Getting my head around German vowels
Thursday, November 12th, 2015 08:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lethargic_manI've been displacing from resuming learning German by trying to get my head around the non-English sounds I have trouble with.
I had difficulty getting my head around [ç] (the "ch" in ich) when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
curious_reader first tried to explain it to me a decade ago, but then it became easy when I learned that it also existed in English as an allophone of /h/ in words like "hew" and "huge".*
* I hadn't even realised /h/ had any allophones in English until then. Likewise, it wasn't until I learned about them that I realised /l/ and /p/ do, which makes me wonder whether Biblical Hebrew speakers were aware of the sound differences between the letters בגד כפ״ת and the versions with דָגֵשִׁים (centre dots), which differences were allophonic in Biblical Hebrew but today either lost or phonemic (i.e. either version could appear in a particular context, e.g. פ vs. פּ in קוּף and קֶטְשׁוּפּ).
I've been struggling also with the long A in German; the sound in Vater. IPA transcriptions revealed it's not the front vowel [æː] (the long version of the sound in English "cat", which doesn't exist in standard English, but which I am familiar with nonetheless), nor the back vowel [ɑː] as in English "father", but [aː], which is somewhere in between.
Like quarter-tones in Arabic music, this falls between the categories I am conditioned to hear: I can perceive it fine, but remembering it and reproducing it is another matter! Again, though, Wikipedia came to the rescue, when I studied the page on English phonology and discovered the sound did exist in English, as the first half of the diphthong [aɪ], as in "price". So the key to getting my head around it is to say "price" really slowly, so I can hear what I'm saying, then only pronounce the first half. :o)
Unfortunately, though, there's only so far English will get me. I still can't pronounce the long "e" in my girlfriend's name, and listening to me trying to get the difference between the [œ] that Wikipedia says one should use for short /ö/ and the [øː] for long /ö/, or the [ʏ] or [yː] for short and long /ü/ is like listening to a giggle stick...
I had difficulty getting my head around [ç] (the "ch" in ich) when
curious_reader first tried to explain it to me a decade ago, but then it became easy when I learned that it also existed in English as an allophone of /h/ in words like "hew" and "huge".** I hadn't even realised /h/ had any allophones in English until then. Likewise, it wasn't until I learned about them that I realised /l/ and /p/ do, which makes me wonder whether Biblical Hebrew speakers were aware of the sound differences between the letters בגד כפ״ת and the versions with דָגֵשִׁים (centre dots), which differences were allophonic in Biblical Hebrew but today either lost or phonemic (i.e. either version could appear in a particular context, e.g. פ vs. פּ in קוּף and קֶטְשׁוּפּ).
I've been struggling also with the long A in German; the sound in Vater. IPA transcriptions revealed it's not the front vowel [æː] (the long version of the sound in English "cat", which doesn't exist in standard English, but which I am familiar with nonetheless), nor the back vowel [ɑː] as in English "father", but [aː], which is somewhere in between.
Like quarter-tones in Arabic music, this falls between the categories I am conditioned to hear: I can perceive it fine, but remembering it and reproducing it is another matter! Again, though, Wikipedia came to the rescue, when I studied the page on English phonology and discovered the sound did exist in English, as the first half of the diphthong [aɪ], as in "price". So the key to getting my head around it is to say "price" really slowly, so I can hear what I'm saying, then only pronounce the first half. :o)
Unfortunately, though, there's only so far English will get me. I still can't pronounce the long "e" in my girlfriend's name, and listening to me trying to get the difference between the [œ] that Wikipedia says one should use for short /ö/ and the [øː] for long /ö/, or the [ʏ] or [yː] for short and long /ü/ is like listening to a giggle stick...
no subject
Date: 2015-11-12 02:33 pm (UTC)I'd suggest getting familiar with phonology diagrams, of the sort that describe the mapping between sounds and the positioning of parts of the mouth; that might help with your "find a sound part-way between X and Y" issue.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-12 06:24 pm (UTC)I pronounce "bad" /bæd/. I've heard that [æː] was a step in the development of the southern long A, and remains in fringe areas of that pronunciation, but I've never knowingly heard it myself. This table on Wikipedia does not present it as present in RP.
I'd suggest getting familiar with phonology diagrams, of the sort that describe the mapping between sounds and the positioning of parts of the mouth; that might help with your "find a sound part-way between X and Y" issue.
I've been scratching my head over those diagrams for years. Besides, seeing a diagram is one thing, mastering a sound quite another. Though the ones on Wikipedia now have hyperlinks to most of the sounds on them allowing them to be played.