Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn

[Imralu]

There are a fair number of obvious loanwords beginning with <ch>, but other than that, there don't seem to be any native words. Which makes sense, since /x/ derives from Proto-Germanic *h, which became /h/ initially, or otherwise *k after a vowel, which clearly can't be initial.

Just looking through my DE-EN dictionary and all of the listed words that start with "ch" (all loanwords of course) start with one of /k ç ʃ t͡ʃ/, e.g. Charakter, Chemie, Chef, Chips, and I know that in the south, the words Chemie and China start with /k/ instead of /ç/. Chuzpe is missing from this dictionary.

And yeah, if we're getting into dialects, in a lot of (most?) Swiss German, I have a cat is something like i hob ä chatz there are also dialects out in Nordrhein-Westfalen where g is pronounced [x], which must sound a bit Dutch ... but I've never heard anyone speaking any of these dialects other than a couple of Swiss people in the bar in my street once, who I thought were Dutch till they said "Wasser" not "water". I didn't recognise it as Swiss straight away - there's quite a bit of diversity in Switzerland too and I'd never heard it sound so full of /x/ as these two, and it didn't have the slightly Scandinavian/Welsh lilt to it that I'm used to when I think of Swiss.

[linguoboy]

Before I learned to produce initial /x/ (thanks, German!) I had /'hətspah/. Some time after that, I learned the stressed vowel was etymologically /uh/ and the final vowel is shwa (again, thank German, where the word is spelled Chuzpe) and adjusted my pronunciation accordingly.

In standard German, I can't think of a single word that starts with /x/ other than Chuzpe ... /x/ is basically only coda or medial.

Right, but once you've mastered medial [x], it's not a big leap to pronounce it in initial position.

And, as it happens, I was living basically on the Katze-Chatze isogloss in Germany. So I got pretty familiar with Alemannic dialects.

Oh, that reminds me of a German one: nobel. I had always assumed this had final stress, like other borrowed French adjectives (e.g. eventuell, aktuell). But this is true only of the proper name Nobel. Not only is the ordinary adjective /ˈnoːbəl/, but the shwa is deleted before inflectional endings just like in native words. So I described a neighbourhood as [noˈbɛl] and baffled my Austrian companions.

[Imralu]

Before I learned to produce initial /x/ (thanks, German!) I had /'hətspah/. Some time after that, I learned the stressed vowel was etymologically /uh/ and the final vowel is shwa (again, thank German, where the word is spelled Chuzpe) and adjusted my pronunciation accordingly.

In standard German, I can't think of a single word that starts with /x/ other than Chuzpe ... /x/ is basically only coda or medial.

Right, but once you've mastered medial [x], it's not a big leap to pronounce it in initial position.

Yeah, you're right, but there are so many people who struggle with initial /ts/ or /ŋ/ despite having no problems at all saying "pizza" or "singer". I sometimes like to pronounce initial /n/s in English as [ŋ] just to see if people ngotice.

And, as it happens, I was living basically on the Katze-Chatze isogloss in Germany. So I got pretty familiar with Alemannic dialects.

Ah, what are the odds!?

Oh, that reminds me of a German one: nobel. I had always assumed this had final stress, like other borrowed French adjectives (e.g. eventuell, aktuell). But this is true only of the proper name Nobel. Not only is the ordinary adjective /ˈnoːbəl/, but the shwa is deleted before inflectional endings just like in native words. So I described a neighbourhood as [noˈbɛl] and baffled my Austrian companions.

For years I said Monát because basically every other -at word is from Latin and stressed on the final syllable, and my students are the same and find Mónat really weird.

[Qxentio]

Yeah, you're right, but there are so many people who struggle with initial /ts/ or /ŋ/ despite having no problems at all saying "pizza" or "singer". I sometimes like to pronounce initial /n/s in English as [ŋ] just to see if people ngotice.

It often baffles me that so many people have problems putting together the sounds they know into affricates. I most often hear the name Cthulhu pronounced as /kəˈθuː.lu/ by English native speakers, whereas I would pronounce it as /k͡θuːlu/. /θ/ is not even part of my native language's phonology. And who knows where the second <h> went.
I do realize producing unstressed vowels between consonants is the normal mode of speaking in many languages, such as Arabic. But I never felt that was true for English.

