Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn

[jal]

Iirc, there's quite a bit of variation between different regions in Germany with regards to vowel pronunciation (and iirc, that's goes basically for all germanic languages). So I'm not sure how valuable it is to talk about "the German pronunciation of X".


JAL

[din]

Of course. But I meant the (what people perceive to be) 'neutral' pronunciation of standard German

[hwhatting]

My limited exposure to German has been from someone from Hamburg, and I could swear I hear something like /dəɐ̯/ or maybe /dɛɐ̯/.

In all positions or only when unstressed?

That looks like a pronounciation in unstressed position to me.

Also, in the south, "der", I think, turns into something like [dər] [dəɾ] [dr̩] or something like that (I don't know what to do with transcribing that [d] because I know the voicing distinction is tense/lax there) and people often write "dr" when writing Swiss German.

Yes, that's a Southern / Swiss thing, in those areas that don't turn "r" into a vowel.

[StrangerCoug]

As a result, German /eː/ often ends up sounding like [iː] to me.

Does to me, too, which is why my ears find the "E wie Emil" and the "I wie Ida" useful disambiguations.

[linguoboy]

As a result, German /eː/ often ends up sounding like [iː] to me.

Does to me, too, which is why my ears find the "E wie Emil" and the "I wie Ida" useful disambiguations.

But couldn't the former end up sounding like "I wie Emil"?

[Qxentio]

I just recently learned that Hochzeit (wedding) is not pronounced as hoch + Zeit but has a short "o"

I hate to break this to you, but there's two of them. Hochzeit with a short o meaning wedding, and Hochzeit with a long o meaning heyday or zenith.

I wish more languages used Macrons and they were all over keyboards. They're beautiful..

I wish they were an integral part of the German alphabet. The lack of reliable markers for long and short vowels is its main problem. I use macrons in personal notes for long vowels and for syllabic consonants.

About the <der>" thing: According to wiktionary, it is [deːɐ̯] when (stressed) and [dɛɐ̯], [dɐ] when unstressed. I guess both are acceptable. There are a dozen of shortened forms and dialectal variations of the word, as you all have already stated. The short [dɛɐ̯] feels more natural to me.
[deːɐ̯] strikes me as either typically Westphalian (they lack the tense-lax distinction before vocalized R; all vowels turn tense in that context) or as distinctly accentuated. I'm from the Hannover Region, which means I do not distinguish between long <e> [eː] and <ä> [ɛː]. So I might not be the best judge.

[linguoboy]

I just recently learned that Hochzeit (wedding) is not pronounced as hoch + Zeit but has a short "o"

I hate to break this to you, but there's two of them. Hochzeit with a short o meaning wedding, and Hochzeit with a long o meaning heyday or zenith.

Now you are just making shit up to torture us. (Kudos for taking the time to edit Wiktionary to lend credence to your hoax, but I ain't fallin' for it. Bielefeld existiert nicht!)

[KathTheDragon]

I just recently learned that Hochzeit (wedding) is not pronounced as hoch + Zeit but has a short "o"

I hate to break this to you, but there's two of them. Hochzeit with a short o meaning wedding, and Hochzeit with a long o meaning heyday or zenith.

Now you are just making shit up to torture us. (Kudos for taking the time to edit Wiktionary to lend credence to your hoax, but I ain't fallin' for it. Bielefeld existiert nicht!)

Uh, what? Check the page history! Unless Qxentio was planning this 11 years in advance, you're plain wrong.

[linguoboy]

Now you are just making shit up to torture us. (Kudos for taking the time to edit Wiktionary to lend credence to your hoax, but I ain't fallin' for it. Bielefeld existiert nicht!)

Uh, what? Check the page history! Unless Qxentio was planning this 11 years in advance, you're plain wrong.

Are you impugning his ability to pull off a long con?

[KathTheDragon]

Given that the Collins dictionary also gives both forms, either you're wrong or this is a conspiracy.

[linguoboy]

either you're wrong...

Impossible!

or this is a conspiracy.

I KNEW IT!

[Salmoneus]

either you're wrong...

Impossible!

or this is a conspiracy.

I KNEW IT!

Kath never believes in conspiracies...

[Qxentio]

Uh, what? Check the page history! Unless Qxentio was planning this 11 years in advance, you're plain wrong.

I have, in fact, waited 11 years for the perfect time to strike.
I am sort of surprised that linguoboy is informed about my current location though.

[Pole, the]

Given that the Collins dictionary also gives both forms, either you're wrong or this is a conspiracy.

This is a conspiracy.

(Also, this post is completely serious.)

[StrangerCoug]

As a result, German /eː/ often ends up sounding like [iː] to me.

