; hair-hare; heir-air;
Many are pronounced the same, BUT.... their-there; four-fort; peas-piece; spies-spice; eyes-ice; height-hate; witch-which; core-corpse; whether-weather; strife-strive; cattle-kettle; flesh-flash; wet-vet; leaf-leave; decent-descent; all have different sounds.
Agreed. I struggle a lot of with american r's at the end of the word, british "ah" instead of "errrrr" is so, so much easier to my poor german mind, haha
I was going to suggest you could "cuddle" instead of "hug" but then latter in the video I saw you also struggle with the soft double "d". As an Australian mit deutsche Eltern (ex Hamburg & Leverkusen), I find your videos really interesting.
Attention, Trixie: you're saying it perfectly fine. Perfectly. No one is going to misunderstand you. There are more dialect variations than you can shake a stick at and your pronunciation is in line with the majority of native speakers. It's Dana that is actually in the minority with her pronunciation. Body. Dana's pronunciation is really weird. Very American in the way she lengthens the O vowel. The solution is easy though: don't try to pronounce it the American way. Go for the British RP or a NZ or Australian pronunciation instead with a very short O. Often. Dana's pronunciation is flat out wrong on that for it to be any Standard English. There's a T in there and she is completely suppressing it.
When I first took German in high school (some decades ago...) one of the very first things they pointed out was that Germans don't drop the "t" sound in the middle of words the way American's do. I still remember the example my German teacher used: at conversational speed, we usually pronounce "20" as "twenny" instead of "twenTy"...so "often" is usually pronounced "offen." It seems like in general German has lots of hard sounds that are like stops, or sharp turns, whereas in English (especially American English) pronunciation, anything that can be rounded off or worn down is. It's why we drop the "g" in "-ing" words, so "getting" becomes "gettin" (or even "get'n"), and so on... For "body," I would say that in American English "bawdy" is a homophone-that sounded closest. And I agree with others that your "attention" seemed fine... Oddly, to me when you said "clothes" it was the vowel that sounded a bit off, not the "thz" combination at the end. (PS: At full speed, Americans will often say something that's indistinguishable from "close.") I don't know what to tell you about "said" except that it's not pronounced like it's spelled... A wild guess (totally unsupported by research) is that it may have originally been pronounced more like "say-id," (rhyming with "laid," "raid," etc.) but over centuries the diphthong got smoothed out to the short "e" sound it is today. Just remember that it rhymes with "red," "fed" and "led."
The gee in -ing is hyper-correction, anyway. The correct (historically) pronunciation is without it, and that's how native speakers often realize it, too.
That's bullshit. Leaving off the "g" is nonstandard. To leave off the "g" also changes the "i" sound. It's very noticeable. Yes, some people do it but it does have a lazy or uneducated association.
You can say those words you just struggle with Dana's accent. Don't sweat on often. Just say "offen" like Possenhoffen. Also women generally don't like a soft D...
Your English sounds great to me! "Attention" sounds perfect. We also say "cloze" -- rarely do people pronounce the "th." And you can say often with the "t" -- it's perfectly acceptable. I am a native English speaker teaching German, and my students always struggle with the "ch" sound. I sometimes have to stop and think about the difference between two similar sounding words, like Kirsche and Kirche and schwul and schwül (which is a pair I totally avoid!!) Thanks for you videos!
“said” - If you can say “bed”, then just replace the “b” the an “s” then you have it! You say “attention” perfectly! Stop worrying about it. As far as “clothes”, the trick is to put your hand on your throat and feel the vibrations of your voice box. As you say “clothes” the vibrations in your voice box should last throughout the whole word. Then you know you have it right. It’s like the “th” in the word “there” as opposed to the “th” in “think”. The “Th” in “there” carries the vibrations in the voice box, while the “th” in “think” does not. Try practicing with your hand on your throat. If you feel the vibrations throughout the whole word “clothes”, then you got it! I love your accent! It is beautiful. Don’t worry about a thing. 😊
Thankfully my first English teacher was a stickler for pronunciation, which helped develop my ear for languages, as well as being subjected to different dialects in my childhood - moving from the Pottdeutsch to Hessegebabbel to Rheinisch to Plattdütsch, with other dialects on TV.
One of the things to factor in as far as American English is the location, for example, in Seattle they will pronounce the "T" in often and the word clothes is actually two syllables and when you pronounce it that way it's much easier and far more correct. That same word in Texas is pronounced quite differently. If you go spend time in the Pacific northwest you can hear English in a different way and you wont have these struggles. I also think your "attention " pronunciation is spot on.
Hi, native Spanish speaker here. (Like your husband, if memory serves). I struggled with "clothes" as well. Learned to pronounce it by practicing "cloth" over and over first.
I understood you perfectly on all of those. No native English speaker would even tease you about them. And she’s right - many if not most Americans drop the th sound from clothes and just make it sound like “close”. In my high school German class, a short German word that many struggled with was der Zug. Putting a hard Z on the front was a struggle for many of us.
1. Attention was perfect 2. Clothes can be a tricky one but I guess just think of it as Clodz? Your O is a little too round, consistently. But still thumbs up for you. 3. Your Hug is fine. Don't overthink this one. 4. Body- think of Baden..."Bad-y" 5. Often - I know many people around me who both swallow the T and pronounce it 6. Said - I think I heard you say it ok. I'm learning German now with Duolingo and the mechanics are so challenging. So we all struggle with something.
Attention: I say it ah-ten-chun. No sh. Clothes: I say it cloz. I don't say the th. Often: Although I do say "awfen", saying it "awften" is acceptable as well. Spanish: Here is a word that I struggle with: Perro. It means dog. The "rr" is rolled. I struggle with "rr" between 2 vowels. It is very difficult for me. I feel your pain. I love your video. And your English is absolutely fantastic!
I think there are so many regional differences in the way people say words that often it's the context of the word that would differentiate between sad said etc
Perfectionist! All you need is to realise that pronunciation by native speakers is so varied that your versions will be native to many. The best, most faultless, English I ever heard was by a German. So good, he could never pass as a native speaker. The clearest was by a Dorset man, born in the 1870s, who was almost unintelligible as he spoke a very broad "Darzett" dialect.
