German english voice

[António Marques]

Hi.

At https://youtu.be/KFq2pU21cNU you can hear The Model, by Kraftwerk,
which everyone knows.

At https://youtu.be/1q7s5fdgbng you'll find The Sparrows and the
Nightingales, by Wolfsheim.

What is the common thing between the way these two speak English? They
sound the same to me, but I can't point out why.

Cheers.

[Hen Hanna]

your 2nd clip sounds less German to me.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlGGgNFYMQo
i like step 4: [everything a bit shorter and harder]
(ku"rzer und ha"rter)

HH

[Ruud Harmsen]

Sat, 23 Mar 2019 03:45:10 -0000 (UTC): António Marques
<anton...@sapo.pt> scribeva:

>At https://youtu.be/KFq2pU21cNU you can hear The Model, by Kraftwerk,
>which everyone knows.

Passable English, but with a German accent. One problem is
Auslautverhärtung.

>At https://youtu.be/1q7s5fdgbng you'll find The Sparrows and the
>Nightingales, by Wolfsheim.

Different kind of accent. Irish maybe? Also here I here
Auslautverhärtung in a non-native way (there is also a native British
type).

The lyrics contains a fragment that is very native sounding German, so
this too must be a German accent.

>What is the common thing between the way these two speak English? They
>sound the same to me, but I can't point out why.

As said, I find the accents quite different. Wikipedia tells me
Wolfsheim is from Hamburg and Kraftwerk from Düsseldorf, perhaps that
explains it.

--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

[Christian Weisgerber]

On 2019-03-23, António Marques <anton...@sapo.pt> wrote:

> At https://youtu.be/KFq2pU21cNU you can hear The Model, by Kraftwerk,
> which everyone knows.

♫Sie ist ein Model und sie sieht gut aus.
♫Ich nähm' sie heute gerne mit zu mir nach Haus'.

Oh, you mean the English version.

> At https://youtu.be/1q7s5fdgbng you'll find The Sparrows and the
> Nightingales, by Wolfsheim.
>
> What is the common thing between the way these two speak English? They
> sound the same to me, but I can't point out why.

A German accent?

Actually, I don't hear the similarity. The Kraftwerk singer has a
typical, identifiably German accent. The Wolfheim singer does not.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de

[António Marques]

Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> Sat, 23 Mar 2019 03:45:10 -0000 (UTC): António Marques
> <anton...@sapo.pt> scribeva:
>> At https://youtu.be/KFq2pU21cNU you can hear The Model, by Kraftwerk,
>> which everyone knows.
>
> Passable English, but with a German accent. One problem is
> Auslautverhärtung.
>
>> At https://youtu.be/1q7s5fdgbng you'll find The Sparrows and the
>> Nightingales, by Wolfsheim.
>
> Different kind of accent. Irish maybe? Also here I here
> Auslautverhärtung in a non-native way (there is also a native British
> type).
>
> The lyrics contains a fragment that is very native sounding German, so
> this too must be a German accent.

I dun hear no ferharerteng, but maybe that's me.

>> What is the common thing between the way these two speak English? They
>> sound the same to me, but I can't point out why.
>
> As said, I find the accents quite different.

Natürlich, da du selbst ein Nordwestdeutscher bist.

[António Marques]

Christian Weisgerber <na...@mips.inka.de> wrote:
> On 2019-03-23, António Marques <anton...@sapo.pt> wrote:
>
>> At https://youtu.be/KFq2pU21cNU you can hear The Model, by Kraftwerk,
>> which everyone knows.
>
> ♫Sie ist ein Model und sie sieht gut aus.
> ♫Ich nähm' sie heute gerne mit zu mir nach Haus'.
>
> Oh, you mean the English version.

I tend to think of The Model as the original. And everything else in Man
Machine. It's the opposite for every other KW song with an English version.
It's downright criminal that Trans Europa Express is so hard to find.

>
>> At https://youtu.be/1q7s5fdgbng you'll find The Sparrows and the
>> Nightingales, by Wolfsheim.
>>
>> What is the common thing between the way these two speak English? They
>> sound the same to me, but I can't point out why.
>
> A German accent?
>
> Actually, I don't hear the similarity. The Kraftwerk singer has a
> typical, identifiably German accent. The Wolfheim singer does not.

To me, both do, to the same extent. Possibly the things that I'm picking up
are different from those a German speaker would, or even not audible to
them, whereas those you do hear more clearly I tend to disregard.

To me, the issue is (I think) prosody, and maybe the position and opening
of the vowels. Also the lateral.

To me, Klaus Meine is an example of someone who doesn't have a German
accent. Nor does Stephanie Duchene (Flowing Tears), though at times she
falls heavily into the kind of thing I think you're picking up but isn't
what I think of as a German accent.

[António Marques]

António Marques <anton...@sapo.pt> wrote:
> Christian Weisgerber <na...@mips.inka.de> wrote:
>> On 2019-03-23, António Marques <anton...@sapo.pt> wrote:
>>
>>> At https://youtu.be/KFq2pU21cNU you can hear The Model, by Kraftwerk,
>>> which everyone knows.
>>
>> ♫Sie ist ein Model und sie sieht gut aus.
>> ♫Ich nähm' sie heute gerne mit zu mir nach Haus'.
>>
>> Oh, you mean the English version.
>
> I tend to think of The Model as the original.

