German F Pronunciation

[Vickiana Sconyers]

Yourquestion is about the pronunciation variations of //. While there is just one standard pronunciation, in some dialects, though, the sound is differently spoken. In some regions the "ch" in words like ich, Mdchen, ... is spoken as /ʃ/ (which actually is the sound of "sch" as in waschen, Taschen, ...).

That is not wrong or unnatural or even funny. As the answer to the related question points out those people aren't able to speak a normal //, even if they try to - at least, it's very hard and needs much concentration.

I reread your question and now I think that "It feels like it comes more from the throat." means the /χ/-sound. As already mentioned, there are two different pronunciation and you just have to learn when to pronounce the "ch" as either // or /χ/. (The rule is very simple: Use /χ/ after a, o, u except when "ch" is followed by diminutive -chen WIKIPEDIA)

All foreign learners should concentrate on these and forget other variants for the moment - then you should be pretty safe. The good thing is: this will come natural, anyway, because it acommodates the natural movement of the tongue when talking, so it's much easier than it sounds. :)

NOTE: the /χ/ sound is the voiceless equivalent of the "French" "r", made all the way back against the uvula (the soft little stalactite at the back of your mouth). It sounds a bit like clearing your throat. Most Germans find this rather hard to pronounce, but it is commonly used by the Swiss and Tyrolians, I think. It is also common in Arab languages.

Just last week a choral conductor gave our group a good way to remember how to pronounce the soft "ch" in German correctly: Say the English name "Hugh", then start to repeat it but stay on the first letter "H". Note how it sounds and feels.

first say /i/ (written "i" in german, "ee" in english)then push your tongue upwards against the top of your mouth, behind your teeth (I think that's called the hard palate but I'm not sure), leaving all the rest of your mouth exactly in the /i/ position.When I do this, the sound automatically becomes voiceless and that's //.However, don't let your teeth get too close or it well be /ʃ/.

in "Gr dich" the sound is produced in the mouth by pressing the tongue to the roof of the mouth. I think there is no similar sound in common english. It is not totally unlike "sh"s in "dishwasher", but you will probably be recognized by your pronunciation of this after 10 years of practice /wink/. Let's call this one "mouthy" pronunciation.

I think there is a rule (with exceptions, of course) about when the "ch" is throaty and when it is mouthy. After an "open vowel" like "a" the "ch" us usually "throaty", after a "closed vowel" like "i" it is usually "mouthy".

The ch-sound after the vowel a is different from the ch-sound after i.I simply call the first ch "Bach-sound. When you pronounce the German word Bach the mouth opening is wide for the vowel a. When you pronounce the ch-soundyou keep this wide mouth opening and the air stream from your lungs passes the vocal cords, which have the widest opening, without any vibration.The sound of this German ch might be compared to the rough sound of an angry cat.

When you pronounce the ch-sound after the vowel i as in the word ich, your tongue position in the mouth room is high when you pronounce i.The ch-sound after i, which I simply call ich-sound is produced exactly in the same way as the Bach-sound, only with small mouth opening as it is necessary for the vowel i.

The two different ch-sounds have two different phonetic signs. Actually this wouldn't be necessary.It is almost impossible to produce a Bach-sound after i or an ich-sound after a. You would have to speak two separate syllables and you would have to change the mouth opening.

I don't know whether this theoretical explanation will help you. Normally a teacher produces the sounds, explains to you how these sounds are produced,and corrects you when you don't hit it with the first go.

I have just had a look at a youtube video "German "CH" Pronunciation". The speaker talks a lot, but I don't think that that way will teach someone how to pronounce German ch. There are several things to show: The mouth cavity, the mouth opening and the tongue position when you pronounce the vowels /a/ and /i/. This can best be shown by diagrams showing the mouth room in a vertical cut so that one sees the mouth cavity and the tongue position from the side. When producing an /i/ the lip position changes. This can be shown with diagrams showing the mouth from the front.