I had two german teachers at school, one was a man who had lived in germany for the first 12 years of his life (his dad was in the military and was posted there) and the other was a woman who had only visited germany,she was also irish with a pronounced northern irish accent, which also carried over into when she was speaking german. the male teacher, who was fluent in german and some of the local dialects, never faulted my pronounciations as he said that they were spot on and that both the language and the pronounciations seemed to come naturally to me (he also said my accent when speaking german sounded like i was from somewhere, although i cannot remember which part of germany he said) The female teacher, although she was quite good at teaching vocabulary, would penilise students for not having the same accented prounounciation as hers (ie. irish), and i dunno about you, but i dont think there are many irish accented native germans, lol. Also, your pronounciation of "Body" (BoH-dee) is spot on compared to your friends american accented version (BaWW-Dee), so dont worry about it, same with "often" (Off-Ten), thats how its supposed to be said in English-English :)
I am a native English speaker, and I can’t pronounce any word with “ths” in it correctly. Months; clothes, cloths, moths, etc. it comes out like “tz” for me. It’s A common issue speakers from the New York and New Jersey area have. I was raised in New Jersey, but have lost most of that accent except for this one issue. I recently realized how difficult it is to say any TH combination at the end of a word while recording an out of office voicemail message.
You say attention perfect. The way Dana pronounces it is American English... American accent. I'm British and we say attention with the sound of 'shun' at the end. Good job
Hi Trixi, just came across your channel and really laughed my sox off! I am a bilingual german / english. And I noticed another hard word for germans seems to be vest. Like Unterhemd. They usually say it like west. Or whether or not would be wetter or not. I do admitt, the V is a challenge! Keep up your channel! Enjoyed your video (in this case pronounced wideoh) very (uery) much! cheers, Charmaine btw: british bilingual ;-)
It’s interesting because while I haven’t read anything formal on this, American T’s that occur in the middle of words will quite often shift from a strong T to a weaker D to simply a glottal stop. Sort of like letter becomes “ledder” or latter becomes “ladder” and in my accent mountain becomes “mou-in”. I think a similar thing happened in “often” but once it got to the point of the glottal stop there was really no good place to put it between the F and the I so it kinda got eaten by the two letters. However you’d be perfectly fine in saying /ˈɔftən/, many Americans will omit the T and not omit the T interchangeably depending on how much attenschen- I mean attention the word is given. Which I guess kinda makes it funny that you have to concentrate so hard. Oh and I know it was a joke but the whole “swea” thing actually does happen in my accent. It’s that glottal stop I’ve been talking about. So to say “I sweat when I hike up the mountain” like a Utahn you’d say “I swea’ when I hike up the mou’in” where ‘ represents a glottal stop. I...blame the inbreeding!
It's kinda refreshing to hear someone else say often without the t. Everyone seems to say "off ten" instead of "off en" Also, if you don't like soft D's, then you do not want to come to the Midwest. We often replace the Ts and Ds with a glottal. "I sa' down." The apostrophe representing a glottal in this case.
I think it depends on the native English speakers accent, pronouncing words like attention can sound quite different, I would recommend listening to the big seven and the way they say certain words and if you fit within that spectrum you are fine :) England, Scotland, U.S, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa (Wales and Ireland would just be for fun)
I can't pronounce words with the "u+umlaut" to save my life. Saying the word five / fuenf is a nightmare to me. And I started out as a German teacher. I learned something useful from a woman in one of my study groups in Germany. She had only studied the language for one year, but she spoke it anyway, cheerfully making so many mistakes, and the German natives we encountered loved her for her attitude and because she tried. I think you are doing a great job. Just do your best, and you'll be fine.
Thank you both for a fun video! It was a nice break from making German notecards to hang around my house 😂 I also have trouble with a lot of longer German words that go from soft to hard sounds or vice versa (or both lol). I can see how English has similar difficulties as well for German speakers. Hope you're all staying safe and have a great day! 😀
The way you say "attention" sounds 100% correct to me.
Dave Emberton agreed 😂
Yeah I agree its when she talks faster that her tone starts to revert to more German sounding. Also the english speaking girl she referred to had a weird accent herself. I can even repeat how she said pretzel!
Yeah it was right
me too
She sounds like many of the people that I grew up with. They are 4th generation Americans and still have those speech glitches
You said attention perfectly to my ear. I did not hear anything wrong with it.
Same. Maybe she's hearing a sch instead of a sh sound? In English we don't always distinguish between those sounds
@@rm2kmidi, if you as toddler doesn't meet the difference between two sounds, it gets "hardcoded in the decoder hardware", and it is almost impossible to hear the difference. Like Asians, where R and L gets confused. We have erection/election almost daily. We hope you enjoyed your fright/flight on Japan airlines.
The one thing that non-native English speakers struggle with the most is the slight aspiration that vowel sounds have in English. English is a breathy language, and some dialects are more aspirated than others. German, and most European languages, don't have this apsirated vowel sounds (which are very subtle), so a non-native speaker is easier to pick out due to the lack of aspiration.
The word "attention" has very slight aspiration on the second and third vowels, but Trixie says the word without any additional puffs of air, making it sound neutral and flat, and that's maybe why it sounds weird to her, even though her pronunciation is perfectly fine and in line with some English dialects.
We Americans have probably been dropping the "t" since that event in Boston.
ROTF!
Bawson?
🤣
I see what you did there. 😂
That is genius!
You and Dana are such a sunny spot in the world of UA-cam! And Trixie, you have such a sharp ear for words that you hear inflections where I don't. Your accent is charming, not an impediment.
Trixie, I just paused the video at 2:09. I hear you pronouncing "attention" perfectly. Don't be so demanding on yourself.
Haha thank you, sometimes I do it right, I guess, but I can still hear a difference. :)
I think there is as much difference between your "attention" and Dana's as between native speakers. I couldn't hear anything different.
I also think foreigners, whose reference is often "BBC-english" are harsher on themselves than British English people, who are used to hundreds of accents and dialects, not only from different regions in UK, but also from former colonies.
@@DontTrustTheRabbit the BBC London news presenter's use a very formal and specific ( a word I struggle with as a Canadian 3nglish speaker born & raised)accent known as Royal English. Its very upper crust accent. Try listening to those from the north of England especially around Cornwall. That accent is near indecipherable sometimes. North and North east very different from the home counties.
Your English is actually very good Trixie. Don't forget that Dana speaks American, which to a non American actually sounds less like correct English than yours does sometimes. Keep up the good work, and don't fall into the trap of speaking American, as so many people do when learning English. ☺
This might help. To say "sat", it's simply like "at", but with an s in front. The a is short. To say "sad", its pronounced like "saad". "Said" is totally different. It's pronounced as "sed". The ai makes a short e sound. Again, if you ignore the American pronunciation and focus on English, which sounds to me more like German pronunciation than American, you will get it right.