[Sumelic]

Yeah, you're right, but there are so many people who struggle with initial /ts/ or /ŋ/ despite having no problems at all saying "pizza" or "singer". I sometimes like to pronounce initial /n/s in English as [ŋ] just to see if people ngotice.

It often baffles me that so many people have problems putting together the sounds they know into affricates. I most often hear the name Cthulhu pronounced as /kəˈθuː.lu/ by English native speakers, whereas I would pronounce it as /k͡θuːlu/. /θ/ is not even part of my native language's phonology. And who knows where the second <h> went.
I do realize producing unstressed vowels between consonants is the normal mode of speaking in many languages, such as Arabic. But I never felt that was true for English.

Schwas are just the usual English repair strategy for unpronounceable foreign onset clusters. It might be related to the fact that /CəC/-initial words are frequently subject to loss or near-loss of the schwa in connected speech e.g. "police" > /pliːs/.

Modern Standard Arabic doesn't have any onset clusters at all, but it does have medial and coda clusters.

[jal]

It often baffles me that so many people have problems putting together the sounds they know into affricates. I most often hear the name Cthulhu pronounced as /kəˈθuː.lu/ by English native speakers, whereas I would pronounce it as /k͡θuːlu/.

1) You would pronounce it as [k͡θuːlu]. Note the square brackets.
2) [k͡θ] is not an affricate but a consonant cluster, since [k] and [θ] don't share the same POA, which affricates by definition do. I also doubt whether you actually co-articulate them, instead of in succession.


JAL

[Imralu]

I remember blowing a Korean student of mine's mind when I told her that "sport" and "support" are pronounced differently. She refused to believe me for a long time that it's possible to pronounce two consonants at the start of a word without an intervening vowel.

[jal]

I remember blowing a Korean student

I was tempted to quote this in the quotes thread, as an example of "selective citation" :).


JAL

[StrangerCoug]

Yeah, you're right, but there are so many people who struggle with initial /ts/ or /ŋ/ despite having no problems at all saying "pizza" or "singer". I sometimes like to pronounce initial /n/s in English as [ŋ] just to see if people ngotice.

It often baffles me that so many people have problems putting together the sounds they know into affricates. I most often hear the name Cthulhu pronounced as /kəˈθuː.lu/ by English native speakers, whereas I would pronounce it as /k͡θuːlu/. /θ/ is not even part of my native language's phonology. And who knows where the second <h> went.
I do realize producing unstressed vowels between consonants is the normal mode of speaking in many languages, such as Arabic. But I never felt that was true for English.

I tend to mangle it into something resembling [ˈsθuːlˌhuː] myself.

[Qxentio]

It often baffles me that so many people have problems putting together the sounds they know into affricates. I most often hear the name Cthulhu pronounced as /kəˈθuː.lu/ by English native speakers, whereas I would pronounce it as /k͡θuːlu/.

1) You would pronounce it as [k͡θuːlu]. Note the square brackets.
2) [k͡θ] is not an affricate but a consonant cluster, since [k] and [θ] don't share the same POA, which affricates by definition do. I also doubt whether you actually co-articulate them, instead of in succession.

Eh, guess you're right about the [k͡θ] thing. I used the tie bar to indicate a release of the velar stop directly into the fricative, without any vowel inbetween. Highly unorthodox. About the slashes/brackets thing, it doesn't really make a difference in this as the phonemes and phones are largely the same. Maybe my /u/s would be [ʉ]s if I wanted to be perfectly accurate.

[Imralu]

I just recently learned that Hochzeit (wedding) is not pronounced as hoch + Zeit but has a short "o" ... I was laughed at, like "It's not Hoch-Zeit. That would be silly." Yes, so much sillier than what it is!?

I remember blowing a Korean student

I was tempted to quote this in the quotes thread, as an example of "selective citation" .

Bahahaha... well, I guess that would not be incorrect as long as you put "[...]" inside the quotation to indicate something's missing.

[linguoboy]

I just recently learned that Hochzeit (wedding) is not pronounced as hoch + Zeit but has a short "o" ... I was laughed at, like "It's not Hoch-Zeit. That would be silly." Yes, so much sillier than what it is!?

