Man, that's by far the best video on pronunciation I've ever watched in my life. It did not just help me with German, it actually helped me with French as well.
In the course VLC125 - you find all the information you need for a contrastive RP-German analysis. VLC135 ... RP vs. Arabic, 115 RP-vs. Spanish, more to come later in 2023, among them French.
It’s easy to match sounds with letters in German. The vowels are these (short/long): A is /a/ or /aː/ E is /ɛ/ or /eː/ I is /ɪ/ or /iː/ O is /ɔ/ or /oː/ U is /ʊ/ or /uː/ Ä is /ɛ/ or /ɛː/ Ö is /œ/ or /øː/ Ü is /ʏ/ or /yː/ Ps: short versions come before double consonants, “ck” and “tz”. The rest is long vowels
Perhaps you are interested in a really systematic account. Here is the complete German character-to-cound Playlist with mor than 60 videos from our channel "German as a foreign language": ua-cam.com/play/PLM9N2zvFTBQ-ZEbNEiOQh1mtYTQ9Ybk4a.html
In France, when you start learning German, teachers tell you there are only 3 diphtongs ( aɪ/ɔy/aʊ) so I pronounced /tir/ instead of /tiɐ/. But since I'm fluent in English, I've realized that the final "r" isn't said in German and sounds like a diphtong. "Here" sounds like "hier" even if the pronunciation is a little bit different !
+Lucie Lucianora Take this video ua-cam.com/video/qffJOKIYQyI/v-deo.html from our new channel "German as a Foreign Language" to practice the final "r" (which is essentially a low central vowel). ... and [ui] mainly in expletives is the 4th diphthong.
According to Siebs' stage pronunciation, standardized in 1898, the pronunciation of all German "r"-s is always alveolar trill "r"...like Spanish or Italian "r". Later appeared the so-called "Deutsche Hochsprache". Then, the rules are different for the pronunciation of "r". Singers, such as Heino, Roy Black and Lolita, sing German with Spanish "r" type. Actually, this is the real traditional German and Dutch "r" before vocalized "r" and American English "r" appeared in German and Dutch respectively. Long time ago, German and Dutch were considered to be one. Jonathan Swift in "Gulliver's Travels" (1726) called German and Dutch as High Dutch and Low Dutch respectively.
"Siebs' Deutsche Bühnenaussprache" has been employed as a model for the standard pronunciation of German in teaching and learning German as a foreign language in Indonesia as it is considered to be the only easy accent of German for Indonesians to speak. Indonesians have problem pronouncing several types of German "r" pronunciation and syllabic consonants. So, "die deutsche Bühnenaussprache" is the best here.
There have been two types of Standard German pronunciation: 1. "die deutsche Bühnenaussprache" (standardized by Theodor Siebs in 1898 under the order of the Emperor of Prussia at that time) and, 2. "Deutsche Hochsprache".
Hello Prof Handke! Is Standard Hochdeutsch non-rhotic to the same extent as modern RP? It seems so to me, but I'm not sure, as the R before consonants in some words, like "hart," is pronounced by some speakers and not by others, and in German pronunciation dictionaries, it's not only transcribed with the usual vocalic sound replacing R /ɐ̯/, but other times it's actually both pronounced and written in IPA transcriptions [haʁt], even in reputable dictionaries like the Duden. Is Hochdeutsch non-rhotic in a different way from modern RP, where you don't distinguish if the R comes after a long or short vowel, as between "Ohr" and "Herr"? Have you or will you also make a comparison of the sounds of German and Italian? 6) Do you offer lessons in German pronunciation/accent reduction, or could you recommend someone I could work with online? THANK YOU SO MUCH! LG
I disagree with some points. First of all the consonant [ʒ] should be included despite the fact that it occurs only in loanwords, since the standard pronunciation is indeed [ʒ] and not [ʃ]. Secondly, I don't think that "ui" should be counted as a valid diphthong since it only occurs in interjections. Finally I would like to mention that the distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants is rather a distinction between fortis and lenis including partial devoicing and aspiration.
