Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
8 German Words You'll Struggle To Pronounce
Topic Started: Jul 16 2016, 05:50 AM (120 Views)
Klaus
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-to-pronounce-these-tricky-german-words-perfectly

I found that interesting because I'd never have guessed that these words are particularly tricky to pronounce.

In general, I don't understand why people find compound nouns so scary. In other languages, you'd use a space in between and we do not, but that's hardly a significant difference.

We Germans, on the other hand, struggle with much simpler things in foreign languages, such as the English "th", or saying "Barcelona".

Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
I struggle with not punching non-Catalans in the face who insist on pronouncing "Barcelona" with a "th" sound.

Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Aqua Letifer
Member Avatar
ZOOOOOM!
We do compound nouns, too, Klaus, we just think we don't. Dry-cleaning, firefly, toothpaste, blackboard, etc. We compound other parts of speech, too: output, overthrow, fuckup, etc.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
LWpianistin
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
That kind of thing was the hardest for me to learn, but I think I do well enough with pronouncing umlauts. The compound nouns are straightforward if you know the individual words or grouping of letters (like -chen) and how to pronounce them. Just put them together as one word. I always like trying to pronounce big numbers in German.
Edited by LWpianistin, Jul 16 2016, 06:16 AM.
And how are you today?
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Klaus
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
One problem with compound nouns is that they are sometimes ambiguous, e.g. Baumast could be parsed as Baum-ast or Bau-mast (in other words, German, like most languages, is not prefix free). But these ambiguities are rather rare.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Fully Featured & Customizable Free Forums
« Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic »
Add Reply