{"id":6660,"date":"2022-03-28T09:40:23","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T09:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/?p=6660"},"modified":"2022-03-28T09:40:23","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T09:40:23","slug":"the-secret-to-pronouncing-german-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/the-secret-to-pronouncing-german-words\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret to Pronouncing German Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are a few things German is infamous for. Its Umlaut\u00a0<\/em>with\u00a0\u00e4, \u00f6, \u00fc<\/em>, its many cases, and its long, looong words<\/a>. What about Rindfleischetikettierungs\u00fcberwachungsaufgaben\u00fcbertragungsgesetz<\/em>? You might see a very long word with natural pause points where the different words are separated. Or you simply see a whole bunch of letters that are seemingly arranged at random. But there’s another, much shorter word, that might similarly break your tongue:\u00a0das Eichh\u00f6rnchen\u00a0<\/em>(squirrel). Here’s how you can deal with pronouncing German that’s just not that simple.<\/p>\n

Pronouncing German: Taking Breaks<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"Pronouncing<\/a>

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/photo\/photo-of-a-woman-jumped-on-obstacle-3764164\/<\/p><\/div>\n

First off, there’s logic to the madness. The magic to pronounce German properly is die Pausen\u00a0<\/em>(pauses, breaks)<\/strong>. We talked about this as well in our post about pronouncing\u00a0die Impfpflicht<\/em> (vaccination requirement)<\/a>, which also doesn’t look fun to pronounce. Instead of seeing a word as a 100 meter race that you can race through at will, German is more like a hurdle race. The hurdles are like little breaks, little humps, that break words up into different sections.<\/p>\n

That crazy long word above IS crazy long, but by breaking it down into manageable chunks, you get to something that is quite pronouncable:<\/p>\n

Rindfleisch-etikettierungs-\u00fcberwachungs-aufgaben-\u00fcbertragungs-gesetz<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Beef labeling monitoring tasks transfer law.<\/p>\n

Still a mouthful. But hey, it’s pronouncable. Here’s that with easier words:<\/p>\n

das Eich-h\u00f6rnchen<\/em><\/p>\n

die Impf-pflicht<\/em><\/p>\n

You might wonder – why don’t Germans just use dashes then? Because it, unfortunately, doesn’t. It’s a question akin to why “knight” has a k at the front, or why German even uses cases, if often context is entirely enough to explain what you’re saying. I suppose, similar to how the cases can lead to a prettier linguistic expression, a word without dashes just looks nicer, no?<\/p>\n

Ok, fine. Let’s go with it then. But how do you know where to put those breaks, add those dashes in your mind?<\/p>\n

Partly, that will be achieved over time, when you recognize the different words that together compose the compound noun you’re looking at. So\u00a0Eichh\u00f6rnchen\u00a0<\/em>connects\u00a0die Eiche\u00a0<\/em>(oak) and\u00a0das H\u00f6rnchen\u00a0<\/em>(little horn).\u00a0Impfpflicht\u00a0<\/em>is made up of\u00a0impfen\u00a0<\/em>(to vaccinate) and\u00a0die Pflicht\u00a0<\/em>(mandate).<\/p>\n

One pretty good indication where words break is when you have a ton of\u00a0Konsonanten\u00a0<\/em>(m, consonants) piled up. As in\u00a0Impfpfl<\/strong>icht, or\u00a0Eichh<\/strong>\u00f6rnchen<\/em>. Another giveaway is an\u00a0s\u00a0<\/em>in the middle of a sentence. That super long word has etikettierung<\/i>s<\/i><\/strong>, \u00fcberwachungs<\/strong>, <\/em>and \u00fcbertragungs <\/strong><\/em>in it! We add the\u00a0s\u00a0<\/em>where otherwise the two words we’re connecting would clash in pronunciation.<\/p>\n

Of course, it’s not always that easy, but with the knowledge of taking breaks in your words, you can get there!<\/p>\n

Do you have difficulty with pronouncing German in other ways? Let me know in the comments below!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"Pronouncing

There are a few things German is infamous for. Its Umlaut\u00a0with\u00a0\u00e4, \u00f6, \u00fc, its many cases, and its long, looong words. What about Rindfleischetikettierungs\u00fcberwachungsaufgaben\u00fcbertragungsgesetz? You might see a very long word with natural pause points where the different words are separated. Or you simply see a whole bunch of letters that are seemingly arranged at…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":13917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[8,11,376076],"tags":[457016,551859,551768],"class_list":["post-6660","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-language","category-pronunciation","category-vocabulary","tag-german-vocabulary","tag-pronouncing-german","tag-pronunciation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13918,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6660\/revisions\/13918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}