Does to me, too, which is why my ears find the "E wie Emil" and the "I wie Ida" useful disambiguations.

But couldn't the former end up sounding like "I wie Emil"?

Yes, but I got "E wie Emil" and "I wie Ida" from the German version of Wheel of Fortune, so it's pretty ingrained that it should be that way around. To my ears, it's like the case of using "B de burro" and "V de vaca" in (Latin American, at least) Spanish.

[Imralu]

Yes, but I got "E wie Emil" and "I wie Ida" from the German version of Wheel of Fortune, so it's pretty ingrained that it should be that way around. To my ears, it's like the case of using "B de burro" and "V de vaca" in (Latin American, at least) Spanish.

Reminds me of playing hangman with my students and a Spanish speaker said "b" so I wrote "b" on the list of letters that were not in the word and she said "No, the other b!". I said "there is no other b" and she looked frustrated, so I went "Oh, the other b!" and added a capital "B" and another limb because I'm a mean teacher.

[Soap]

From when I was ~8 years old. These are more cases of misanalysis than mispronunciation, since I didnt know the meanings of any of the three words at the time:

underfed "un-derf-ed". Since I had no idea what the meaning of this word was, having seen it only in print, I wanted to find out what it meant to "derf" someone. I dont remember if I ever bothered looking it up in a dictionary, if I asked my parents, or neither.

unstable: "the Sun will become an unstable red giant" ... I figured unst must be a verb I didnt know, but in this case, I wasnt really curious about it since I pretty much understood the meaning from context.

awry: /'ɔ.ri/. I think I saw this word in the user manual for the original Mega Man game, and once again, I could sort of guess at the meaning from context, but it would never have occurred to me to pronounce it with the accent on the second syllable. I still had a pretend baseball team called the Awries when I was 10 or 11 years old, and they always won, so I must have assumed the word had a positive meaning.

[jal]

awry: /'ɔ.ri/.

It was only quite recently that I found out the word isn't pronounced like that...


JAL

[linguoboy]

Trying to remember when it was I learned that "Tanzania" did not rhyme with "Tasmania".

[Sumelic]

Trying to remember when it was I learned that "Tanzania" did not rhyme with "Tasmania".

I just learned that now. I wonder why. It seems to be basically a made-up name with the usual Latin -ia suffix. Maybe it's based on the Swahili pronunciation, since Swahili seems to have penult stress in general.

[Soap]

: /

I remember working with a woman, who talked to me and said, "I worked in an African country, called Tanzania, where children hadnt ever seen a pencil" ....

And she wasnt stupid. I think, in fact, that the common pronunciation is wrong and that Tanzania wants their name to be pronounced like every other nation, with the root of the name stressed.

[Pole, the]

Given my Polish-slanted language sense, the obvious (for me) pronunciation of the former would be something like /tənˈzɑniə/, which technically counts as a penult.

And she wasnt stupid. I think, in fact, that the common pronunciation is wrong and that Tanzania wants their name to be pronounced like every other nation, with the root of the name stressed.

Given that the name of Tanzania came from combining two other names (Tanganyika and Zanzibar), there could be a political motive.

[jal]

I'm on a short skiing holiday in Austria, and I had to go to a location called "Fronebenalm". So I asked where "fro-neben-alm" was and was met with huge question marks on the person's face. Then I showed the written word, and they said "ah, fron-eben". I mean really, how hard could it be to understand what I was saying???


JAL

[Soap]

Also, apparently, I've been pronouncing manito ("spirit"; cf Ojibwe manidoo) wrong for more than 20 years and I just found out last night. It's not exactly an everyday word in English, but I used it as part of an early screen name and also a character in a comic strip I was working on privately at the time. I had always given it essentially a Spanish pronunciation, varying between /ma'nito/ and /məṇito/ depending on stress, which may be why I've always preferred the manito spelling to the more common manitou. Turns out the proper English pronunciation is actually /ˈmænətu/; that is, the same as "manatee" until the final vowel. Wiktionary doesnt list a pronunciation for the manito spelling but my hunch is that it would also have initial stress.

[linguoboy]

I'm on a short skiing holiday in Austria, and I had to go to a location called "Fronebenalm". So I asked where "fro-neben-alm" was and was met with huge question marks on the person's face. Then I showed the written word, and they said "ah, fron-eben". I mean really, how hard could it be to understand what I was saying???

It's amazing how just a slight alteration of a proper name can throw you off completely. The other day I hired a cabbie to take me to a friend's place. Confirming the route he said, "And then I'll take Austin." And I was like, "No, it's just off Halsted! Austin is too far west." "That's what I said, Austin!" I think he may have been vocalising the /l/, and that alone was enough for me to reinterpret the entire word.