Why do I keep saying "Hämburg"?
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- Опубликовано: 23 июл 2024
- I am not a native German speaker, so sometimes when I speak German my pronunciation is slightly off. But the strange thing is that what Germans tell me they hear me saying is not what I'm actually saying.
To understand what's going on, we have to dip our toes into the world of phonetics and try to make some kind of sense of vowel sounds in English and German.
Chapters:
00:00 Hämburg?
01:10 The International Phonetic Alphabet
02:00 The vowel chart
02:46 Putting them together
03:06 English and German vowels
03:41 Theory and reality
04:23 Individual pronunciations
05:10 Narrowing it down
05:44 Regions, not points
06:09 Substitutions
Music:
"Style Funk" and "Hot Swing"
by Kevin MacLeod incompetech.com/
Creative Commons Attribution licence
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Хобби
Linguists: Yes, I made a couple of errors in the first half of the video. Fortunately they don't undermine my point, and they give me an idea for a possible future video... so... on balance, no harm done.
You won't hear me complaining about more linguistics videos : )
As a philologist and a language teacher I think this level of detail is as deep as you can reasonably do in a video like that... or a language class for that matter!
There are a video don't remember the name that show how to create vowels chart using a software called Praat and excel.
learned a lot anyway. keep at it, please. 🤓
Imo you exhale to much while pronouncing the H, other than that it’s good!
When you said Hamburg in the very beginning I did not hear it, but the next two times, once when you only said the syllable Ham and then then next time you said Hamburg, I could totally hear the "häm".
I still can hear the "Häm" the first time, even though it's not as ""bad"" as the other few times.
As a native German speaker (well, Austrian, but I guess close enough) I didn't hear the 'häm' at first since I didn't pay attention, but after concentrating on it, it is there, at least slightly.
I think though in normal conversation and stuff, I wouldn't have noticed it since it sounds close enough and it feels more like nitpicking to me from people who point this out.
That however might be a difference to other regions and dialects, or it might be because I am so much in touch with English myself that I lost this 'sensibility'.
To me it seems like his a in Hamburg was a bit too long, and it wasn't quite as monotonous as it should be. It absolutely didn't sound like "Hämburg" to me though. It was off, but in a subtle way.
@@faultier1158yes, his a does have a scratching sound at the end. more like a really open æ or a(j).
@@faultier1158I think it's also because he opens his mouth really wide on the A. When I say Hamburg, I barely open my mouth ;-)
I think there's 2 things happening here:
1. Your pronounciation of the German phoneme /a/, to my ears, is very close to the English /æ/ (a good example is 5:27, your /masə/ sounds like [mæsə]). Since Standard German doesn't have /æ/, speakers tend to hear it as /ɛ/, which is why they say it sounds like "Hämburg".
2. Since Standard German doesn't have /ʌ/, speakers tend to hear English /ʌ/ as German /a/, so to them /hʌm/ would be /ham/. That's why they suggest "humburg" as a pronounciation guide for "Hamburg".
As a pronounciation guide for "Hamburg", I would suggest "harm-burk" for RP speakers and "homm-buok" for GA speakers.
BTW it's curious that you transcribe "Rewboss" with /ʊ/ because to me it very clearly has /u/. But then again, my /ʊ/ is basically [ɯ̽] so I'm not the best person to judge that.
Yeah, I made two opposing tense/lax errors in this video, which of course will haunt me to my grave.
@@rewboss
I'd suggest to approach from _hard/ harbour/ art/ mart/ harm/ Mardi Gras_ towards _Hamburg._
Both _a_ and _m_ in _Hamburg_ are centiseconds longer than in _hum._ Mouth slightly more open.
Perhaps you can use a piano (
I'm a native speaker, for me the problem isn't even to much the a. It does sound a bit off to me but some people pronounce the a like that in other parts of germany I would assume. However the "H" sounds more like a "Ch" to me, the sound you get when your throat is a bit closed. Funnily enough the german platt-dialect around Hamburg would most likely pronounce the "H" like that, but that's not how the rest of germany would pronounce it.
@@sk.43821why write it as Харків if it's pronounced Харкіф? Or did you mean something else?
@@saadisaveIt's generally pronounced Харкіф or more like Харкіу. It's written though. Ukrainian isn't fully written and pronounced the same way. The written version of a word is usually closer to the pronunciation though. And the pronunciation also depends on where in Ukraine the person is from.
