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Blog article: German: ä eh pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 1 of 9 12 October 2012 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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John Wells' blog is a recent discovery to me, thanks to finding a link here in an old posting. It obviously won't be new to a lot of other people here though.
Going through it, I found a fascinating article about pronunciation issues in German to do with words containing "ä" or "eh", and [e] versus [ɛ]. Fascinating for me as I'm always hoping to improve my German pronunciation, and also recently having had a discussion here about how to represent the short English "e" ([e] versus [ɛ] again). John Wells on ä pronunciation (please don't shoot me; I'm only the messenger in this case) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5132 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 2 of 9 12 October 2012 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me, Mär vs. Meer, Sänfte vs. Senf, Bälle vs. bellen, Bären vs. Beeren, sähen vs. sehen, clearly sound different. I
grew up in Southern Germany, though, and have had little exposure to the Northern variety. A friend of mine is from Poland, and she can't pronounce the e properly, which immediately marks here as a non-native speaker, much to her chagrin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4670 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 3 of 9 12 October 2012 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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For the map of two E's see the page 6 of this pdf file: http://pub.ids-mannheim.de/laufend/sprachreport/pdf/sr11-2a. pdf 1. the contrast is robust in Southern Germany, Western Germany and in Switzerland 2. the merger is prevalent in Northern Germany, Eastern Germany, and in Austria 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pinutzz Diglot Newbie Switzerland Joined 4517 days ago 6 posts - 16 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Spanish, Cantonese | Message 4 of 9 13 October 2012 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am a German native speaker who grew up in Western Germany and from what people tell me I don't have any regional accent (so far nobody has been able to guess where I am from correctly).
I can only pick out a difference between ä and e in long vowels (Mär vs. Meer, Bären vs. Beeren, sähen vs. sehen) while for short vowels the sound is the same (Sänfte vs. Senf, Bälle vs. bellen). Interesting to see that even natives don't agree on that topic. I am surprised that the southern dialects have a distinction on the short vowels as well, Bakunin. I am currently living in Switzerland - will definitely pay attention to how the Swiss pronounce those sounds during the next couple of days... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 5 of 9 13 October 2012 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Pinutzz,
One of the issues that we non-native speakers of (or learners of) German is knowing which are the long vowels and which aren't. Sometimes there are clues, but others we just have to learn, it seems. On a slightly different issue, I recently had my pronunciation corrected by someone who appears to speak German well, but is not a native speaker in the normal sense of the word (complicated history), but I'll accept that hers is closer to native than mine is! It was the syllable ".ang" in words like "Untergang" "Gesang". She seemed to want to make them a bit like English "gong" (maybe not quite so far back), where I was making it more forward like British English "gang" as in "gang of thieves". (Sorry, I cannot reliably produce th IPA). This was for a piece of poetry spoken out loud, so she might have been using "theatrical pronunciation" - she has had some stage training in the Steiner method. I listened to one of my audiobooks (spoken by Gert Westphal), and I didn't think my version was far off his for similar words, but it's hard to be sure. I didn't actually think my pronunciation was far off hers, but she obviously did. The strange thing to me is I can't reconcile pronunciations like the famous "Happy End" (sounding a bit like "Heppi End"), with this "gong"-like "Gang". Maybe that's a vowel-length thing? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pinutzz Diglot Newbie Switzerland Joined 4517 days ago 6 posts - 16 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Spanish, Cantonese | Message 6 of 9 13 October 2012 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I pronounce words ending in -ang the a is VERY short and somewhere between a "schwa" and a normal length "a". I think your friend is right - it sounds more like "gong" than "gang" - but pronouncing it with a German "o" would be totally wrong. I hope that helps.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5132 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 7 of 9 13 October 2012 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Pinutzz, I don't really speak a Southern dialect, my parents are from Eastern Germany. It's more like standard
German with a slight Southern hue. On the issue of short ä vs. e, I hope that I don't fool myself when claiming that there's a difference. The difference is subtle, but consistent and clear. I tested a few more word pairs like schenken - die Schänke, Kälte - Kelte, Männer - Menstruation, Erker - Ärger (is that short? not sure...). When I look at myself in the mirror pronouncing those words, I see that I move my mouth differently, and I also feel that when I pay attention. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pinutzz Diglot Newbie Switzerland Joined 4517 days ago 6 posts - 16 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Spanish, Cantonese | Message 8 of 9 13 October 2012 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, quoting Wikipedia on German phonology:
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