Anglophone Pronunciation of Foreign Languages - German

German

There are several German vowels that create problems for English speakers:

  • One of the most difficult is German /eː/ as it is further forward in the mouth than in varieties of Standard English so that speakers may pronounce German Geht as if it were English gate.
  • Similarly, /a/ is very similar to the accent of northern and central England. Hall (2003) suggests that the vowel in Southern British English hut is closest.
  • Most English speakers also have difficulty with the two sounds represented by ch in German, usually replacing them both with. /k/; they also have difficulty with the guttural r of most German dialects.
See also: German phonology

Read more about this topic:  Anglophone Pronunciation Of Foreign Languages

Famous quotes containing the word german:

    “How much atonement is enough? The bombing must be allowed as at least part-payment: those of our young people who are concerned about the moral problem posed by the Allied air offensive should at least consider the moral problem that would have been posed if the German civilian population had not suffered at all.”
    —Clive James (b. 1939)

    “Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.”
    —Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)

    “Reduced to a miserable mass level, the level of a Hitler, German Romanticism broke out into hysterical barbarism.”
    —Thomas Mann (1875–1955)