The "o" in body is pronounced noticeably differently between British and American English. What I found in my staying in Germany is that it's usually easier for the German pronunciation to approximate to British English rather than the American, especially with typical American "aaaa" sound.
Often with the T is also more typical British than American, although it is technically correct either ways.
Be careful with body sounding like ( bAW- dee ) which is humorous indecent talk or writing.
@@Ozzy_2014 The only time I have ever seen or heard the word "bawdy" out loud in my entire life was reading Shakespeare. Unless I'm underestimating its use in the Commonwealth, non-native speakers need not fret about being misunderstood.
There might always be one dialect , where a single word is correct. It just sounds strange if you change dialect from word to word.
I thought that Dana was saying "bardy". The Welsh have bards, but "bardy"?
Reminds me of how I told some U.S. students never to go into a rural pub in Australia and ask to use the "bathroom". Although the publican will know what they mean, they will play tricks and show them a room with a bath and shower. I told the students they would get great "street cred" by asking to use the "dunny". ("Dunny", the u pronounced like the u in "hug", is a colloquial term for a rural out house or National Parks "long drops"). I just couldn't get them away from saying "darny".
"Germans don't like soft Ds."
....I don't think anyone does.
Took me a while to figure that out
😂😂😂
Ha-ha.
@Ella Blun you must not know many Americans
@Ella Blun ...well, "ya can't please EVERYBODY!!!"
1. You pronounce "attention" perfectly.
2. Regarding clothes. It is actually the way you pronounce the "o" that starts your problem. You pronounce the "o" in German, meaning that the first half of the word sounds like "Klo" (the toilet). Try to pronounce the o like the o in "over" in British English.
In general, you shouldn't try to adapt an american accent when your own is much closer to british, so instead of pronuncing "often", "body" and "said" in American English, use British English.
She doesn't sound closer to British to my American ear. Just fairly neutral.
marbe166, agreed. She is pursing her lips to make the “o” sound like “Klo” and not relaxing her lips and opening the mouth slightly to give it the broader American “o” sound.
See, I thought she has a Canadian pronunciation...
I agree she said Attention perfectly.
I could not hear a thing with attention and clothes (rhymes with close, don't listen to Dana, she's been in Germany too long). Nobody pronounces the th in clothes. I've never heard of such a thing. -Jan (degrees in linguistics and ex-speech pathologist, if it matters).
It is important to remember that we are wired to speak our native tongue shortly after birth through interactions with our parents and others. Those cognitive and language structures can be bypassed or set aside, but they don't disappear. They will reassert themselves when we are distracted or inattentive. Also, I really enjoyed your facial expressions in this video.
Even if you're self-conscious and putting in extra effort to say these words you struggle with, they sound perfectly fine to me as a native English speaker. Your pronunciation is nearly on a native-speaker level.
Attention: Every single time you said "attention" sounded perfectly fine.
Clothes: I can't say this elegantly with the "th" either -- I just say "cloze".
Vowels are a continuum, so even IPA (whose whole point is to record exactly how someone sounds when saying words) gives up on transcribing them *perfectly* [I learned just yesterday]. You might want to look up "Simon Roper" on UA-cam. He's English and does a lot of videos about linguistics & such. I think his videos might reassure you about your vowel sounds (and he also talks a lot about how English & German came to be the way they are). "Introduction to IPA and Regional Accents" and "The Great Vowel Shift" might be particularly helpful in this regard.
Also, even native speakers don't always say words perfectly the same every time -- that's why languages drift in pronunciation over the centuries.
I, as an American, also often pronounce the t in often.
I say the t very softly.
I'm thinking maybe a regional USA dialect is an issue here. With many words, how they sound just depends on where you are.
I am from California, and I say it softly. Come to think about it I say the t in softly, softly. I can totally under how it would disappear.
@@jamesparson I'm from Washington so I think the west coast is pretty similar
I'm from Pennsylvania we pronounce often with d sound instead of a t sound.
We have a lot of German and we also have a lot of Eastern European people that settled here.
Ok but HOW did you tear that paper PERFECTLY in half?!
Great video. I love the collaboration with Dana. Typical as a German you are somewhat of a perfectionist and much critical of your own accent. You should know that you speak English more clearly than that of most people in Texas, so don't sweat it! You managed to pronounce each word correctly, usually on the third example. Know that many American's drop the T in often, change the t in butter to d, and say "cloze" instead of "clothes". Also children learning to talk will often say "cloves" before "clothes". The refinements you're looking for in your pronunciation are highly advanced above most native speakers.
Trixi, your "attention" is fine, I didn't hear a difference. And secondly your accent is beautiful (I know that sounds odd). And lastly : I don't think I have EVER pronounced the "th" in clothes. Your English is a LOT better than you think, don't sweat the small aspects. Even if you think it's a big deal, you can be happy in knowing that we native English speakers have more troubles pronouncing words than you do! 😉
Even if she said attencion, I'm sure most Americans wouldn't mind.
It is veeeery common to pronounce “clothes” the same as “close”, just like pronouncing “months” as “muns”
“Attention”
Trixie;
I’m don’t your pronunciation is incorrect.
I think there are many in the States who say it the same as you.
Trixie, I agree with the above statement, and have to add, at least to my ears, you have LESS of an accent than many Americans. There are some Americans who to me, as a native speaker, are almost unintelligible because their accent is so thick.
I'm American and I sometimes pronounce often with the "T."
Many do.
You're doing it wrong. Lol. 🤣
How often do you say it that way? :D
The official version is with the t. The hardest thing about english is that english speakers are lazy and will turn off-ten into off-tuhn and then into off-fuhn or will turn separate into seperuht into sehpruht
@@joemorgan6738 Incorrect. Silent is standard. Check a dictionary or a few.
Middle Illinois "often" is said with a "T" sound. Different regions of the US pronounce words different.
I honestly have never heard "often" pronounced without a "t"; it sounds oddly childish to me though I come from an area of the US with a rather peculiar accent (objectively speaking).
Pronouncing the 't' in "often" sounds odd to me. It would be like saying the 'L' in talk. Or like someone who hasn't heard english spoken but is trying to read it phonetically. Hard to believe someone has *never* heard the silent t version, considering it's standard. Maybe it's regional.