The second important thing is a the behaviour of the vocal cords. There are models that can give an understanding of the vocal corrds, but it is important to convey a feeling for the vocal cords. When someone produces the loud sound of a long /aaaaa/ the vocal cords are opened wide and without any tension. They begin to vibrate and one can feel this vibration in the throat clearly. When someone produces the sound /h/ a light air stream from the lungs passes through the vocal cords without any vibration. When we produce a strong air stream the vocal cords get tension and the typical ch-sound is produced. The vocal cords are open and tense, there is no vibration. As I said before it is the sound of an angry cat.

Depending on where you are in Germany, words like 'China' or 'Chemie' are either pronounced 'K'ina, 'K'emie, or 'Sch'ina, 'Sch'emie. This pronunciation is kept if the word is the second part of a longer word, like 'Sdostchina' or 'Schulchemie'.

Many have already noted different phonetic realisations of the phoneme ch (which I am going to consistently represent with /x/ rather than // throughout this answer). /x/ comes in two allophones, which are typically distinct based on the preceding vowel (or lack thereof):

There is little variation in the first group through German dialects. Speakers from everywhere can agree on a common pronunciation of e.g. Bach ([bax]). Things start to get difficult for the other allophone as it occurs in dich.

Throughout most of the North, the pronunciation is pretty consistently []. This is a sound not unlike [ʃ] but perceived as a little softer. This is also the pronunciation generally preferred for (German) national news speakers and other occurrances of Bhnendeutsch.

And finally, in the very South and including Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and South Tyrol, the realisation gets close to [x], meaning that the allophones are no longer distinguished. So somebody from Austria, like your teacher, would be prone to use [dɪx] for dich in Gr dich, which gives the rather throaty sound close to the /x/ in Bach.

/mɪl/ is Standard German. The other one is most likely the result of the speaker having an accent. Some German dialects, e.g. Swabian (however obviously not in this case according to the comments :-) ), often pronounce ch as the IPA sound /ʃ/. And native speakers with that dialect often can't drop that habit even if they try to speak Standard German.

Actually, ch is only [x] when used after a back vowel. It is pronounced as [] in all other locations (the two are allophones of the same phoneme with [] being the default). [] might sound like a [ʃ] to speakers of languages which do not have the [] phone.

As deceze points out, the German back vowels are [u], [a], and [o] and their unstressed variants. There are rare cases where a segment border stands between such a vowel and a following ch where the ch is pronounced as a [] (consider Frauchen ['fʁaʊ.ən], a female owner of a dog, literally "little woman", where no phonetic variation occurs in the diminutive suffix), but other than that, the allophones occur in perfect complementary distribution.

Although [mɪl] is the correct pronunciation in Standard German, it's quite common to hear other pronunciations. As pointed out by some, in Hessian, Badenian, Pflzisch, Saarlndisch and Klsch, they often pronounce ch as /ʃ/. Sometimes this is a problem with hypercorrection, or the speakers just don't make a very clear distinction between these sounds.

My friend learnt German with an institute and afterwards on his own for about seven months before I started to help him with his German. The way he was learning German was actually quite efficient, but for some reason he had never learnt how German numbers are spelled.

In my French class in school, I had to prepare an essay about the governmental system in France. Our teacher wanted us to write something about our assigned topic first and then talk about it in front of the class, in French of course.

The nice thing about the German pronunciation is that once you get your head around those sounds there will be less surprises. You can expect the pronunciation and intonation to stay like that for about 90% percent of the German words. The other 10% are foreign words and you probably want to learn them as you go along.

What you also can do is to learn the phonetic alphabet, the international one or at least the pronunciation they use in your book. There are also many websites online that provide audio files that will help you get the pronunciation right.

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Some of the phrasebooks I've seen (including Rick Steves) render the "ch" in Ich and nicht as "kh," the same as in "achtung." Other books say it's more like "sh" (in "ich" and "nicht,") and I've seen explanation that it depends on the vowel the "ch" follows. Is it actually somewhere in between "sh" and "kh," or are there regional variations, or what? If the variations are regional, which way would Berliners pronounce 'Ich"? If either way is correct, how important is it to be consistent?

Standard ("High") German for the ch in "ich" and "nicht", or "echt" or "sprechen", or "euch" or "feucht"... it's closest to the first sound that many of us make in English when we say "huge." (And thus I break my own rule about comparisons with English... but it works to do so in this case.)

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