German sounds for KISS people
There are consequential differences between the French and the English languages:
- Unlike English the French language has no concept of variable vowel duration, and it's not explicitly taught at school from the beginning. No wonder why French people pronounce beach like bitch, sheet like shit, and so on.
- The syllables of all French words can be stressed or smoothed as much as the speaker wishes to, and that's one of French poetry trade mark. In English the words have a definite sound envelope, with a definite inflexion point that can't be tampered with or missed. And again, that is left to French pupils to suck it from their thumb.
- English accents all around the world are mostly based on the respective sounds of the vowels. I find there's no systematic quality in the different French accents. They mainly consist of variations in prosody and pronunciation of specific sounds such as [ɛ̃] that is found written as un, in, and ien [jɛ̃] as in chien (dog). But please don't take my word for it.
- The French verbs give a general picture that needs to be completed by other verbs, adverbs and adjectives in order to not leave too much space to the imagination of the recipient. In most cases, there's one English verb that can replace those long French constructs. Again, not taught at school, and so French people say/write "I went to work with my car / my push-bike, on foot" instead of "I drove to work, I biked..., I walked...". They also use two verbs when only one suffice.
- The way to express ideas is consequently different in both languages: English focuses on the verb and adds complements in a canonical order1, while French focuses on massaging the message through a creative verb group (described above) and a creative order of the different complements.
What about German?
I threw myself in the deep end nearly a year ago, and at long last I'm starting to be able to put words on my difficulties. That means I'm starting to solve them :)
- The consonants are much more used in German than in French and English, and it produces subtle differences that keep entertaining my interlocutors in the way French people entertain English speakers when they don't vary the duration of the vowels appropriately. Example: streicheln (to caress, to pet) and streichen (to paint – among others).
- At the same time, there are several consonants that are pronounced in the same way. As an example, the following words start with the sound [f] despite having a V and f / F as their first letter: der Vogel (the bird) [fo:gl] and der Flügel (the wing) [fly:gl] and flügeln (to move the wings) [fly:gl] and fliegen (to fly) [fli:gn̩].
- I really have a hard time with dealing with the semantic proximity and the partial phonetic similarity.
- But the real fun comes with die Vögel (the birds) [fø:gl] and vögeln (to have sex) [fø:gln]. As a consequence, at that point, when I try to say – birds fly with wings i.e. Vögel fliegen mit Flügeln – I end up saying something like – Having sex while flying with wings – or – birds fly while having sex –. When I try to say – birds move their wings i.e. Vögel flügeln – I end up saying something like – Birds have sex – or – Have sex moving wings. The look upon the face of my interlocutors tells me when they wrestle with what they just heard :)
- Countless words differ only by a L that is there or not or moves around, but this is not the only trickster for me. The ä, ö, ig/isch, st... provide me with plenty of fun too.
- This week-end I had the chance to hear a French speaker speak German. He has been married to a German lady for 40 years, he has all the vocabulary, he speaks fast, he was understood by his German counterparts, but... he sounded awfully French, and I got confirmation from native German speakers. That made me realise this is not where I want to be, so I asked my partner what I need to correct in order to sound German. She gave an example that I interpreted as: detach the syllables, boost the consonants. Well. That's a plan!
At that point, I feel more informed about the traps than I ever was, and I can tell I have started to build new neural pathways in order to make my mouth spit out just the right sounds in the right order. I wish someone had told me about all of that some 40 years ago. Hopefully these notes will help someone out there!
Final notes:
- Life is too short to waste time with bad dictionaries! I definitely recommend the following:
- I used the International Phonetic Alphabet for the sounds above. I find this link from TV Monde useful and helpful.
I'm sure this is not the end of my discoveries. I'll keep you posted.
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