As a South-German:
In the beginning as you said "Hum", it sounded 1:1 like a (South-)German says Hamburg ☝🏻
This comment should be at the top. Even if he cant tell the difference, "hum" (as in english) is basically the correct high german pronunciation. He wants to sound native he should practice using that sound.
Not being able to hear the difference in a foreign language has to do with brain and speech development. At some stage in childhood, it narrows down to the sounds it encounters. That is why learning a new language as an adult, most people have an accent because they can't perceive the sound differences in the foreign language.
Welcome to my personal battlefield as german trying to correctly pronounce "th". 😂
@@meinaccoif your brain can't distinguish the sounds correctly then just accept it. We all have some sort of accent.
@@meinacco sats reely hart indeet
I embrace my accent :)
@@meinacco Draw the mental image of yourself as a blond hairstylist with a big bust and then try to say a word with th .
I (as a german speaker) noticed this for the words: flash and flesh... I can hear the difference, but my mouth cant for the life of me pronounce them differently, whenever i try to say flash it sounds like flesh... Got me into an akward situation in the past when i was talking about a flashlight once, so I'll never forget this :D
The difference is tiny and lies in which direction the tongue moves during the sound. For the e, it moves a tiny bit straight forward, for the a, it's backward and down. The movement isn't much, maybe a sixteenth of an inch, but it causes the tongue to straighten or bow resp. The same effect can be accomplished with just muscle tension instead of moving the tongue, but that's harder by an order of magnitude.
For „flash“ I just increase the duration of the „a“ a bit.
not to forget flush, which is in my german native speaker perception very close to flash
I'd suggest just saying 'torch' and avoiding the awful American word altogether.
there is a difference between proper English and American dialects too
I've discussed with German friends the fact that they will pronounce "man" in a way that sounds more like "men" to me, despite the fact the vowel sounds in Mann and Männer don't seem all that different to the English equivalents. This video seems to explain that, so thanks.
Well now that you are here, I could imagine that a collab between the two of you on some liguistics topic could make a very enjoyable video! I love and closely follow both your channels with great interest!
I think a lot of what makes people sound English when speaking a foreign language is largely down to aspiration (I don't know if this is a term you can use for vowels).
'English' Hamburg sounds a lot more breathy than 'German' Manchester which would be pronounced as Menchester by most
yes, most british people actually DO say [a], but for some reason learners of english use [ɛ] instead for some reason
Sat men ower sehr!
Seriously, though, when I first heard a native English speaker pronounce "but" almost exactly like I would in German, rather than the "bat" I had been taught before, I felt betrayed. (They were from Lincoln)
While most English speakers don't pronounce it like that, it did make me aware that "but" is not pronounced like "bat" at all.
I think one of the reasons is that we learn English from non native speakers. Ei'ff ektschullie hät en inglisch tietscher hu wut ollweys spiek leik sis. ["I've actually had an English teacher who would always speak like this", but with the strongest German accent you could possibly imagine]. She also misheard "planes" for "plants" when we were doing a listening comprehension task... so yeah, that's that.
It was only when I started watching English RUclips videos that I realised you guys pronounce a and u way closer to the German a and u than what we learn in school as the English way of pronouncing them. I still don't understand why tho.
I think one of the most important points is that the a/ä difference in German has a grammatical effect, like "hatte" (had, past tense) vs. "hätte" (had/would have, conditional), or "Vater" vs. "Väter" (father / fathers). Hence, it is really important to tell those two apart in German, and probably also the reason why we indicate the different pronunciation with an Umlaut.
or schwül (hot weather) and schwul (gay, homosexual) or Kuchen (cake) and Küchen (kitchens).
@@deniseb.4656yeah but in Kuchen/Küchen, the ch changes as well.
@@deniseb.4656Those are just different words spelled similar by chance, which happens at some point with basically every letter flip. In contrast, it having an implication on the grammatical meaning is quite rare, which makes this case interesting.
@@alexz5620 No, schwül (hot, warm) and schwul (gay) are actually related.
@@deniseb.4656 Yes, that's why we say "warmer Bruder".