My Michigan accent also has a t in often
Central Illinois, born and raised.
Agreed 👍
@@johnbooth870 I have never heard someone not say the 't' when going for a "standard" accent in movies or television
Just want to join the “I’m American and pronounce the T in often” club. From CA and we definitely pronounce the T, though sometimes it sounds more like a D if we’re talking fast.
I often pronounce often like ofTen
Think pronouncing the T in "often" is more of a generational thing with modern-day Americans. Grew up in 1960s-1970s and was taught that the T in "often" was S-I-L-E-N-T. Then WHY is that letter in that word?!?!?!? UHG?!?!?! Noticed that the T was being pronounced a lot more in late 1990s and into the 2000s, though ALL generations seem to either pronounce the T or not.
From the Northeast here, and I've both dropped and pronounced the "t". Dropping the "t" happens more of'en in causal speech or when someone's taking fast.
I just caught myself saying it right now ... also from CA
Often, sorry to use that word, we use our native alphabet to pronounce words in a different language and this usually doesn't work in every instance. Your pronunciation is absolutely flawless in English, I'm not kidding. Also, I have noticed in a few videos you say words in English with a perfect southern US accent. Like when you said "sad" in this video and "love" in another video.
Attention sounds good to me! I’ve been listening to you since the beginning and I don’t even hear your German accident?! To you and Dana stay safe and healthy!
The "o" sound in body is somewhat different between typical American speakers and typical British speakers. I hear Dana saying "baady" rather than "body". I think the German short "o" sound is more similar to how British speakers say the word.
definitely! she pronounced body in a perfect british accent when she spelled it "boddy" on the screen. as a british person, i cant pronounce the american "o" as used in body either
Yes, as an Aussie, I hear 'baady' when Dana says 'body', too.
You're right the British short o phononeme is more similar. It's as back, but a little lower. The British aw is the exact same basic sound, just a bit longer. So British "caught" would rhyme with German "Gott". But American "tock" would sound more like German "Tag", with a tad bit of rounding (depending on region)
Yes when trixie said it I understood it when she said body, yet when her friend said it I was like..... That's not how we say it in Britain
@@lujinki YES!!! Exactly
I really enjoy your videos. Firstly, you are 99.9999% there with everything. Please don't sweat it! You actually pronounce body as bawdy. It is so subtle, which is another word like often where we drop the T! Thanks again for all the hard work you do on these videos.
I'm American and I pronounce the t in often.
@Chris Peters Then you must live in a bubble.
Chris Peters fact, I always hear the t pronounced
I actually think it's more common for British English speakers to say "ofen " without the t.
When you say body like “boddy” it sounds English to me, as a native British person :) I also pronounce said as “sedd” and often like “offen” in German.
Attention! I often hug my body without clothes
Great video! As a native English speaker currently studying Russian (early days), the word currently giving me the most trouble is чувствующий отвращение
- disgusted. I can say it syllable by syllable fairly well, but if I try to say it at normal speed, my tongue tries to tie itself in a knot about halfway through.
Your English is great and I love that you share your frustrations even as a very advanced English speaker. It's great motivation for those of us who are earlier in our language learning journey; there are a lot of days that I need a reminder that it's okay to get frustrated, and that it's possible to find some words/aspects frustrating and still love the language!
You can say "often" however you want, with or without the T. I've lived in the US and now in Canada and I've heard people interchange them, so you're fine.
First time comment Trixi. Been watching you and Dana for about three years. You sound Crystal clear to me. It been really improving over time too. Keep the videos coming!
Dana does have a certain American accent. So although her "attention" sounds different than yours, it does not mean that yours is wrong. In fact, a lot of Americans pronounce it as you do. Concerning "clothes", it is the same thing - e.g. there are a lot of regions where the "th" is entirely dropped (saying "closss") - though where I come from, we pronounce it like Dana does. So hey, cheer up.
Your pronunciation is good! don't be too worry about it! Entertaining video by the way!
You sound fine, and many native English-speakers in the US don't say "clothes" very distinctly. As Dana says, they just say "close."
I come from the Midwest, where we have particularly strong vowels.
1. I pronounce the "-tion" in "attention" almost like a German "-chen", but with an even smaller whisper of air.
2. "Clothes" is one of those words that even native speakers only pronounce with like 90% consistency. Sometimes the sounds just don't come out properly, and it ends up sounding like "clodes" or "cloze".
3. The "u" in "hug" or "up" is said with a neutral mouth, and I can feel my throat around my Adam's apple vibrate.
4. "Body" is one word that immediately identifies me as a Midwesterner when I'm abroad. Those of us with strongly regional accents, like Michigan's governor Gretchen Whitmer, pronounce it "bahdy" with the corners of the mouth drawn back. Most speakers of BE pronounce the "o" shorter and rounder.
* Bonus: "allergisch gegen" heißt "allergic TO"
5. "Often" is another word where you have to decide how Midwestern you want to be. I might say "ahfen" (almost exactly like Affen), but "awfen" is more General American. And if you really want to emphasize that word in the sentence, Americans will pronounce the "t", like Dana did. (This is actually true of a lot of words with commonly dropped sounds in connected speech, like "something" or "remember".)
6. "Sad" and "sat" have identical vowel sounds, but "said" is a different vowel. If you can pronounce "Edward", you can pronounce "said word" ;)
Her pronunciation of "often" is very telling of where she grew up. I very rarely ever hear anyone pronounce it the way she does "offen". It's "off-ten" even in American English.
For me, it's the opposite: I mostly hear "offen," rarely hear "often."
Trixi, your English is so good and your German accent so mild that you really have almost nothing to worry about. That said, if you want to work on improving it, I have made an observation about people who believe they are speaking comprehensible English but whose accents make understanding difficult -- and ever-so-slightly, this applies to you. It's the soft vowels they (and you) need to master. The /a/ in cat, the /e/ in ten, the /i/ in sit, the /o/ in fog, and the /u/ in (your favorite) hug.
Beat down the temptation to use the stronger German vowels and try for the less distinct sounds typical of American English (and English in southern England; northern England is very different which is why both Shakespeare and the Beatles can rhyme "love" and "move".) If you can get the vowels right, that will help some of your other issues, like "clothes".
As for German words that bother me, I struggle to hear a German speaker's different pronunciations of "her", "Herr", and "Heer". I believe I learned fairly good German in school, but my excellent teacher did not emphasize that in German the long vowels literally take longer to pronounce.