(I'll admit that '... doch vor der Kamera...' connects much better with the
preceding clause than its English counterpart.)

[Ruud Harmsen]

Sat, 23 Mar 2019 19:16:53 -0000 (UTC): António Marques
<anton...@sapo.pt> scribeva:

>>> At https://youtu.be/1q7s5fdgbng you'll find The Sparrows and the
>>> Nightingales, by Wolfsheim.

>I dun hear no ferharerteng, but maybe that's me.

1:02 and God iss on your site.

>>> What is the common thing between the way these two speak English? They
>>> sound the same to me, but I can't point out why.
>>
>> As said, I find the accents quite different.
>
>Natürlich, da du selbst ein Nordwestdeutscher bist.

Wirklich? Wir sprechen ganz anders.
Werkelijk? Wij praten heel anders.
(spreken gans anders? No, too formal, old fashioned, southern).

[Ruud Harmsen]

18 May 2022 22:00:42 GMT: r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram)
scribeva:

>Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> writes:
>>Passable English, but with a German accent. One problem is
>>Auslautverhärtung.

From quite an old thread!
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.lang/c/ojF4x9KGOwQ/m/07HLhPbIBAAJ
Nice to survive it.

> (Sorry, have not read this NG; must catch up starting with
> older posts from times when Franz Gnädinger was still alive!)
>
> I'm a native speaker of German but not of English.
>
> For me, the most prominent feature of the German
> pronunciation of English is the insertion of glottal stops
> in front of vowels whenever words start with a vowel.

Yes. Although native English sometimes does that too, but less
prominently.

> Then, there sometimes might be a lack of reduction of
> vowels in unstressed syllables. Some English dipthongs
> might be realized as monophtongs.

> Certain specific letters or phonemes might be realized by
> incorrect sounds. But this might depend on the speaker,
> sometimes one finds th->s/z, s->z, z->s, w->v, ?->a, r->?,
> v->f, k->kh, æ->??, hw->h, ?->œ, ...

Vee hef vays too make you tok!

> Sometimes, the correct pronunciation just might not be
> known. For example, "action" is not pronounced with a [t],
> but many Germans will insert a [t] into the pronunciation.

Yes! Many Dutch people do that too.

> Sometimes, the wrong syllable might be stressed, for example,
> "array" might be stressed on the first syllable.

[Helmut Richter]

On Thu, 19 May 2022, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

> 18 May 2022 22:00:42 GMT: r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram)
> scribeva:

> > Certain specific letters or phonemes might be realized by
> > incorrect sounds. But this might depend on the speaker,
> > sometimes one finds th->s/z, s->z, z->s, w->v, ?->a, r->?,
> > v->f, k->kh, æ->??, hw->h, ?->œ, ...
>
> Vee hef vays too make you tok!

For me, raised in S Germany with parents from E Germany, this sounds very
odd. In the S and E, [v] is not a phoneme but consistently replaced by a
bilabial approximant. Hear the two audio files on the right hand side of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilabial_approximant, especially the lower.
I find this a much more natural sound for pronouncing a German <w> than
the one in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labiodental_fricative. I am
aware that this is not correct stage pronunciation.

A funny thing which I observe is that I have no problems in clearly
distinguishing English “vine” from “wine” even when talking fast, but I
find it much harder to read a German text aloud with conistently
pronouncing all -w- as [v].

--
Helmut Richter

[Ruud Harmsen]

Thu, 19 May 2022 09:28:16 +0200: Helmut Richter <hr.u...@email.de>
scribeva:

>On Thu, 19 May 2022, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>
>> 18 May 2022 22:00:42 GMT: r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram)
>> scribeva:
>
>> > Certain specific letters or phonemes might be realized by
>> > incorrect sounds. But this might depend on the speaker,
>> > sometimes one finds th->s/z, s->z, z->s, w->v, ?->a, r->?,
>> > v->f, k->kh, æ->??, hw->h, ?->œ, ...
>>
>> Vee hef vays too make you tok!
>
>For me, raised in S Germany with parents from E Germany, this sounds very
>odd. In the S and E, [v] is not a phoneme but consistently replaced by a
>bilabial approximant. Hear the two audio files on the right hand side of
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilabial_approximant, especially the lower.
>I find this a much more natural sound for pronouncing a German <w> than
>the one in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labiodental_fricative. I am
>aware that this is not correct stage pronunciation.

Quite interesting!

That means South and East-Germany have the same kind of <w> (bilabial)
as Southern variants of Dutch (the South of the Netherlands and all of
Dutch speaking Belgium), and the rest of the Netherlands and the rest
of Germany also have the same <w>: labiodental.

>A funny thing which I observe is that I have no problems in clearly
>distinguishing English “vine” from “wine” even when talking fast, but I
>find it much harder to read a German text aloud with conistently
>pronouncing all -w- as [v].