Not being able to hear sounds when it's not in your native language isn't just vowels. When I try to get my American friends to stay my name, they don't register my Dutch uvular R as a valid sound. It's really cofusing to explain it to them.
Edit: as pretty much a native German speaker, I hadn't actively noticed the incorrect Hamburg pronounciation, but I think that more likely a consequense of subconsciously assuming that's your British accent showing through.
Edit2: Listening the video again: as a native Dutch/German speaker and very good English speaker, I'm gonna disagree that Ham in German rhymes with English Hum, but it's close enough for explaining stuff like that (or for using in a forced rhyme if you have to).
Es ist eigentlich ganz einfach: Der Phonembestand ist von sprache zu Sprache mal mehr mal weniger unterschiedlich... d.h. ein Lautunterschied hat in einer Sprache Bedeutung in einer anderen nicht. Das lernen eigentlich nur Kinder. Erwachsene hören es deshalb nicht - sowenig wie der Blinde die Farbe.
Was er nicht hört, kann er erst recht kaum Artikulieren. Fertig.
Ham absolutely sounds exactly like Hum
@@BadMemoryAccess Agreed. I'm just saying, I don't believe it's totally 100% the same. It's like 99,999% or something.
@@SsarevokIn discussions like that, I'd really like to see a frequency diagram of the sounds (which I believe you get by doing a Fourier transform on the sound data from the microphone, though that's definitely not m,y specialty). Such a diagram should make the differences visible. Actually, _because_ it makes them visible, it would probably help refine your pronunciation - and learning to recognize differences - in cases like this, especially if you could get one almost live.
New Zealand English "hum" and Standard German "Ham" should almost the same.
As a German native speaker I didn't even hear the mentioned pronunciation "errors" at first.
Not because there where none, but because I am so used to listening to English that you speaking German words with an English pronunciation seemed normal in the English thinking mind...😊😂😂
As a german from Brandenburg close to berlin, your Hamburg sounds fine. A little accent but that impression could come from the english words around it.
Same from Aachen. It sounds fine. A little bit off, because of the british accent, but not anywhere near an Ä.
@@Asturian85 Cologne here and yeah, agree. A is maaaybe a teensy bit on the "English" side but nowhere near an Ä. I do kinda get what they mean though when they say the A should be closer to an English U.
You can absolutely tell it isn't his first language but it's nevertheless as close as you can get without having learnt it natively.
I'm from the Mosel and I fully agree. The way he says Hamburg is a little off, but it definetly doesn't sound like Hämburg.
@@userhh66 Maybe the problem with hearing vocal differences is a German regional problem as well.
@@userhh66 I am slightly influenced from berlin although I am not really speaking to the extend that the typical berliner does it. My family comes from Stade so I have an influence from there too.
Wow. I am a German native speaker with halfway decent second language skills in English, and while trying to learn some Norwegian, something like that is one of my biggest hang-ups. There are several vowels that would fall into the range that the German language would depict with an a and telling them apart requires a level of concentration similar to trying to locate a mouse in the ceiling just by the sounds it makes. Also, related language or not, Dutch has consonants that are close to impossible to replicate for me. Language is so much more than just grammar and a mental dictionary!
Same, but reversed languages. Lykke til!
I tried to learn norwegian for a bit and I didn't struggle that much with vowels, but my norwegian friends kept making fun of how I rolled the "r" too much and my brain just couldn't handle how to pronounce an r without at least a bit of roll in it. On the other side the spoken language in norway is vastly different in like every Fjord. People from the north of norway can barely understand people from the sound without paying a lot of attention.
@@DarkGeorok 100%, dialects are very different considering how small of a country Norway is. Most of the time it goes completely fine, but you do occasionally run into that one guy with an incomprehensible dialect that you have to concentrate on to decode.
@@2Links Everything is relative but I wouldn't call Norway a small country. It spans 1.700 km from north to south. Quite huge.
@@GrandTheftChris meant relatively, but especially the shorter distances that have large dialect differences down south, not the Finnmark-Kristiansand differences lol
I wouldn't have noticed it without you calling it out, but yeah, i hear it now. It really does sound like Hämburg.
German here. The way you said "hum" in the beginning sounds exactly how I would pronounce the "Ham" in Hamburg in german.