7:42 I do know that the diphthong [ui] appears only in the interjection "pfui!". However, that interjection belongs to German. Meanwhile, interjection is one of the parts of speech. So, it is understood that the diphthong has been included in the sound system of Standard German. Initially, I thought "pfui!" was not the only [ui] in German. I thought "Duisburg" was also pronounced with an ui-sound. Later, I found that I was wrong. That German town's name should be pronounced as [ˈdyːsbʊrk], leaving "pfui!" the only ui-sound in the German language which I know.
Soweit ich weiß, kann das offene E sowohl kurz als auch lang ausgesprochen werden, oder? WÄHLEN klingt länger als WELLEN, nehme ich an. Und es geht nicht um /e:/, nicht wahr?
I have been counting multiple times and I always thought I missed one, but could it be that the chart actually only lists 23 consonants and that the /ç/ is missing. Or am I missing something? I see 6 plosives, 3 nasal (making 9), one trill (10), 4 affricates (14), 7 fricatives (21), one approximant (22), and one lateral approximant (23). Regardless, thank you so much for the video.
Although Standard German is clearly based on the East Middle German dialects, it is not identical with any one of them; it has accepted and standardized many forms from other areas, notably the Upper German sound pf (Pfund, Apfel) and also large numbers of individual words in the forms of other dialect areas. Because it is the only type of German taught in schools, its spoken form is based to a large extent on its written form; and the spoken form that carries the greatest prestige (that of stage, screen, radio, and so on) uses a largely Low German pronunciation of this written form. As a result, the spoken form of modern Standard German has often been aptly described as “High German with Low German sounds.” Source: German language - Encyclopaedia Britannica
I can't differentiate between the last two R posalveolar fricative and uvular trill one . I have spent about a week searching but I didn't get the difference :( .
The German phoneme /x/ has three allophones... after short back vowels, /x/ is not a velar but a uvular fricative, as in "Bach", "macht", "lachen", "Bucht", "mochte"...
In singing, the southern alveolar trill is more distinguishable than the other variants. It’s especially used in classical singing, which often takes place in larger acoustical environments like concert halls, churches etc. where the southern trill is easier to hear. It’s not so much a thing in German pop music, though.
@@albedoshader Also if singing classical music velar/uvular sounds are much more challenging to articulate without disrupting legato and continuity of tone production - and can be ugly.
What you said about the vowels in "gebe" and "gaebe" doesn't make sense. If people distinguish them, then clearly have 2 vowels. Did you mean that they only distinguish them in careful speech or for disambiguation? That is what Wikipedia says.
Ich gebe [ 'ge:bə ] = 1.SG.PRES.IND (engl. I give); Ich gäbe [ 'gɛ:bə ] 1.SG.PRES.SUBJT. (I 'would' give). Or take Bären (engl. bears) vs. Beeren (engl. berries). When the two vowels are merged, we have two homophones. Similar case in North American English: the low back merger: ua-cam.com/video/UEEIUbMWECQ/v-deo.html
Yes you will, but you will sound strange. Here is the rule from ua-cam.com/video/A-HBxeeIOOw/v-deo.html in our video channel German as a Foreign Language.
Occasionally in meaning, between short and long umlaut vowels? (I'm guessing, since I'm not a native German speaker, I'm a native English speaker.) For example, I remember a Masterclass in London, hearing Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (German classical singer) drilling, then eventually murdering, a British singer trying to get him to hear and repeat the difference in the vowel between füllen and fühlen ... makes a difference if you want someone to fill your heart or feel it!
Ich finde schwer Wörter wie Beethoven oder Knoblauch zu sagen. Die Entonation von Beethoven und die "Kn" finde ich schwer. Auch der "J" da meine Muttersprache Spanisch ist.