Isn't the /oː/ in uninfected positive form by analogy with the inflected/comparative stem hoh-? In any case, I had the opposite problem: I initially pronounced hoch with a short vowel and had to unlearn that.

Have I already mentioned pronouncing Englisch with /ɪ/ instead of /ɛ/?

[Imralu]

Isn't the /oː/ in uninfected positive form by analogy with the inflected/comparative stem hoh-?

Dunno. All I know is that vowel length is basically never indicated before <ch> or <sch> so you just have to guess. I can't think of any instance of <sch> following a long vowel within a morpheme (probably because it mostly came from /sk/) but there are a few long vowels before <ch>: nach, Buch, suchen, hoch and their derivatives ... except for Hochzeit apparently. Like, I get it ... <hch> looks fucking dreadful and naach, hooch, Buuch just looks like a parody of Dutch. I wish more languages used Macrons and they were all over keyboards. They're beautiful..

In any case, I had the opposite problem: I initially pronounced hoch with a short vowel and had to unlearn that.

And why wouldn't you? It looks like noch and doch. I think I probably did too. I have a vague memory of one of my German teachers back at uni more than ten years ago explaining that it's long. I hear the difference between short and long vowels very easily and always have because I guess my dialect of English set me up for it (a Texan friend of mine struggled with anything other than /ɪ/ vs /iː/), but with words that I learn from writing rather than in conversation, I have been stuck with some spelling pronunciations especially if I fossilise them in my head years before I ever say it to anybody who is likely to correct me. A few years ago at a party in Cologne, I said either "husten" or "pusten" with a short u and a whole roomful of people laughed at me. Guys, that is how it's spelt, and stop laughing at the foreigner! I sometimes think I'd get laughed at less if I just absolutely murdered my pronunciation all the time.

Have I already mentioned pronouncing Englisch with /ɪ/ instead of /ɛ/?

No, I don't recall it ... but that's not unusual. For probably about the first six months that I spoke German, I pronounced "der" exactly as I would in Australian English, which Germans would most likely hear as döh ... I was pronouncing most other things decently, but it suddenly occurred to me, because it was one of the first words I had learnt, I had already fossilised bad pronunciation with it.

[linguoboy]

For probably about the first six months that I spoke German, I pronounced "der" exactly as I would in Australian English, which Germans would most likely hear as döh ...

I had trouble understanding that this was a long vowel given how weakly-stressed articles are in English. I used to say /dər/ until I was corrected. (That would've been correct for the Alemannic dialect I eventually learned.)

I also used to pronounce weg and Weg identically. After all, they're etymologically the same. Why would I expect the first of these would be /vɛk/? (In Alemannic, that's what you call a Brötchen.)

[hwhatting]

I can't think of any instance of <sch> following a long vowel within a morpheme

Yes, I think there aren't any, except for people who have /a:/ for "ar" in closed syllables.

[Imralu]

Yeah, that all the definite articles except for das and des have long vowels was something I didn't pick up on for a while. I pronounced den as denn for a while. My dialect of English prepared me for vowel length and tense and lax pretty well, but I can't think of any unstressed long vowels in function words in my English. Like, the word "are", which for me is [a:] destresses to a schwa, so I sometimes accidentally type things like "dogs a cool"... weirdly enough, I stumble over it when I read it and think "What the hell does that supposed to mean? [sic]" but I write it myself if I don't reread what I've written.

For a while I was confused over the length distinction in vowels before vocalic /r/ (eg. Heer, Herr, wer, werde) but then I realised I pronounced just about everything correctly anyway, although I'm sure I have words that I've only read that I'd pronounce wrongly.

I can't think of any instance of <sch> following a long vowel within a morpheme

Yes, I think there aren't any, except for people who have /a:/ for "ar" in closed syllables.

Ah, yeah, I didn't think of that, but it's clear from spelling anyway. I think that's how I pronounce <ar> and I remember thinking that it's another step (in addition to Frauchen / rauchen) in the phonemicisation of the difference between /ç/ and /x/, because /a:/ can be followed by either, as in Aachener Architekt.