To make it more complicated, many variants of Dutch have three sounds,
perhaps also phonemes, <w>, <v> and <f>:
https://rudhar.com/fonetics/fvw/fvw.htm .

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Thursday, May 19, 2022 at 3:28:21 AM UTC-4, Helmut Richter wrote:
> On Thu, 19 May 2022, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>
> > 18 May 2022 22:00:42 GMT: r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram)
> > scribeva:
> > > Certain specific letters or phonemes might be realized by
> > > incorrect sounds. But this might depend on the speaker,
> > > sometimes one finds th->s/z, s->z, z->s, w->v, ?->a, r->?,
> > > v->f, k->kh, æ->??, hw->h, ?->œ, ...
> >
> > Vee hef vays too make you tok!
> For me, raised in S Germany with parents from E Germany, this sounds very
> odd. In the S and E, [v] is not a phoneme but consistently replaced by a
> bilabial approximant. Hear the two audio files on the right hand side of
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilabial_approximant, especially the lower.
> I find this a much more natural sound for pronouncing a German <w> than
> the one in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labiodental_fricative. I am
> aware that this is not correct stage pronunciation.

Burt English has no bilabial fricative, so we hear that as

Vee haff vayss off making you talk

(not "to make")

[Ross Clark]

On 30/05/2022 9:46 a.m., Stefan Ram wrote:

> r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>> For me, the most prominent feature of the German
>> pronunciation of English is the insertion of glottal stops
>> in front of vowels whenever words start with a vowel.
>

> English, at least American English, also has different
> vowels lengths, some sounds are long. Recently I observed
> that something was off with the pronunciation of many non-
> native speakers I heard on videos of talks, and I was not
> sure what it was, but my first guess is that they often
> seem to realize all vowels as short vowels.

There is intrinsic vowel length in all varieties of English -- some
vowels are longer than others, ceteris paribus. The trouble is that
vowel quality is considered to be _the_ distinctive feature, and length
to be an automatic concomitant of certain qualities. So length is not
taught, but has to be picked up by ear, and some learners don't pick it up.

> (Another problem might be a non-native prosody. But this
> topic is difficult for me, since it might be more difficult
> to learn about it, to get learning material for this.
> It is also not easy for me to hear, since my ears are not
> trained to notice it explicitly.)
>
>

[Ross Clark]

On 30/05/2022 12:37 p.m., Stefan Ram wrote:
> Ross Clark <benl...@ihug.co.nz> writes: So length is not

>> taught, but has to be picked up by ear, and some learners don't pick it up.
>

> IIRC, it was not taught explicitly in the English class when
> I went to school (but possibly implicitly when the teacher
> spoke English), but some books give the length using length
> markers in phonetic notation. So eager learners do not have
> to depend on their ears but also could learn it from books.
>
> Some examples from my notes which are often based on
> phonetic notation I find in books:
>
> erroneous [ ɩ ˈɹoˑʊ niəs ]
> afternoon [ ˌæf tɚ ˈnuːn ] (uː = ʊˑu)
> institution [ ˌɩnst ɩ ˈtuːʃ n̩ ]
>
> .
>
> ɩ more open and back than [i], between [i] and [ə], unrounded [Y]
>

Yes, if you have good phonetic transcriptions and know how to read them,
it helps.
Some of the non-native speakers you heard may have an L1 in which vowel
length does not vary much. They try to match vowel quality by ear, but
it does not occur to them that duration is involved.

[Ruud Harmsen]

30 May 2022 11:08:36 GMT: r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram)
scribeva:

>Ross Clark <benl...@ihug.co.nz> writes:
>>Some of the non-native speakers you heard may have an L1 in which vowel
>>length does not vary much. They try to match vowel quality by ear, but
>>it does not occur to them that duration is involved.
>

> I have created a small mp3 file (105 kb, 11 seconds) with a
> comparison between a generated American English voice and
> a voice of a human speaker, presumably a German speaker,
> of English (not me, but from a video of a talk!).
>
>http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/mp3_jf47ht81Ht/german.mp3
>
> The German voice sounded strikingly German to me,
> but it is difficult for me to say why exactly.

The German may also be Danish, and there is something off with his
intonation.

> Spoiler warning: Do not read on if you want to first hear
> the audio resource without having read my interpretation.
>
> Of course, a big difference is the very contracted way
> in which the German says "There are". But while there is
> no accepted "there're" contraction, some English speakers
> may contract these words more than the generated voice.
>
> Then the generated voice has many strong pitch changes which
> I do not hear from the German speaker.

The other way round, as I hear it.

> I don't know if this
> has more to do with female speakers having stronger pitch
> changes than male speakers or with English speakers having
> stronger pitch changes than German speakers. You can also
> see this in the spectrogram: The generated voice's f0 is
> waved, the German voice's f0 is flat.
>
> But there must be more to it (why the German speaker sounds
> so strikingly German)! I am just not able to say clearly
> what it is. Maybe one of the readers of this post can hear
> more than I can?