"Rechts." I can't for the life of me get that word out of my face correctly. My wife (aus Hamburg) delights in my struggles to pronounce that damnable word.
Yeah, I feel you, Erick has the same problem. :3
@@DontTrustTheRabbit I have the same problem with the very basic word "ich". We don't have an equivalent in American English. Sometimes I say "ick" -- which isn't right -- and sometimes I say "itch" -- which also isn't right. The best I can do is say "i" followed by blowing air off the roof of my mouth.
@@LG123ABC haha that's great "ick" is the Berlin dialect for "ich", so to put it in JFKs words "Ick bin ein Berliner", so you don't speak with an english accent just with an specific german dialect XD
@@LG123ABC Can you say "shit"? Discard the t , switch the sh and the i. Now say "ish" with the exact same pronounciation of the two parts as before. Good enough. Trust me, I'm german.
I have a tough time with "nichts." In my head, I have to say "nicht" first and then add an "s" at the end.
So glad she coverd the "close" and the T in "often" at the end.
Trixie and Dana XOXO!! I don't hear any German accent and attention sounds good to me. I always enjoy your videos have a wonderful week😎😎
I'm a native New Yorker. We say "clothes" the same as "close". We say "awffen" for often. Great video!
All of these, except attention, are Saxon (Germanic) words which have equivalents or relatives in German and the other Germanic languages.
You already know this, but different regions within the same country use different pronunciations. I’m from Texas (which has a variety of accents within itself), and I say the ‘t’ in ‘often.’
And it seems you are attempting to “read” the words In your mind before saying them. This is great for spelling or reading to yourself. However, as I teach my children to read and spell, English has so many words that you can’t “sound out” and come up with the correct spelling.
Also, being identifiable as a non-native speaker is a gem. It gives character to your personality. It alludes to your intelligence for mastering another language or more. Plus, it provides a point of conversation when meeting new people. This could help advance a conversation beyond small talk, which I hear Europeans generally dislike. It’s our culture, go to the grocery store and strike up a conversation with someone and you could make their day.
You can learn to say the th sound. I had to learn it as an adult even though I am a native English speaker. I learnt from my singing teacher. I say often, not offen. First time I have ever heard offen. Please stick with often.
Zunächst einmal liebe ich deine Show und genau wie Dana habe ich Schwierigkeiten mit dem Satz "Ich erinnere mich" und mit dem Wort "Hören unter anderem” keep up the good work♥️
If it may help at all for pronouncing the vowel sound in “said”, “said” also rhymes with “dead” and “fed.” That being said, Trixie, I think you’re doing better than you think!
Hey, Trixie! Been away for awhile but so glad to see you still here! Attention is exactly correct, and to tell you the truth I'm not hearing the incorrectness in your pronunciation of any of the words. Also, don't forget that English was originally a Germanic language (with a hell of a lot of loan words). You're so adorable, thank you so much for being you! Always lifts the spirits.
*edit* A lot of us do say of-TEN. It's a regional thing.
I still struggle with the classics Eichhörnchen"" and "Kirche".
Sometimes even german people sound, when they are talking about "Kirche" as if they were talking about "Kirsche". I think it is the difference in dialects.
As an American listener, your pronunciation of "attention" is perfect and I see no issues. "Clothes" is a word that most native English speakers struggle with so it's not just you as a German. In America most people simply pronounce it like "Close" and let it be obvious from the context what they are referring to. I have always pronounced the "T" in often and in my experience about half the people in America do and about half don't. As your favorite "dirty old man" subscriber, I'll try to avoid any remarks about your blouse which I of course love, but much love to you sweetie! Liked and subscribed as always. Many thanks.
To this native English speaker, you absolutely *did* say "attention" and "body" correctly. So maybe to your own ear it *sounds* wrong and you're self-conscious of it. But I assure you, you said them right. 👍
Your pronunciation has gotten better from the last time I’ve visited this channel!
"See, a hag. Such a beautiful word!" :D
I always look forward to these. Trixie's linguist deep dive is so fascinating. Great video as always!
I'm confused. I feel like attention doesn't provide an indication of you being German. The pronunciation sounded regular
Maybe it's just in my head, but every time I use the word there's something that feels unsatisfying to me. :D
@@DontTrustTheRabbit It is *mostly* in your head. There is, if you listen *VEEERY* carefully there's a slight hint of… accent, but really, it's nothing to write home about.
I think that vocabulary is much more important then pronounciation. When talking to native english speakers, I never got a complaint because my pronounciation is not perfect. I remember, that in the first years I tried very hard to pronounce english like an American (although I learned British English in school, I mostly had to deal with Americans during my career), but later just stopped worrying, because nobody ever seemed to care.
Haha, at least in America, pronouncing “clothes” is closer to “close”, as in “close the door”. Emphasis on the “th” sound is unnecessary. The context is enough to differentiate “clothes” vs. “close”. You can almost always substitute the word “clothing”, but it can come across as too formal.
"We're gonna go to the mall to buy some clothing" ... You're right lol Sounds pretentious lol
Peace Ninja exactly, “clothing” is a word best set aside for poetry and snooty folks who are referring to their $1000 garments. We’re pretty allergic to pretentiousness. Articulating every consonant in informal contexts makes everyone around go “WTF!? I didn’t know we were polishing our pince-nez’s and monocles at the caviar shop!”.
Daniel Cody lol
Hallo Trixi.. I am U.S born but, I was raised by my Deutschen Grandparents when I was very Young.. But now that I am older, I have been told by my friends that I have a slight German Accent when speaking to them. Meaning that I still use the " V" sound when I say a word with the letter " W" in it; And I use the " F " sound when I say a word with the letter " V" in it. So It seems that, I too have the same problem trying to say even the most simple word in Englisch. lol.. I just want to thank you for your funny but, Informative Videos. And by the way, I love you Accent!!
