Rob Harris Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5055 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, German
| Message 1 of 8 15 August 2010 at 11:43pm | IP Logged |
Hello all.
After having seen the learned advice and gentle criticism directed at schoenewaelder's recording of himself speaking German, I wondered if anyone would be so kind as to listen to my effort below. It's the first paragraph of the article on the Grundgesetz in the German wikipedia.
I personally think my 'R' sounds and 'CH' sounds are a bit harsh. Not sure about my prosody either.
http://www.rharris.ukfsn.org/grundgesetz.mp3
I'll be grateful for any criticisms you might choose to level. Please, don't hold back.
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LangOfChildren Tetraglot Groupie Germany Joined 5214 days ago 82 posts - 141 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Swedish Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai, Russian
| Message 2 of 8 16 August 2010 at 1:04pm | IP Logged |
For some reason, the voume is quite low for me, but your pronunciation seems quite clear to me.
You mispronounced "Rechte" using the wrong ch-sound. After e it is always pronounced as in "ich".
Other than that, I couldn't really find anything, but I have to say that a louder and preferably longer recording would be better. Try recording a longer passage and I'll be sure to listen to it and pay more attention, but in this recoring I couldn't here much, even though my speakers were turned all the way up. (maybe a problem on my side).
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Derian Triglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5095 days ago 227 posts - 464 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Czech, French, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 3 of 8 16 August 2010 at 1:34pm | IP Logged |
Hi, Rob.
(Yeah, the volume is indeed extremely low.)
I must say your pronounciation is very good, if not excellent (mind that I'm not a native speaker though). With the only major problem being the 'ch' sounds, especially the soft one, which you didn't use where they were due (e.g. Rechte, Gerichte).
Your 'R's worked well in words like "gRund", "besondeRs". But there was one problem - it appeared to me, that if a word like "grund" is followed by a word containing a hard "ch" sound, then you have trouble with it [with the "ch"], because you then seem to apply the same technique you make the 'R' sound with (which is kind of a guttural sound), so this "ch" becomes very guttural (like in Dutch) as if, in fact, you were trying to make an 'R'.
To fix this, I just came up with something for you to practice on. Which will also explain my point better.
Practice these two sequences of words:
1. "Grund Runde"
2. "Grund Hunde"
Your aim is for them not to sound the same.
Edited by Derian on 16 August 2010 at 1:35pm
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Rob Harris Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5055 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, German
| Message 4 of 8 16 August 2010 at 8:49pm | IP Logged |
That's a little better than I expected.. Thanks everyone! Apparently all those hours listening to podcasts and dubs of HBO's Rome paid off at least a little.
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Rob Harris Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5055 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, German
| Message 5 of 8 20 August 2010 at 6:00pm | IP Logged |
OK. Here is my second attempt. AFAICT the volume is OK.
http://www.rharris.ukfsn.org/House.mp3
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Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5107 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English
| Message 6 of 8 20 August 2010 at 6:57pm | IP Logged |
I listened to it several times and at first I thought that I was listening to a speech synthesizer, because the sentence melody is very flat and somewhat monotonous.
The pronunciation itself is pretty good, except for the the "ch" and the "r", which sometimes sound a bit too rough for my taste. You also sometimes pronounce vowels either too short or too long.
Other than that you did a pretty good job.
Edited by Doitsujin on 20 August 2010 at 6:58pm
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schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5347 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 7 of 8 21 August 2010 at 2:36am | IP Logged |
I thought the melody was pretty good. I'm English, but I thought English and German tended to be quite similar in this respect.
Well, you know my level so these might be my mishearing, but I think it's often easier to hear errors in other peoples pronounciation than your own, so:
Ablauf: sounded like "Aublauf"
Untergeben: sounded a bit "Unvergeben"
dieser: sounded like "der sehr"
durch: Question for the natives. The dictionary says it's pronounced like it's spelled, but to me it always sounds as if it's pronounce more like "deuch"
I think you had the microphone a bit close to your mouth, there were quite a few puff/distortion noises. Although your first recording was really very very quiet, it was quite good sound quality, so once it had been amplified up, it was quite clear to hear.
Edited by schoenewaelder on 21 August 2010 at 2:37am
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Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5553 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin
| Message 8 of 8 21 August 2010 at 4:55am | IP Logged |
'durch' has vowelized r and [ç] (unless you speak an Upper German dialect like Bavarian.)
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