Ich mag deine Aussprache des Englischen... Du hast natürlich einen deutschen Akzent, aber dir ist das scheißegal, du stehst einfach dazu. Und man hört bei dir auch heraus, dass du genug über Phonetik weißt, um deinen Akzent stärker der Aussprache eines Muttersprachlers anzugleichen, aber dir geht es in erster Linie darum, verstanden zu werden, ohne dass du dich übermäßig anstrengen musst, um wie ein Muttersprachler zu klingen. Respekt dafür.
Herr is usually not used in an isolated fashion without an article-unlike in English, where you say “See you soon, sir!” An acceptable form of addressing someone whose last name you don’t know would be “Auf wiedersehen, der Herr.”, although it would be more common to just say “Auf wiedersehen.” Herr in the sense of “Mr.” is only used in combination with the last name, like “Herr Schmidt.”
Man, that's by far the best video on pronunciation I've ever watched in my life. It did not just help me with German, it actually helped me with French as well.
In the course VLC125 - you find all the information you need for a contrastive RP-German analysis. VLC135 ... RP vs. Arabic, 115 RP-vs. Spanish, more to come later in 2023, among them French.
It’s easy to match sounds with letters in German. The vowels are these (short/long):
A is /a/ or /aː/
E is /ɛ/ or /eː/
I is /ɪ/ or /iː/
O is /ɔ/ or /oː/
U is /ʊ/ or /uː/
Ä is /ɛ/ or /ɛː/
Ö is /œ/ or /øː/
Ü is /ʏ/ or /yː/
Ps: short versions come before double consonants, “ck” and “tz”. The rest is long vowels
Perhaps you are interested in a really systematic account. Here is the complete German character-to-cound Playlist with mor than 60 videos from our channel "German as a foreign language": ua-cam.com/play/PLM9N2zvFTBQ-ZEbNEiOQh1mtYTQ9Ybk4a.html
The Virtual Linguistics Campus thank you so much!
8:12 Consonant manner of articulation animation of your tongue movement. Very helpful.
I love your lectures and style. Keep it up. Vowel length is terribly diffecult for Englishers. Danke Schön!
This was quite useful. Thank you, Professor.
you didn't mention how [ç] is also an allophone of 'g' (as in the final position as in the word "richtig" or "zwanzig")
[x] vs [ç]: the former occuring before "u, o, a, au", the latter before "e, i, ei, eu, äu, y". For example:
das Buch [buːx] - die Bücher [ˈbyːçər]
"zwanzig"
German German: [ˈtsvantsɪç]
Austrian German: [ˈtsvantsik]
Swiss German: [cwancik]
In France, when you start learning German, teachers tell you there are only 3 diphtongs ( aɪ/ɔy/aʊ) so I pronounced /tir/ instead of /tiɐ/. But since I'm fluent in English, I've realized that the final "r" isn't said in German and sounds like a diphtong. "Here" sounds like "hier" even if the pronunciation is a little bit different !
+Lucie Lucianora Take this video ua-cam.com/video/qffJOKIYQyI/v-deo.html from our new channel "German as a Foreign Language" to practice the final "r" (which is essentially a low central vowel). ... and [ui] mainly in expletives is the 4th diphthong.
According to Siebs' stage pronunciation, standardized in 1898, the pronunciation of all German "r"-s is always alveolar trill "r"...like Spanish or Italian "r". Later appeared the so-called "Deutsche Hochsprache". Then, the rules are different for the pronunciation of "r". Singers, such as Heino, Roy Black and Lolita, sing German with Spanish "r" type. Actually, this is the real traditional German and Dutch "r" before vocalized "r" and American English "r" appeared in German and Dutch respectively. Long time ago, German and Dutch were considered to be one. Jonathan Swift in "Gulliver's Travels" (1726) called German and Dutch as High Dutch and Low Dutch respectively.
This German man's English is perfect. It's outstanding. One can tell that he THINKS in English.