Attention sounds perfect! Clothes is perfectly fine to say as "cloze", the th can be dropped as Dana said! Hug is a tricky one, i'm not entirely sure how to explain it, but you didnt sound much off at all. Body, you sounded great, like "bawdy" is how i say it and im native! Often is actually originally without the T, believe it or not, though i, among many others, perfer to say Oft-en with the T. Said, i didnt understand your struggle until you said Sat and Sad. I think of Said as Sed. Sat is more like S-AHHH THERES A MONSTER-T. Sad is the longer of the three, sad is almost the same as Sat, but think of that soft D, i know, its so difficult when you are used to the hard rigid D from German, but think of it like you are about to say the word "die" and that soft D will roll right out. "sa-die" then drop the ie and "sa-d" and then finally "sad". Great video Trixie! I'd love to see more things that we can help you with, alongside more vocabulary words? Maybe something around the B2-C1 level that can make us sound mmore native when its used often in sentences? Thanks, have a nice day :)
yep, as an amiercan i've _said_ "cloze" pretty _often._
Really? I'm pretty sure she is well past THAT point, and already knows HOW to pronounce these words. It's more about expressing her frustration with them when using them in conversation, and her "germanisms" slip out. Knowing how to pronounce something isn't the same as actually executing it flawlessly when you're speaking a second language.
Jakob Smith good thing I didn't make the list for you, but for her lol bye
I always thought of XOXO as hugs and kisses, but 'X" is the hug(crossed arms) and "O" is the kiss(pursed lips). As far as difficulties in making certain sounds, I find the German "R" tricky. I want to roll it at the tip of my tongue, like Spanish, instead of at the soft pallet. I am geting better, some days I get a good one and feel quite accomplished, but it is not consistent yet. I am still having a small struggle hearing the umlaut sounds in some plural words, specifically the ü in words like: Mütter und Brüder. This was a great video. Vielen Dank
My english words are: daughter, jewelry, thirty, Imatination, metal and thorough.
There is a Spanish word that I really struggle with: Perro. I have a hard time rolling "r's" when they are between vowels.
@@bretstauffer3923 - That's pretty much every time. R's always come before vowels. I can't think of a word where it doesn't.
I presume you meant 'imagination' there?
Moin Trixie, da war, der Sonntagmorgengruß von Trixie!
Ich hoffe, ihr habt Ostern genießen können.
Mit kleinen Kindern macht es ja doch auch in diesen Zeiten mehr Spaß, als mit einem großen Teenager.
Weiterhin alles Gute und immer genug Klopapier im Schrank! XD
I pronounce the "T" in "often"
With regards to the T in "often", it depends on which dialect of English you normally speak even within the larger groupings of "American" or "British" English, etc. That being said, I normally speak with a Western New England accent, and the swallowing in the T sound in the middle of words is very common. It will be fully voiced at the end of words however. When it is in the middle of words, it tends to come out quite like an H sound. For example, you would say "Please siT on the chairs over there", but "He is sihhin on the chairs over there". Also in this accent we tend not to voice the G at the end of a word.
Really highlights how much you need sound deadening equipment...
Great video!!! Long time ago I stopped worrying about my German accent. It shows where I am from. And why should a German accent not be justified as you see distinctive accents among native speakers? And who wanted to miss the German commercial with the guy from Italy: "...Isch 'abe gar kein Auto."? Or the french lady saying: "...die Bier, die so schön geprickelt 'at in meinem Bauchnabel"? Accents are wonderful. They tell where we are from. They should be appreciated. Did you ever listen to Dana saying "Bayerischer Rundfunk"? No German native speaker can do this more adorable as she does. You both shouldn't worry. A brilliant/awsome topic for a video though.
2:00 - Ä Tännschen! xD
Your pronunciation of "attention" sounded good to my American ears.
With "often", both pronunciations common in the US. I know I use both. Which one typically depends on the how stressed the word is in the sentence. I will usually drop the "t" in often when it is unstressed in the sentence.
In general in English, we are lazy speakers with our words, especially with hard consonants. For example many times a "t" will turn into a "d" when it is between vowels, in an unstressed syllable, or at the end of the word. Sometimes "t" becomes a glottal stop and isn't pronounced at all. In my region of the US, it is common for the "t" in "it" to be dropped completely and the word is just stopped sharply with a glottal stop. Most don't even realize that they're doing that. I only became aware of it when I was speaking to a German exchange student back in high school because he would make sure that he pronounced every consonant exactly, and I noticed he came across very stiff because of that.
Keep practicing because you are far better than you realize. Your accent has become very subtle and easy to miss without extended listening.
Your english sounds more 'British english' with a strange accent, not American. Be happy with that. I notice that your pronounciation changed a lot since you started this vlog. And your English speaking is way better then Danas Deutsche Sprache. Sorry Dana. Have a nice weekend.
*pronunciation.
Sorry. I don't do this, but this video IS about pronunciation, so I had to lol
@@SoumilSahu you are absolutely right. Can I blame Autocorrect Du-En?😁
Doesn't sound British to me. More neutral.
Dana's Deutsche Sprache is not good considering she has lived in Germany for 10 years.
She doesn't sound British to me except for some of her "o"s. Dana's German would sound a lot better if she could just get the "r"s right.
As a linguist, I have some advice on 3 of the words.
1. Often - pronouncing it with or without the T are both equally acceptable (but with the T is more correct)
2. Clothes is hard even for English speaker. It helps if you relax your mouth de-emphasize and shorten the end. Ironically, the less you try, the easier it is and the better it sounds
3 Attention - it helps to pronounce by splitting the end. Pronounce like attent-shin. This helps in 2 ways, 1 it simplifies the saying, 2 it is stronger and, interestingly enough, more attention getting
Hope this helps!
P.s. your pronunciation as a whole is great, just offering helps if you are curious and interested
Clothes? Just pronounce it like "close". I'm a native Midwestern American English speaker, and that's how we pronounce it.
If you could say it perfectly, you would lose your German accent, which is absolutely AWESOME!
I had a German friend who one time went to ask me to write down something. Her German came in and she said "remember this on paper". It seams that is the literal translation for German (I don't know any German). I thought it was one of the funniest things she'd ever said, and I loved it! I looked forward to when we worked the same shift at work. AWESOME! Don't change! These idiosyncrasies are very endearing.
"Germans don't like soft Ds"
I can't believe you didn't comment on that one.
That's what I was thinking too.
"Careful words may have sharp edges" could not stop laughing on this one. You are awesome!!!
Try saying "off-ten"and you got it!! There are so many regional accents in Britain that many words sounds very different. We do not have a "hooch deutsch" equivalent, but I suppose Oxford English is good enough.mThat being said Tixie you speak exceptionally clearly, much better than many english speakers!! Mervyn
I just started making videos in German (mother tongue is American-English) and someone shared your video with me to see the same struggle I have in the opposite direction! 😂 I don't want to say it makes me feel good to see you struggle, but I am going through the same with my German every video! The last biggest problem I was having was saying the difference between "Staat" and "Stadt" in my last video?? I hear no difference!! 😆 But I really would say that the words you were saying, particularly "attention" and "body" sounded 100% accent free (or American accent) perfect! 😊
I wonder if there are any german words that even germans struggle to pronounce?