[Imralu]

Random little rant: I have seen a number of German learning materials and even Lonely Planet phrasebooks that say that <ch> is generally pronounced as /x/ except after <e> and <i>... Um, and the umlauts, and consonants, and initially, so, um, "except most of the time" would be more accurate. In standard German, it's only /x/ after <a o u au> (and not <äu eu>) and while /ç/ is really common, often several times in a sentence, there really isn't that much of /x/ (sometimes not even one in a whole song). Like, yeah, it's much more understandable if someone uses [x] everywhere than using [ç] where it doesn't belong, but it's a way less common sound.

[Zaarin]

For probably about the first six months that I spoke German, I pronounced "der" exactly as I would in Australian English, which Germans would most likely hear as döh ...

I had trouble understanding that this was a long vowel given how weakly-stressed articles are in English. I used to say /dər/ until I was corrected. (That would've been correct for the Alemannic dialect I eventually learned.)

My limited exposure to German has been from someone from Hamburg, and I could swear I hear something like /dəɐ̯/ or maybe /dɛɐ̯/. Is that normal for Low German, or should it still be /deːɐ̯/ and I'm just hearing wrong/hearing something else?

[linguoboy]

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?

[Imralu]

I think I quite possibly say [de] in quick speech when it's unstressed and people often tell me I don't have a foreign accent (although that varies from day to day). I think there is quite a lot of variation that happens when these words are unstressed, but it's not the same as the way English weakens sounds. 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. Anyway, as a non-native, take what I say with a grain of salt.

[Zaarin]

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?

Hard to say. I don't speak German, but I did listen to the commentary (in German with English subtitles) of a German-made game whose designer is from Hamburg*. Since I read pretty quickly, I had plenty of time between subtitles to listen to what he was saying, and his der frequently sounded considerably more lax than /deːɐ̯/. On the other hand, it could just be my unfamiliarity with the language.

*As an aside, he really does make the best point-and-click adventures. His name is Jan "Poki" Müller-Michaelis, and he's responsible for what I would consider Daedalic Entertainment's best games: the Deponia trilogy (+ Doomsday Deponia now), The Whispered World, and the two Edna & Harvey games. He's got a very...dark sense of humor.

[Pole, the]

I had trouble understanding that this was a long vowel given how weakly-stressed articles are in English. I used to say /dər/ until I was corrected. (That would've been correct for the Alemannic dialect I eventually learned.)

Wait, there's an /eː/ in „der“? I'd been learning German for nine years and didn't realize it until now.

[din]

I had trouble understanding that this was a long vowel given how weakly-stressed articles are in English. I used to say /dər/ until I was corrected. (That would've been correct for the Alemannic dialect I eventually learned.)

Wait, there's an /eː/ in „der“? I'd been learning German for nine years and didn't realize it until now.

Isn't German /e:/ lowered (but not quite as far as /ɛ/) before /r/ anyway? It is in my dialect of Dutch (and in Limburgish), and I thought it was the same in German. If so, it sounds a lot like /ɛː/, so that shouldn't be too surprising.

[linguoboy]

Isn't German /e:/ lowered (but not quite as far as /ɛ/) before /r/ anyway? It is in my dialect of Dutch (and in Limburgish), and I thought it was the same in German. If so, it sounds a lot like /ɛː/, so that shouldn't be too surprising.

I'm not the best person to ask. When learning phonetics, I discovered that my /eː/ is noticeable lower than cardinal [e]. As a result, German /eː/ often ends up sounding like [iː] to me.

(I also learned from a monograph on German phonology that phonetic realisations of German vowels are all over the damn map anyway.)

[Travis B.]

Isn't German /e:/ lowered (but not quite as far as /ɛ/) before /r/ anyway? It is in my dialect of Dutch (and in Limburgish), and I thought it was the same in German. If so, it sounds a lot like /ɛː/, so that shouldn't be too surprising.

I'm not the best person to ask. When learning phonetics, I discovered that my /eː/ is noticeable lower than cardinal [e]. As a result, German /eː/ often ends up sounding like [iː] to me.

I am the same way; my /eɪ/ when short is like [e̞], and when long is more like [ɛ̝ː], and I frequently hear German /eː/ as /iː/.