Very interesting is the contrast with Chinese, in fact. "kichern" could be written "kixan" in Pinyin, with the x standing for tbe soft ch. Jin, Qin, Chin, Xin, Zhin, Shin, Sin, Zin are all interestingly pronounced differently, and I was disappointed the hard ch is not included in the list of consonants. Wish you good luck in establishing the channel, you deserve it!
I think the soft CH sound is why one of my favorite sounding words in German is "euch" (the other favorite sounding word is "Herbst", just for the sake of completion :) I also tend to pronounce Flugzeug as "fluk-ts-euch", because somehow I can't always take "flug-tsoyk" seriously 😅
Good explanations Stephan! Just a minor point: suchen / Kuchen would have been better as examples of the “hard ch” since these are produced at the back of the throat and don’t use the same ch as your other examples (Ich etc). Indeed the ‘ch’ will be mostly hard after the “u” vowel.
Thank you for the positive feedback! To be completely honest, I struggle with the CH after the "u" vowel. To me it is almost a third in-between category. I listed it under the soft CH category, simply because it seems to be easier to pronounce that way. To me it is most important that learners are not obsessive about getting it completely right, but rather that the language and the way it sounds gradually grows on them. Students of the German language will notice how the more open vowels, such as "o," "a," and even the "u," make it almost impossible to produce a completely soft CH. There is definitely a spectrum of sounds produced by CH after vowels, depending on the speaker and what variant(s) of German said speaker has been exposed to.
@@loquidity4973 - yes, there are 3 main ways in standard German to pronounce the ch: soft (between teeth and tongue) after the light vowels i/e etc eg ich/nicht/Blech ; somewhat harder at the back of the throat after the dark vowels (a/o/u) Bach/Koch/Fluch; and like an English x in some combinations of ‘chs’ (Wachs).
I also stumbled when you even pronounced Kuchen with the hard ch. I thought first you had mixed it in to show the difference after following the u-vowel.
Great content, very interesting also for a native speaker. One way to put it: the ch is the revenge for the English th we're struggling wiz. A very important point made in your video: the ch sound differs a lot between regions. So non-native speakers don't be afraid, people might only think you're from another village.
That explained nicely, why the CH was the most difficult thing about German in my (anno dazumal) school days. Or actually it mostly was about the "hard" version, as you described it. By now, after all the decades, I have a whole lot more difficulties, but that is another story. In fact, although I still can read at least text specific to my profession, I stopped trying to speak German already in 1980s. Now, when I occasionally try to follow some German presentations on RUclips, I find that I "get" maybe a quarter of it.
That’s great that you retained your reading skill so well and can still understand quite a bit phonetically. Check out my follow up to my CH video, where I fill in some of the blanks of my first CH video. Thanks for your comment!
This is interesting. I never really thought about how I pronounce "ch" too much in German. It's a continuum for me, depending on the word, that is. Insgesamt, ausgezeichnet! Nu, ich bin beeindruckt von diesem Video.
Danke schön! Have you watched my follow up video about the German CH? There I go into a little more depth and explain exactly what you just said: CH is pronounced on a continuum. Thanks for your excellent comment!
@@loquidity4973 For a dozen years, when I was working for a German home manufacturer, on of my many duties was to correspond with customers. Titled gents were the dumbest. No doubt, they were good at their profession, but had little knowledge of anything else. For instance, one professor used to send a weekly 4 to 5 page letter, tightly type written, all words he considered important, marked in red. Ah yes: the letter was always full of Fremdwörter. Obviously very important to him. What was the whole effort about? Next to nothing! He was the person that gave me a reason to invent my own system for people like him. And believe me, I consequently used it a lot. OK, I made a very long list of Fremdwörter with at least four syllables. I then mixed the single syllables of the different words in a completely haphazard way. So the newly created and meaningless words looked like genuine Fremdwörter. It was s a winner! After all it made such client doubt their own knowledge and capabilities. I know: not nice. But some customers can become worse than a toothache.
@@Fritz999 haha, you beat them at their own game! ;-) Yes, language can be used to intimidate people or to make them doubt themselves. It would be naive to think that language's purpose is simply to communicate useful information. And, effective communication is an art. Thanks for your example!
In my experience, the normal CH sound is made by a narrow space between the tongue and the palate. My palate - I just measured it - is about 6 cm long; and in these 6 centimeters my tongue can form many different CH sounds, not just two! I usually need about 3 or 4! In any case, "Kuchen" is far more similar to "och" than to "ich"! Incidentally, I think it's rather wrong to represent German pronunciation through excessive facial expressions: you can pronounce almost all letters correctly with almost motionless mouth and lips: the tongue has to be moved in a highly differentiated manner!
