DEUDSCHE SPRACHE

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Speaking of difficult sounds, I am not sure why the sound /eɪ/ (e.g. as in "cake") seems to give so much trouble to many people whose native language is not English. At my previous job I had several co-workers from Italy and France, and a couple from Germany and Austria, and they usually pronounced the names "Craig" and "Greg", of two actual colleagues, in the same way, which occasionally created misunderstandings. I am not sure why it's so difficult. After all it's just "e" followed by "i".
Same reason: It's not part of the phoneme inventory. German doesn't have the /eɪ/ sound naturally, so a German speaker will not hear the difference between long e and ei and will also not be able to reproduce it.
By the same token, you could ask why English speakers cannot just pronounce the long e in Latin re, but why they always turn it into "ray".

It is not difficult to learn if you do some dedicated speech training, but it is difficult to hear, understand and reproduce if your only reference is your native languange (and no other speech training).
And don't call English lessons at school speech training. The committed few will get these kinds of things with training outside school (like youtube) or with an incredible amount of talent ... or with both. But it will pass most people entirely.

What is interesting is that children up to a certain age (I think 9 to about 15 months) manage to distinguish these kinds of sounds. But once their native language has sort of been programmed into their brains, they fail to distinguish any kinds of allophones or foreign sounds that they had previously been able to recognise.
 
 

rothbard

Aedilis

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Location:
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Same reason: It's not part of the phoneme inventory. German doesn't have the /eɪ/ sound naturally, so a German speaker will not hear the difference between long e and ei and will also not be able to reproduce it.
That's true. In the same way, since "sr" doesn't often occur in their language, some Italians say, and sometimes even write, "Isdraele" rather than "Israele".
By the same token, you could ask why English speakers cannot just pronounce the long e in Latin re, but why they always turn it into "ray".
Or sometimes it becomes an /ɪ/ sound, as Italy's PM Giuseppi Conti knows.
It is not difficult to learn if you do some dedicated speech training, but it is difficult to hear, understand and reproduce if your only reference is your native languange (and no other speech training).
And don't call English lessons at school speech training. The committed few will get these kinds of things with training outside school (like youtube) or with an incredible amount of talent ... or with both. But it will pass most people entirely.
Listening to a recording of onself speaking, and then comparing it with the pronunciation of the same passage by a native speaker, is probably useful for this.
 

Adrian

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

The German language is relatively easy. Those who can speak Latin and are used to declinations, normally learn it very rapidly. At least that is what German teachers say in their first class. They start learning: der, die, das, des, dem, den and the rest just comes naturally. It’s amazingly easy! If this doesn’t convince you, let’s learn German with an example.

First of all, take a book in German. It’s a splendid leather-covered book published in Dortmund. It is about the customs and habits of the Hottentots (which in German is Hottentotten).

The book teaches that the opossums (Beutelratten) are captured and put in cages (Kotter) with wooden slats (Lattengitter) to protect them from the elements. Those cages, in German, are called “cages with wooden slats” (Lattengitterkotter) and, when they have inside a opossum, we call all the group as “cage with wooden slats with an opossum” (Beutelrattenlattengitterkotter).

One day, the Hottentots arrested a murderer (Attentäter), accused of having killed the Hottentot (Hottentotter) mother (Mutter) (a Hottentottermutter) of a boy who stuttered and was also a bit slow (Stottertrottel). That woman, in German, is called Hottentottenstottertrottelmutter and, her murderer, we call easily Hottentottenstottertrottelmutterattentäter.

In the book, the Hottentots caught him and, without having where to put him, they used a opossum cage (Beutelrattenlattengitterkotter). But, incidentally, the prisoner escaped. After they began the search, quickly came up a Hottentot warrior screaming:

> "We caught the murderer (Attentäter)!"

> "What?," asked the chief.

> "Lattengitterkotterbeutelrattenattentäter" answered the warrior.

> "Who? The murderer that was in the cage of opossums with wooden slats?" the chief of the Hottentots asked.

> "Yes," answers the native with great difficulty. "Hottentottenstottertrottelmutteratentäter (murderer of the Hottentot mother who had a slow and stuttering child)."

> "Ah," the chief says, "you could have said from the start that you had caught the Hottentottenstottertrottelmutterbeutelrattenlattengitterkotterattentäter!"

As it can be noticed, German is very easy. You only have to show a little willingness...
 

Glabrigausapes

Philistine

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Milwaukee
Woher findest du diese Witze?
 

