Libby ([info]invinciblend) wrote in [info]linguaphiles,
@ 2008-11-30 21:47:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend  Next Entry
Entry tags:german, pronunciation

German pronunciation
After a brief look through the German tags I couldn't find this, but I'm sorry if this is a very obvious question.

Listening to various German speakers I've noticed what I assume is a dialect difference in the pronunciation of 'ch'. German-speaking members of my family (some of whom learnt it at school and others who learnt it while living in Eastern Europe) pronounce it the way I always thought, as a /k/ or /x/. However a number of singers (including Nena) and a choir teacher at school, who has studied modern and literary German, pronounce it closer to a /ʃ/.

So is this just a difference between dialects or is it an issue of personal pronunciation? If you speak German, which pronunciation do you favour?


(21 comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]bevived
2008-11-30 01:10 pm UTC (link)
First off, the ch after an e and i is pronounced differently from after a, o and u. The one after a, o and u is /x/, the one that doesn't follow after a a, o, u, such as after e and i is /ç/. Neither is pronounced like a /k/ or a /ʃ/ in standard German. Some regional dialects do this, though (Berlin dialect, Swabian, Bavarian, Hessian, ...). I personally try to speak 'proper' (standard) German, but I am Bavarian, so it can happen that I say /k/ in Chemie instead of /ç/.
In the end this is not due to personal pronunciation but due to regional variation. And even when you speak dialect, you cannot simply say all /ç/s are pronounced like /k/ but it depends on the context (whether it is at the beginning of a word, in the middle, or end, etc).

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]invinciblend
2008-11-30 01:13 pm UTC (link)
Ah, thank you! I never realised that the pronunciation depended on where the letter fell, so where it would be said /ç/ I must have assumed it was a "sch" or similar.

How do you say "Kirche" then? The people I know are split basically half-half between the "ch" being a /ç/ and a /x/.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]bevived
2008-11-30 01:15 pm UTC (link)
Standard German would be /ç/ (what I would say), but some people pronounce it like /x/ and some like /ʃ/ (depending on dialect).

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]invinciblend
2008-11-30 01:17 pm UTC (link)
Right. Thanks a lot for your help. :)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]pne
2008-11-30 01:17 pm UTC (link)
The one after a, o and u is /x/

More like a /χ/ for me (uvular, rather than velar, i.e. further back in the mouth).

And yes, some areas merge /ç/ into /ʃ/, so "Kirche" (church) and "Kirsche" (cherry) sound the same for them. Occasionally, speakers of such varieties of German will have hypercorrections when they try to speak standard German, so you might hear "fricher Fich" instead of "frischer Fisch" for "fresh fish".

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]bwillsouth
2008-12-01 12:15 am UTC (link)
Do you have any examples of dialects that make this merger?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]anicca_anicca
2008-12-01 05:33 pm UTC (link)
In Berlin regiolect, Kirche and Kirsche tend to sound alike, with the vowel going more towards "ü".

In some variants of Palatinate (?) dialects, people have a hard time pronouncing "ch" and make it "sch" more or less all the time.
"Isch geh in die Kersch" ("Ich gehe in die Kirche")
"Isch ess die Kersche" ("Ich esse die Kirschen")

Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl was/is a famous example of overcorrecting this by prounouncing "sch" like "ch". "Zwichen", not "zwischen", for instance. Whether it really was an overcorrection or just a speech impediment, I can't really say.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]iloveyouohno
2008-11-30 02:47 pm UTC (link)
Just as a note, if the A, O, or U has an Umlaut over it, the CH is also pronounced /ç/.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]the_koira
2008-11-30 01:12 pm UTC (link)
Yes, this depends a lot on the dialect you speak.

But there are also two different ways to pronounce 'ch', depending on whether it follows a front vowel like e, i, or a back vowel like a, o, u.
Look what wiki has to say:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_phonology#Ich-Laut_and_ach-Laut

I think the pronounciation of the second one, /x/, is the same pretty much everywhere. The first one depends on the region. I have a very very northern dialect and my 'ch' sounds like a hissing cat, but much softer. In my dialect, this sound also replaces 'g' in word endings like 'richtig' or 'Weg'.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]muckefuck
2008-11-30 06:57 pm UTC (link)
Discussing this with others before, we've found there's some variation in whether /x/ is realised as [x] or [χ]. I think the normative rule is /x/ -> [χ] | a_, but I've definitely heard speakers who have [x] everywhere and others who have [χ] in more positions than just that. (I fall in the latter camp myself, but I'm non-native.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]iloveyouohno
2008-11-30 02:45 pm UTC (link)
I wrote an answer to this question in another community once that I still think explains the difference well. Pardon the unscientific descriptions, as the OP had presumably no knowledge of phonetics.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]invinciblend
2008-12-01 08:19 am UTC (link)
Wow, that's great! Thanks.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]bernmarx
2008-11-30 03:57 pm UTC (link)
The explanations here are pretty good, but I have a rant on the subject. :D