German pronounciation is for me so much harder than French and Welsh, but at least the spelling is nearly phonetic and consistent. It does seem to me that there is a slight continuum of soft CH sounds depending on its neighbours. And of course the hard soft choice is determined by the position of the vowel in the mouth thus o and a are at the back. It is obvious that English is far closer to German than French, despite the latter having more similar words eg garage, éliminer, détester, entrer, intolérable etc.
Wow, French and Welsh are wonderful languages, but they are not easy. The key to German pronunciation might be to take your time. It does not lend itself to be spoken fast.
Ja, das stimmt! Der "ä" Vokal wird sehr offen aber mit zurückgezogenen Lippen ausgesprochen. Wenn das ungewohnt ist, kann es sogar ein bisschen wehtun.
Thanks for commenting, TobyLuke! In retrospect, I should have put CH-after-U into a separate category, not as guttural as "lachen" or "kochen" but also not as soft as "ich." There is really a spectrum of CH sounds instead of categories, largely necessitated by the vowels that precedes them. Vowels also vary from region to region in the German speaking world. Unfortunately, there is not much I can do in terms of editing once a video is posted.
Do you really think the 'ch' in kuchen and suchen [ 2:34 ] is the same sound as in milch or licht?? The former two are certainly softer than in macht, but imho are not closely related to an English 'sh' sound.
Thanks for your comment and question! I think you and I agree (at least sort of) when I tell you that CH after U is really in between the soft CH (closer related to SH in English) and the harder more guttural one in words where CH follows an O or an A. If I were to remake the video, I would point that out and relativize that point. I have struggled with the "CH after U" while I made the video. Unfortunately, RUclips does not let us upload edited videos and the in-studio editing options are very limited and would just butcher the video (i.e. cut the finger off instead of clean the wound and bandage it). Thanks for your thoughts on this! I hope the video was still instrumental or at least somewhat enjoyable on some level. 🙂
@@loquidity4973 Yes, enjoyable content! Unfortunate about the difficulties editing uploaded vids. :^/ I think ch in kuchen is made by airflow being constricted (between roof & tongue) further back in the mouth. In milch, the tongue has to approach the roof further forward. Just my impression, I'm not a German speaker, just interested. Cheers.
@@pbasswil Yes, the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth varies depending on the vowel that follows the CH. I am mulling the idea of creating a follow-up video in which I will go into more specifics and explain how there seems to be a range or a spectrum of CH sounds rather than two or three clear-cut categories. Thanks again for your feedback! 🙂
@@loquidity4973 I could be wrong, but I _think_ the main difference between an English sh sound, and the ch in milch, is that in English the upper & lower teeth must be close (or even touching), so that that constriction contributes to the audible, er... turbulence(!). In German, that airflow constriction is only between the tongue and the top of the mouth. I think! Keep up the good work.
@@pbasswil Strangely, my teeth are apart/ajar when I make the sh sound in English, same for both ch and sch sounds in German. Who knew phonetics could be so much fun!?
Und so: ,,gymnasium" ? I speak no German. Yet... I have always assumed the hard ,,g" and the ,,y" == ,,u" sound in ,,gymnasium". This ,,y" == ,,ü" revelation comes as a shock to my poor old Anglophonic bones 😕.
Not to worry . . . every day brings new discoveries, for each and every one of us. Yes, the German word "das Gymnasium," which by the way is a university preparatory secondary school, might as well be written phonetically with an "ü." Since it is a Greek loanword, and there is still a lot of respect and affinity for ancient Greek culture, it is still spelled with a "y." I wish I knew more modern and classic Greek to make better and more connections. So, that's all I got for now. Thanks for the comment, Phil!
Хобби
![Eminem - Tobey (feat. Big Sean & Babytron) [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9xn0OHEZZ8Q/mqdefault.jpg)
#Loquidity
I simply like this lesson about pronunciation of CH
Danke schön Dr Stephan.
🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
Thank you for your kind words, Zulkifli!
Very interesting is the contrast with Chinese, in fact. "kichern" could be written "kixan" in Pinyin, with the x standing for tbe soft ch.
Jin, Qin, Chin, Xin, Zhin, Shin, Sin, Zin are all interestingly pronounced differently, and I was disappointed the hard ch is not included in the list of consonants.
Wish you good luck in establishing the channel, you deserve it!
Thank you!
Very interesting & answers a lot of my questions. Will have to watch it over & over. Thanks
You are welcome! Thank you for watching!
I think the soft CH sound is why one of my favorite sounding words in German is "euch" (the other favorite sounding word is "Herbst", just for the sake of completion :)
I also tend to pronounce Flugzeug as "fluk-ts-euch", because somehow I can't always take "flug-tsoyk" seriously 😅
The soft ending for Flugzeug is very common i Germany. Since I grew up in the south, near Munich, I tend to pronounce the g-endings a lot harder.