Kind of. We have several words that many to most people pronounce differently, than they are written and meant to be pronounced.
For example: the letter ä is often pronounced as e. Mädchen -> Medchen (or as Heidi Klum says: Meeeeeeetchen), Käse -> Kese.
And 'er' in the end is often pronounced as a short, unstressed a. So hardly anyone says leiser, heiser, weiter, we say something mire along the line of leisa, heisa, weita.
But I guess those are examples for changes, that occur in a language over time, not actual instabilities to pronounce them?
I have so much trouble with Authentizität (authenticity)
As a matter of fact, when Trixi pronounced "Attention" I always understood "A tension". I also made a list of words which sound (at least to me) the same but have very different meanings:
meet- meat; their-there; for-four-fort; hear-here; flower-flour; steel-steal; wait-weight; hole-whole; night-knight; know-no; hour-our; peas-piece; spies-spice; rain-reign; plane-plain; one-won; deer-dear; beet-beat; sea-see; eyes-ice; rite-right; height-hate; steak-stake; mail-male; by-buy; morning-mourning; cite-site-sight; witch-which; break-brake; week-weak; daze-days; sell-cell; maize-maze; lead-led; core-corpse; whether-weather-wether; bear-bare; strife-strive; cattle-kettle; pane-pain; flesh-flash; pray-prey; wet-vet-whet; seem-seam; leaf-leave; decent-descent; hair-hare; heir-air;
Many are pronounced the same, BUT.... their-there; four-fort; peas-piece; spies-spice; eyes-ice; height-hate; witch-which; core-corpse; whether-weather; strife-strive; cattle-kettle; flesh-flash; wet-vet; leaf-leave; decent-descent; all have different sounds.
Stick with the British English way of saying things as it's closer to how your German mind wants things to sound 😊
My "german mind" want everything to sound american.
In fact, I'd love to have a nice strong NY accent ;-)
Agreed. I struggle a lot of with american r's at the end of the word, british "ah" instead of "errrrr" is so, so much easier to my poor german mind, haha
I've lived with a Welsch a Scott a Girl from Sheffield and another from Leeds...they all sounded differently. I has to train my ear for each accent.
I was going to suggest you could "cuddle" instead of "hug" but then latter in the video I saw you also struggle with the soft double "d". As an Australian mit deutsche Eltern (ex Hamburg & Leverkusen), I find your videos really interesting.
Attention, Trixie: you're saying it perfectly fine. Perfectly. No one is going to misunderstand you. There are more dialect variations than you can shake a stick at and your pronunciation is in line with the majority of native speakers. It's Dana that is actually in the minority with her pronunciation.
Body. Dana's pronunciation is really weird. Very American in the way she lengthens the O vowel. The solution is easy though: don't try to pronounce it the American way. Go for the British RP or a NZ or Australian pronunciation instead with a very short O.
Often. Dana's pronunciation is flat out wrong on that for it to be any Standard English. There's a T in there and she is completely suppressing it.
Here's a reference for the word often: dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/often
Actually the Oxford English Dictionary says the silent " t" is the majority but both are correct.
Dana's pronunciation of "body" is a bit weird to this American. Dialects are a thing. Brits have them too.
When I first took German in high school (some decades ago...) one of the very first things they pointed out was that Germans don't drop the "t" sound in the middle of words the way American's do. I still remember the example my German teacher used: at conversational speed, we usually pronounce "20" as "twenny" instead of "twenTy"...so "often" is usually pronounced "offen." It seems like in general German has lots of hard sounds that are like stops, or sharp turns, whereas in English (especially American English) pronunciation, anything that can be rounded off or worn down is. It's why we drop the "g" in "-ing" words, so "getting" becomes "gettin" (or even "get'n"), and so on... For "body," I would say that in American English "bawdy" is a homophone-that sounded closest. And I agree with others that your "attention" seemed fine... Oddly, to me when you said "clothes" it was the vowel that sounded a bit off, not the "thz" combination at the end. (PS: At full speed, Americans will often say something that's indistinguishable from "close.")
I don't know what to tell you about "said" except that it's not pronounced like it's spelled... A wild guess (totally unsupported by research) is that it may have originally been pronounced more like "say-id," (rhyming with "laid," "raid," etc.) but over centuries the diphthong got smoothed out to the short "e" sound it is today. Just remember that it rhymes with "red," "fed" and "led."
The gee in -ing is hyper-correction, anyway. The correct (historically) pronunciation is without it, and that's how native speakers often realize it, too.
That's bullshit. Leaving off the "g" is nonstandard. To leave off the "g" also changes the "i" sound. It's very noticeable. Yes, some people do it but it does have a lazy or uneducated association.
You can say those words you just struggle with Dana's accent.
Don't sweat on often. Just say "offen" like Possenhoffen.
Also women generally don't like a soft D...
Your English sounds great to me! "Attention" sounds perfect. We also say "cloze" -- rarely do people pronounce the "th." And you can say often with the "t" -- it's perfectly acceptable. I am a native English speaker teaching German, and my students always struggle with the "ch" sound. I sometimes have to stop and think about the difference between two similar sounding words, like Kirsche and Kirche and schwul and schwül (which is a pair I totally avoid!!) Thanks for you videos!
Speaking as an English person, Germans can say Often a lot better than Americans do. You should never drop your T.
I proudly drop my t !
“said” - If you can say “bed”, then just replace the “b” the an “s” then you have it!
You say “attention” perfectly! Stop worrying about it.
As far as “clothes”, the trick is to put your hand on your throat and feel the vibrations of your voice box. As you say “clothes” the vibrations in your voice box should last throughout the whole word. Then you know you have it right. It’s like the “th” in the word “there” as opposed to the “th” in “think”. The “Th” in “there” carries the vibrations in the voice box, while the “th” in “think” does not.
Try practicing with your hand on your throat. If you feel the vibrations throughout the whole word “clothes”, then you got it!
I love your accent! It is beautiful. Don’t worry about a thing. 😊
Stop trying to sound like an American. American English is not proper English
There is a proper American English, but you need 5 years of college to learn that. And it's literally like a whole nother language.