"Siebs' Deutsche Bühnenaussprache" has been employed as a model for the standard pronunciation of German in teaching and learning German as a foreign language in Indonesia as it is considered to be the only easy accent of German for Indonesians to speak. Indonesians have problem pronouncing several types of German "r" pronunciation and syllabic consonants. So, "die deutsche Bühnenaussprache" is the best here.
Incredibly awesome content! Thank you very much! Danke schon!
There have been two types of Standard German pronunciation:
1. "die deutsche Bühnenaussprache" (standardized by Theodor Siebs in 1898 under the order of the Emperor of Prussia at that time) and,
2. "Deutsche Hochsprache".
My spanish ears have some trouble distinguishing long e and long i :/
Me pasa lo mismo :(
This video is everything I wanted!!
This was fascinating and clear.
Hello Prof Handke! Is Standard Hochdeutsch non-rhotic to the same extent as modern RP? It seems so to me, but I'm not sure, as the R before consonants in some words, like "hart," is pronounced by some speakers and not by others, and in German pronunciation dictionaries, it's not only transcribed with the usual vocalic sound replacing R /ɐ̯/, but other times it's actually both pronounced and written in IPA transcriptions [haʁt], even in reputable dictionaries like the Duden. Is Hochdeutsch non-rhotic in a different way from modern RP, where you don't distinguish if the R comes after a long or short vowel, as between "Ohr" and "Herr"? Have you or will you also make a comparison of the sounds of German and Italian? 6) Do you offer lessons in German pronunciation/accent reduction, or could you recommend someone I could work with online? THANK YOU SO MUCH! LG
haɐt, haɣt are in free variation, haχt is a local variant.
I disagree with some points. First of all the consonant [ʒ] should be included despite the fact that it occurs only in loanwords, since the standard pronunciation is indeed [ʒ] and not [ʃ]. Secondly, I don't think that "ui" should be counted as a valid diphthong since it only occurs in interjections. Finally I would like to mention that the distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants is rather a distinction between fortis and lenis including partial devoicing and aspiration.
7:42 I do know that the diphthong [ui] appears only in the interjection "pfui!". However, that interjection belongs to German. Meanwhile, interjection is one of the parts of speech. So, it is understood that the diphthong has been included in the sound system of Standard German. Initially, I thought "pfui!" was not the only [ui] in German. I thought "Duisburg" was also pronounced with an ui-sound. Later, I found that I was wrong. That German town's name should be pronounced as [ˈdyːsbʊrk], leaving "pfui!" the only ui-sound in the German language which I know.
@@receivedSE There's also "hui", "ui". "Ruhig" is also essentially this most times, really.
❤ ΕΥΧΑΡΙΣΤΏ Από την Αθήνα 🎉
Soweit ich weiß, kann das offene E sowohl kurz als auch lang ausgesprochen werden, oder?
WÄHLEN klingt länger als WELLEN, nehme ich an. Und es geht nicht um /e:/, nicht wahr?
Ich lerne Deutsch. Sehr Anfänger. Ich hätte gern Beispiele für die drei frontalen oberen Diphthonge gesehen. Vielen danke.
I have been counting multiple times and I always thought I missed one, but could it be that the chart actually only lists 23 consonants and that the /ç/ is missing. Or am I missing something? I see 6 plosives, 3 nasal (making 9), one trill (10), 4 affricates (14), 7 fricatives (21), one approximant (22), and one lateral approximant (23).
Regardless, thank you so much for the video.
Don't "Uhr" and "nur" contain a diphthong /uɐ/?
Although Standard German is clearly based on the East Middle German dialects, it is not identical with any one of them; it has accepted and standardized many forms from other areas, notably the Upper German sound pf (Pfund, Apfel) and also large numbers of individual words in the forms of other dialect areas. Because it is the only type of German taught in schools, its spoken form is based to a large extent on its written form; and the spoken form that carries the greatest prestige (that of stage, screen, radio, and so on) uses a largely Low German pronunciation of this written form. As a result, the spoken form of modern Standard German has often been aptly described as “High German with Low German sounds.”