Glabrigausapes

Philistine

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Location:
Milwaukee
Ich verstehe sehr gut.
 
 

Tironis

Civis Illustris

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Location:
Anglia
Ich finde meistene hier . Aber bitte niemanden weiter erzaehlen, OK?
Ich finde die meisten hier. Aber bitte niemandem weitererzaehlen (one word). Better: Aber bitte nicht weitererzaehlen.
 
B

Bitmap

Guest

Ich finde die meisten hier. Aber bitte niemandem weitererzaehlen (one word). Better: Aber bitte nicht weitererzaehlen.
Ich wollte niemanden korrigieren, aber da du es jetzt getan hast: Gut gemacht! :) Beide deiner Varianten sind übrigens völlig in Ordnung.

Den Fehler mit niemandem und niemanden machen leider auch sehr viel viele Deutsche :( (oder deutsche Muttersprachler).
 

Adrian

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Ich wollte niemanden korrigieren, aber
Ich habe kein Problem damit. Wenn ich irgentwelche Fehler mache, bitte um [Korrigierung / Korrektur]. :)

I don't even know what's funny about that joke.
Wie ich es sehe (als Fremdspracher) einige Leute finden deutsche Syntax und Wortbildung bisschen komisch (zB. solche lange Wörter wie diese die im Witz vorgestellten wurden)

 
 

Terry S.

Aedilis

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Location:
Hibernia
I don't even know what's funny about that joke.
I think it might lie in the reductio ad absurdum of agglutination to eyes not quite so accustomed to such a grammatical trait.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Ich habe kein Problem damit. Wenn ich irgentwelche Fehler mache, bitte um [Korrigierung / Korrektur]. :)


Wie ich es sehe (als Fremdspracher) einige Leute finden deutsche Syntax und Wortbildung bisschen komisch (zB. solche lange Wörter wie diese die im Witz vorgestellten wurden)

I like "Waldeinsamkeit".
 
 

Tironis

Civis Illustris

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Location:
Anglia
Ich habe kein Problem damit. Wenn ich irgentwelche Fehler mache, bitte um [Korrigierung / Korrektur]. :)


Wie ich es sehe (als Fremdspracher) einige Leute finden deutsche Syntax und Wortbildung bisschen komisch (zB. solche lange Wörter wie diese die im Witz vorgestellten wurden)

Ok - once more round the Mulberry bush (English nursery rhyme) :)

Wie ich es sehe (als Fremdsprachler), einige Leute finden deutschen Syntax und Wortbildung ein bisschen komisch (z.B. solch lange (or: solche langen) Worte (Woerter) wie diese, die im Witz vorgestellt wurden.

Well done, Adrian! Not bad at all. The importance is to communicate and make yourself understood - and you can do that. Don't worry about German grammar too much!

Actually not sure whether it should be Worte or Woerter in this context. Bitmap?
 
B

Bitmap

Guest

deutschen Syntax
Syntax ist weiblich. Es müsste tatsächlich heißen "manche finden (die) deutsche Syntax komisch".

Actually not sure whether it should be Worte or Woerter in this context. Bitmap?
It should be Wörter.
Wörter refers to entries from a dictionary (or words that could come close enough to that).
Worte refers to words in a broader context that have some coherent meaning, mainly quotations (e.g. "Um es mit den Worten Goethes zu sagen: Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie.")
 
 

Tironis

Civis Illustris

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Location:
Anglia
(die) deutsche Syntax. I have put my Sprachgefuehl on the naughty step. :)
 

Adrian

Civis Illustris

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Ich muss zusagen, es hat mir bisschen gedauert um diesem Witz zu verstehen:hide:

Johanna zum Papa: Ich wünsche mir als Geschenk ein Pony zu Weihnachten.
Papa: Geht in Ordnung.
Johanna: Wirklich, ich liebe dich über alles!
Papa an Heiligabend: So Johanna, dein Friseurtermin steht
 
 

Tironis

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Anglia
Ich muss gestehen . . . Ich muss zugeben . . . Ich muss bekennen . . .
zusagen = depending on context: to accept, to promise, zusichern and probably lots more.
You might want to rework the rest of the sentence.
 
 

Tironis

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Anglia
Quite amusing - flutter mouse, ocean piglet, shield toad and stink animal which I would call a Stinketier rather than Stinktier.
Stinketier often used like stinker in English, e.g. "You little stinker," she said with a grin. Also: I wonder have you ever had a stinker of a question? Na, das war ein Stinker! etc.
 
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