Good explanations Stephan! Just a minor point: suchen / Kuchen would have been better as examples of the “hard ch” since these are produced at the back of the throat and don’t use the same ch as your other examples (Ich etc). Indeed the ‘ch’ will be mostly hard after the “u” vowel.
Thank you for the positive feedback! To be completely honest, I struggle with the CH after the "u" vowel. To me it is almost a third in-between category. I listed it under the soft CH category, simply because it seems to be easier to pronounce that way. To me it is most important that learners are not obsessive about getting it completely right, but rather that the language and the way it sounds gradually grows on them. Students of the German language will notice how the more open vowels, such as "o," "a," and even the "u," make it almost impossible to produce a completely soft CH. There is definitely a spectrum of sounds produced by CH after vowels, depending on the speaker and what variant(s) of German said speaker has been exposed to.
@@loquidity4973 - yes, there are 3 main ways in standard German to pronounce the ch: soft (between teeth and tongue) after the light vowels i/e etc eg ich/nicht/Blech ; somewhat harder at the back of the throat after the dark vowels (a/o/u) Bach/Koch/Fluch; and like an English x in some combinations of ‘chs’ (Wachs).
@@bausteine I forgot to cover the "chs" . . . I'll keep that in mind when I update the video. Thanks for the feedback!
I also stumbled when you even pronounced Kuchen with the hard ch. I thought first you had mixed it in to show the difference after following the u-vowel.
Great content, very interesting also for a native speaker. One way to put it: the ch is the revenge for the English th we're struggling wiz. A very important point made in your video: the ch sound differs a lot between regions. So non-native speakers don't be afraid, people might only think you're from another village.
Haha, great point about the CH and TH! Thanks for the kind words!
@@loquidity4973 not at all. Your language skills will be interesting for many, thanks for your efforts.
Dr. Stephan congratulations on your new project! Definitely great tips to improve and learn the German language! Thank you very much 💥
Senora Sanchez Cuadros (or Lulu :-) ), thank you so much for your kind words!
I subscribed to your channel. Awesome videos!
@@loquidity4973 Thank you very much for taking the time to take a look at them and subscribe!
@@lourdessanchezcuadros3596 Thank you, Lulu!
@@lourdessanchezcuadros3596 You are welcome!
That explained nicely, why the CH was the most difficult thing about German in my (anno dazumal) school days. Or actually it mostly was about the "hard" version, as you described it. By now, after all the decades, I have a whole lot more difficulties, but that is another story. In fact, although I still can read at least text specific to my profession, I stopped trying to speak German already in 1980s. Now, when I occasionally try to follow some German presentations on RUclips, I find that I "get" maybe a quarter of it.
That’s great that you retained your reading skill so well and can still understand quite a bit phonetically. Check out my follow up to my CH video, where I fill in some of the blanks of my first CH video. Thanks for your comment!
This is interesting. I never really thought about how I pronounce "ch" too much in German. It's a continuum for me, depending on the word, that is. Insgesamt, ausgezeichnet! Nu, ich bin beeindruckt von diesem Video.
Danke schön! Have you watched my follow up video about the German CH? There I go into a little more depth and explain exactly what you just said: CH is pronounced on a continuum. Thanks for your excellent comment!
@@loquidity4973 : Noch nicht, sondern bald.
Favourites of mine:
Fachidioten
Machenschaften
Nachtwache
"Fachidiot" ist ein sehr interessanter Ausdruck. Vielleicht sollte man da ein Video drüber machen. So viele Ideen und nut so wenig Zeit!
@@loquidity4973
For a dozen years, when I was working for a German home manufacturer, on of my many duties was to correspond with customers.
Titled gents were the dumbest.
No doubt, they were good at their profession, but had little knowledge of anything else.
For instance, one professor used to send a weekly 4 to 5 page letter, tightly type written, all words he considered important, marked in red.
Ah yes: the letter was always full of Fremdwörter. Obviously very important to him.
What was the whole effort about?
Next to nothing!
He was the person that gave me a reason to invent my own system for people like him. And believe me, I consequently used it a lot.
OK, I made a very long list of Fremdwörter with at least four syllables.
I then mixed the single syllables of the different words in a completely haphazard way.
So the newly created and meaningless words looked like genuine Fremdwörter.
It was s a winner!
After all it made such client doubt their own knowledge and capabilities.
I know: not nice.
But some customers can become worse than a toothache.
@@Fritz999 haha, you beat them at their own game! ;-) Yes, language can be used to intimidate people or to make them doubt themselves. It would be naive to think that language's purpose is simply to communicate useful information. And, effective communication is an art. Thanks for your example!