Source:
German language - Encyclopaedia Britannica
I can't differentiate between the last two R posalveolar fricative and uvular trill one . I have spent about a week searching but I didn't get the difference :( .
Amazing. Hertzlich danke
The German phoneme /x/ has three allophones... after short back vowels, /x/ is not a velar but a uvular fricative, as in "Bach", "macht", "lachen", "Bucht", "mochte"...
Yes, but in free variation.
gut gemacht!
gibt es auf deutsch?
Danke sehr
Is there a reason why singers use the southern R?
In singing, the southern alveolar trill is more distinguishable than the other variants. It’s especially used in classical singing, which often takes place in larger acoustical environments like concert halls, churches etc. where the southern trill is easier to hear.
It’s not so much a thing in German pop music, though.
@@albedoshader Also if singing classical music velar/uvular sounds are much more challenging to articulate without disrupting legato and continuity of tone production - and can be ugly.
@@KawenaGD You’re absolutely right about that!
What you said about the vowels in "gebe" and "gaebe" doesn't make sense. If people distinguish them, then clearly have 2 vowels. Did you mean that they only distinguish them in careful speech or for disambiguation? That is what Wikipedia says.
Ich gebe [ 'ge:bə ] = 1.SG.PRES.IND (engl. I give); Ich gäbe [ 'gɛ:bə ] 1.SG.PRES.SUBJT. (I 'would' give). Or take Bären (engl. bears) vs. Beeren (engl. berries). When the two vowels are merged, we have two homophones. Similar case in North American English: the low back merger: ua-cam.com/video/UEEIUbMWECQ/v-deo.html
If I confuse "øː" with "œ", will I be understood?
Yes you will, but you will sound strange. Here is the rule from ua-cam.com/video/A-HBxeeIOOw/v-deo.html in our video channel German as a Foreign Language.
All right, thank you.
And here is a (rare) minimal pair: Röschen (eng. little rose, long ö), Rösschen (eng. little horse, short ö)
Occasionally in meaning, between short and long umlaut vowels? (I'm guessing, since I'm not a native German speaker, I'm a native English speaker.) For example, I remember a Masterclass in London, hearing Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (German classical singer) drilling, then eventually murdering, a British singer trying to get him to hear and repeat the difference in the vowel between füllen and fühlen ... makes a difference if you want someone to fill your heart or feel it!
@@KawenaGD Don't worry, learned the difference. Is ez.
brilliant!
Ich finde schwer Wörter wie Beethoven oder Knoblauch zu sagen. Die Entonation von Beethoven und die "Kn" finde ich schwer. Auch der "J" da meine Muttersprache Spanisch ist.
Ich mag deine Aussprache des Englischen... Du hast natürlich einen deutschen Akzent, aber dir ist das scheißegal, du stehst einfach dazu. Und man hört bei dir auch heraus, dass du genug über Phonetik weißt, um deinen Akzent stärker der Aussprache eines Muttersprachlers anzugleichen, aber dir geht es in erster Linie darum, verstanden zu werden, ohne dass du dich übermäßig anstrengen musst, um wie ein Muttersprachler zu klingen.
Respekt dafür.
auf wiedersehen Herr
Herr is usually not used in an isolated fashion without an article-unlike in English, where you say “See you soon, sir!”
An acceptable form of addressing someone whose last name you don’t know would be “Auf wiedersehen, der Herr.”, although it would be more common to just say “Auf wiedersehen.”
Herr in the sense of “Mr.” is only used in combination with the last name, like “Herr Schmidt.”
seit drei jahren lerne ich deutsch. ich wuerde sagen, dass mein deutsch gut genug ist. trotzdem habe ich immer noch probleme mit dem deutschen "r"
+Keaton Williams It's exactly the same as in french. Pronounce German "G"s (as in "Gold") as quickly as You can - and You got the "R"
verstehe nicht viel englisch, oder zumindest auf deutsch untertitelt??
Cesar Garcia no seas payaso