This is one of several reasons why I think that linguistics, at least phonology, should be a standard course in Freshman High School before any language courses. The phoneme in question, /ç/, doesn't exist in English, so German teachers (in the US at least... dunno where you're from) teach pronunciation based on the closest available sound. The thing is, that depends on how much work the German teacher wants to put into explaining articulation, and what sounds are available. That is, the teacher could try to explain the low-incidence /x/ ("loch, Bach"), or they could just go with "It sounds sorta like 'k' in these places and 'sh' in these other places." Or the teacher could get really ambitious and explain it properly, which would lead to most students getting befuddled.

Most just go with "it's close to...." So those of us who care about proper pronunciation are left with partially fossilized flawed phoneme sets.

See also: French "r." ;)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]muckefuck
2008-11-30 07:00 pm UTC (link)
The phoneme (if, indeed, /ç/ does have phonemic status in German, which is debatable) doesn't exist in English, but the phone does. I've had success teaching [ç] to English speakers by pointing out that it's the initial sound in words like hue and humour, so the only trick is get themselves to produce it finally as well as initially.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]mameluke
2008-11-30 08:44 pm UTC (link)
That's tough. A lot of people pronounce "humor" as [ju]mor, although "hue" has a much higher incident of an initial [ç].

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]muckefuck
2008-11-30 11:00 pm UTC (link)
In Britain, you mean? Because I've only known a single speaker of American English who did. She was one of my elementary school teachers. It was so distinctive, that it (along with "crick" and "dunkey") was one of things we make jokes about behind her back.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]felixdiecat
2008-11-30 06:38 pm UTC (link)
It's basically a difference of dialects. I've studied German for a couple years now, and I typically pronounce the "ch" as (I don't know how to write this phonetically, but like the "ch" is pronounced in Hebrew, the "throat-clearing" sound).

That's just me. :)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]invinciblend
2008-12-01 08:28 am UTC (link)
Now I'll have to find out where exactly my grandparents were living in Europe to see what dialect/s of German they may have been exposed to... :P

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]buckfush530
2008-11-30 10:13 pm UTC (link)
Saarlandisch has /ʃ/ where Hoch Deutsch has either /ʃ/ or /x/ (both ich-laut ([ç]) and ach-laut ([x])). A few other dialects do this also.

Sudentenlandisch has [x] or [ç] for word final /k/ in Hoch Deutsch (Honik and Zwazik are pronounced as if they were Honich and Zwanzich).

I learned German (theoretically Hoch Deutsch) from a mixture of speakers of those two dialects, so I sporadically use both of those changes. I use the Sudentenlandisch change by default, but react against the Saarlandisch change because it sounds too American. :D

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]muckefuck
2008-11-30 11:24 pm UTC (link)
That may be word-final [k], but it's not word-final /k/, viz. the inflected forms [ho:nɪgə] "honeys" and ['t͡svant͡sɪgɐ] "Twenties", not *[ho:nɪkə] and *['t͡svant͡sɪkɐ].[*] [ç] as a realisation of /g/ after /i/ word-finally isn't even dialectal, it's normative (although it does have its origins in the dialects of northern Germany). Note that this sort of allophony even leads to hypercorrection among Northerners, e.g. nonstandard ['tʰɛpʰɪgə] as the plural of Teppich "carpet".

[*] Unless you're proposing some kind of medial voicing rule, and then you're stuck explaining why the plural of ['pʰa:nɪkʰ] is ['pʰa:nɪkʰŋ̩] rather than *['pʰa:nɪgŋ̩] or a man who studied ['ɔptʰɪkʰ] is an ['ɔptʰɪkʰɐ] rather than an *['ɔptʰɪgɐ]

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]bwillsouth
2008-12-01 12:21 am UTC (link)
My particular brand of El-Two German favors g > C / _# for some reason, so in the past I've even caught myself pluralizing Teppich as Teppige.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(21 comments) - (Post a new comment)

Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…