Bob Cooper Couldn’t agree more.
Thankfully my first English teacher was a stickler for pronunciation, which helped develop my ear for languages, as well as being subjected to different dialects in my childhood - moving from the Pottdeutsch to Hessegebabbel to Rheinisch to Plattdütsch, with other dialects on TV.
One of the things to factor in as far as American English is the location, for example, in Seattle they will pronounce the "T" in often and the word clothes is actually two syllables and when you pronounce it that way it's much easier and far more correct. That same word in Texas is pronounced quite differently. If you go spend time in the Pacific northwest you can hear English in a different way and you wont have these struggles.
I also think your "attention " pronunciation is spot on.
Hi, native Spanish speaker here. (Like your husband, if memory serves). I struggled with "clothes" as well. Learned to pronounce it by practicing "cloth" over and over first.
I understood you perfectly on all of those. No native English speaker would even tease you about them. And she’s right - many if not most Americans drop the th sound from clothes and just make it sound like “close”. In my high school German class, a short German word that many struggled with was der Zug. Putting a hard Z on the front was a struggle for many of us.
1. Attention was perfect
2. Clothes can be a tricky one but I guess just think of it as Clodz? Your O is a little too round, consistently. But still thumbs up for you.
3. Your Hug is fine. Don't overthink this one.
4. Body- think of Baden..."Bad-y"
5. Often - I know many people around me who both swallow the T and pronounce it
6. Said - I think I heard you say it ok.
I'm learning German now with Duolingo and the mechanics are so challenging. So we all struggle with something.
Attention: I say it ah-ten-chun. No sh.
Clothes: I say it cloz. I don't say the th.
Often: Although I do say "awfen", saying it "awften" is acceptable as well.
Spanish: Here is a word that I struggle with: Perro. It means dog. The "rr" is rolled. I struggle with "rr" between 2 vowels. It is very difficult for me. I feel your pain.
I love your video. And your English is absolutely fantastic!
I think there are so many regional differences in the way people say words that often it's the context of the word that would differentiate between sad said etc
Perfectionist! All you need is to realise that pronunciation by native speakers is so varied that your versions will be native to many. The best, most faultless, English I ever heard was by a German. So good, he could never pass as a native speaker. The clearest was by a Dorset man, born in the 1870s, who was almost unintelligible as he spoke a very broad "Darzett" dialect.
I had two german teachers at school, one was a man who had lived in germany for the first 12 years of his life (his dad was in the military and was posted there) and the other was a woman who had only visited germany,she was also irish with a pronounced northern irish accent, which also carried over into when she was speaking german.
the male teacher, who was fluent in german and some of the local dialects, never faulted my pronounciations as he said that they were spot on and that both the language and the pronounciations seemed to come naturally to me (he also said my accent when speaking german sounded like i was from somewhere, although i cannot remember which part of germany he said)
The female teacher, although she was quite good at teaching vocabulary, would penilise students for not having the same accented prounounciation as hers (ie. irish), and i dunno about you, but i dont think there are many irish accented native germans, lol.
Also, your pronounciation of "Body" (BoH-dee) is spot on compared to your friends american accented version (BaWW-Dee), so dont worry about it, same with "often" (Off-Ten), thats how its supposed to be said in English-English :)
Just to add, the female german teacher was also a french teacher, but her irish accent did not carry over to when she was speaking french.
I am a native English speaker, and I can’t pronounce any word with “ths” in it correctly. Months; clothes, cloths, moths, etc. it comes out like “tz” for me. It’s A common issue speakers from the New York and New Jersey area have. I was raised in New Jersey, but have lost most of that accent except for this one issue. I recently realized how difficult it is to say any TH combination at the end of a word while recording an out of office voicemail message.
You say attention perfect. The way Dana pronounces it is American English... American accent. I'm British and we say attention with the sound of 'shun' at the end. Good job
Hi Trixi,
just came across your channel and really laughed my sox off! I am a bilingual german / english. And I noticed another hard word for germans seems to be vest. Like Unterhemd. They usually say it like west. Or whether or not would be wetter or not. I do admitt, the V is a challenge!
Keep up your channel! Enjoyed your video (in this case pronounced wideoh) very (uery) much!
cheers, Charmaine
btw: british bilingual ;-)
It’s interesting because while I haven’t read anything formal on this, American T’s that occur in the middle of words will quite often shift from a strong T to a weaker D to simply a glottal stop. Sort of like letter becomes “ledder” or latter becomes “ladder” and in my accent mountain becomes “mou-in”. I think a similar thing happened in “often” but once it got to the point of the glottal stop there was really no good place to put it between the F and the I so it kinda got eaten by the two letters. However you’d be perfectly fine in saying /ˈɔftən/, many Americans will omit the T and not omit the T interchangeably depending on how much attenschen- I mean attention the word is given. Which I guess kinda makes it funny that you have to concentrate so hard.
Oh and I know it was a joke but the whole “swea” thing actually does happen in my accent. It’s that glottal stop I’ve been talking about. So to say “I sweat when I hike up the mountain” like a Utahn you’d say “I swea’ when I hike up the mou’in” where ‘ represents a glottal stop. I...blame the inbreeding!
It's kinda refreshing to hear someone else say often without the t. Everyone seems to say "off ten" instead of "off en"
Also, if you don't like soft D's, then you do not want to come to the Midwest. We often replace the Ts and Ds with a glottal. "I sa' down." The apostrophe representing a glottal in this case.
I off-en say off-en for off-ten
I think it depends on the native English speakers accent, pronouncing words like attention can sound quite different, I would recommend listening to the big seven and the way they say certain words and if you fit within that spectrum you are fine :) England, Scotland, U.S, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa (Wales and Ireland would just be for fun)
I can't pronounce words with the "u+umlaut" to save my life. Saying the word five / fuenf is a nightmare to me. And I started out as a German teacher. I learned something useful from a woman in one of my study groups in Germany. She had only studied the language for one year, but she spoke it anyway, cheerfully making so many mistakes, and the German natives we encountered loved her for her attitude and because she tried. I think you are doing a great job. Just do your best, and you'll be fine.
Thank you both for a fun video! It was a nice break from making German notecards to hang around my house 😂 I also have trouble with a lot of longer German words that go from soft to hard sounds or vice versa (or both lol). I can see how English has similar difficulties as well for German speakers. Hope you're all staying safe and have a great day! 😀