In my experience, the normal CH sound is made by a narrow space between the tongue and the palate. My palate - I just measured it - is about 6 cm long; and in these 6 centimeters my tongue can form many different CH sounds, not just two! I usually need about 3 or 4! In any case, "Kuchen" is far more similar to "och" than to "ich"!
Incidentally, I think it's rather wrong to represent German pronunciation through excessive facial expressions: you can pronounce almost all letters correctly with almost motionless mouth and lips: the tongue has to be moved in a highly differentiated manner!
What part of India did your Scottish friend come from?
German pronounciation is for me so much harder than French and Welsh, but at least the spelling is nearly phonetic and consistent. It does seem to me that there is a slight continuum of soft CH sounds depending on its neighbours. And of course the hard soft choice is determined by the position of the vowel in the mouth thus o and a are at the back. It is obvious that English is far closer to German than French, despite the latter having more similar words eg garage, éliminer, détester, entrer, intolérable etc.
Wow, French and Welsh are wonderful languages, but they are not easy. The key to German pronunciation might be to take your time. It does not lend itself to be spoken fast.
the funny thing is that the "hard ch" is actually present in english with the words using kh but no one pronounce it corectly
Very true!
Der a-umlaut wird mit Lippenspreizung ausgesprochen. Nicht wahr?
Ja, das stimmt! Der "ä" Vokal wird sehr offen aber mit zurückgezogenen Lippen ausgesprochen. Wenn das ungewohnt ist, kann es sogar ein bisschen wehtun.
Easy.
The same as the Dutch pronounce the G.
Thanks for the comparison!
Suchen.. Kuchen.. I’d say are harder pronunciations than stated here. Closer to machen usw
Thanks for commenting, TobyLuke! In retrospect, I should have put CH-after-U into a separate category, not as guttural as "lachen" or "kochen" but also not as soft as "ich." There is really a spectrum of CH sounds instead of categories, largely necessitated by the vowels that precedes them. Vowels also vary from region to region in the German speaking world. Unfortunately, there is not much I can do in terms of editing once a video is posted.
@@loquidity4973 no worries, was just thinking out loud.. a great video, thanks!
Do you really think the 'ch' in kuchen and suchen [ 2:34 ] is the same sound as in milch or licht?? The former two are certainly softer than in macht, but imho are not closely related to an English 'sh' sound.
Thanks for your comment and question! I think you and I agree (at least sort of) when I tell you that CH after U is really in between the soft CH (closer related to SH in English) and the harder more guttural one in words where CH follows an O or an A. If I were to remake the video, I would point that out and relativize that point. I have struggled with the "CH after U" while I made the video. Unfortunately, RUclips does not let us upload edited videos and the in-studio editing options are very limited and would just butcher the video (i.e. cut the finger off instead of clean the wound and bandage it). Thanks for your thoughts on this! I hope the video was still instrumental or at least somewhat enjoyable on some level. 🙂
@@loquidity4973 Yes, enjoyable content! Unfortunate about the difficulties editing uploaded vids. :^/ I think ch in kuchen is made by airflow being constricted (between roof & tongue) further back in the mouth. In milch, the tongue has to approach the roof further forward. Just my impression, I'm not a German speaker, just interested. Cheers.
@@pbasswil Yes, the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth varies depending on the vowel that follows the CH. I am mulling the idea of creating a follow-up video in which I will go into more specifics and explain how there seems to be a range or a spectrum of CH sounds rather than two or three clear-cut categories. Thanks again for your feedback! 🙂
@@loquidity4973 I could be wrong, but I _think_ the main difference between an English sh sound, and the ch in milch, is that in English the upper & lower teeth must be close (or even touching), so that that constriction contributes to the audible, er... turbulence(!). In German, that airflow constriction is only between the tongue and the top of the mouth. I think! Keep up the good work.
@@pbasswil Strangely, my teeth are apart/ajar when I make the sh sound in English, same for both ch and sch sounds in German. Who knew phonetics could be so much fun!?
Und so:
,,gymnasium" ?
I speak no German. Yet...
I have always assumed the hard ,,g" and the ,,y" == ,,u" sound in ,,gymnasium". This ,,y" == ,,ü" revelation comes as a shock to my poor old Anglophonic bones 😕.
Not to worry . . . every day brings new discoveries, for each and every one of us. Yes, the German word "das Gymnasium," which by the way is a university preparatory secondary school, might as well be written phonetically with an "ü." Since it is a Greek loanword, and there is still a lot of respect and affinity for ancient Greek culture, it is still spelled with a "y." I wish I knew more modern and classic Greek to make better and more connections. So, that's all I got for now. Thanks for the comment, Phil!