I absolutely love brit. linguists/speakers disecting language ... Dr Geoff Lindsey, Rob Watts, and you make for excellent education and entertainment. My ears smile and my brain goes floof. In my area you walk 3km and boom, a significant vowel shift hits you. Pronounce Hamburg any way you like, you have my blessing. But please keep such kind of content coming.
You, sir, are no humbu(r)g.
If you like British linguists, check out John Wells' lectures, there are recordings from the 90s on RUclips of him teaching classes.
Thank you for your little language related videos. They are always informative and a pleasure to listen to. :)
As a certified Hamburger (no really it's on my birth certificate and everything) I'm always impressed by your pronounciation! I can barely tell a difference if any. If anything, it always throws me off to hear the german pronounciation in english!
Glad to see this turning into a linguistics channel! I always wondered why umlaut pronunciation was used when many german speakers speak english.
Again a very well-informed and interesting video on language, linguistics and the intricate differences in real life. Thanks a lot! (And... I cannot argue that I always heard a difference, though luckily I did between men and man as you pronounced it - but you really put effort in making it clear, too :)
It sounds absolutly correct if you pronounce it like "hum". I just listend to the word "hummingbird" spoken in british english and that sounds a lot like Hamburg. The first part of course :)
To you. To me it sounds absolutely wrong.
Me too - if the u in mutt is not existent, neither is the u in hummingbird. @@rewboss
Finally. I needed a clarification since ages. 😂
Moin from Hamburch.
The comment I was looking for :^)
Moin from Nämberch 😂.
Moment: Ich dachte die Hambuicher sagen Hambuich?
Edit: als ich das erste Mal Minga hörte, mußte man mir auch erstmal sagen, dass das München ist…
@@Stadtpark90Du hast recht, "Hambuich" ist dichter an dem wie wir es aussprechen. Geschrieben sehe ich es aber tatsächlich auch nur Hamburch. Wobei es zumindest bei uns nur selten und zu Spaß Gründen so geschrieben wird.
@@JCel Das r in Hamburg ist eig immer ein Vokal. Als Konsonant spricht man das R vor allem am Beginn von Silben aus.
Lovely video. I was raised on goats milk and phonics, and also got the latter at university here in Norway. Don't speak much german, (which language I also love) but fluent in norwegian, as well as my lingo mater, american, ('west coast standard'). And now you know why I subscribed to your channel, which I enjoy immensly.
Really interesting (and also comforting in a way ^^) to hear you articulate sth. that I have found myself, over the years. Let's me know that I am indeed onto something and not just making things up :D
I had always wondered why most people struggle so much making the (to me) most obvious sounds until I realised most simply couldn't hear the difference. Like an Italian I know, for example, insisting he spoke perfect BE (he sounds as Italian as they come and I wouldn't even have known that BE is what he was going for).
that was a really fantastic Video explaining it
It's very interesting actually. Your German is pretty perfect (also when it comes to pronunciation!) you can still hear a slight difference in how you pronounce the word "Masse" - the way you say it sounds a tiny-tiny bit more like "Messe" or "Mässe" (I know the latter word doesn't exist) than when I as a native speaker would say it... All the best from a German linguistics nerd living in London :)
As an actor who took voice and diction classes in college, I really appreciated this video! 😊
Great video!
Actually your first pronounciations of Hamburg were pretty good. The last one, however, went wild.
Maybe helpful as a general advice on pronounciation of German:
avoid knödelling.
to knödel: to articulate speech as if you had a Knödel (dumpling) in your mouth.
As a non-native speaker of both English and German who only studied German for two years in college (taught by a Taiwanese and a German from Hanover respectively), I have actually always been curious about this issue when I watch your videos... because I do feel what your German viewers said to you. But then again, my own pronunciation is definitely worse than yours, and I've also seen a lot of German speakers praising your pronunciation as well. So I guess my takeaway is I have to be more cautious anyway :p
Excellent video. I'm a german as a second language teacher and I try to explain this all the time without going into detail... It's very hard to do
You brought it to the point 😀. It is close and not the same
great video!
On your note about the exact quality of your /æ/ vowel whether it's [æ] or [æ̞], I think you'd be interested in Geoff Lindsey's blogpost on the "The British English vowel system". It discusses the vowel chain shift that has happened in Standard British English where, among other things, /æ/ has moved from [æ] to [a] and /ɔː/ has moved higher in the vowel space to [oː].
It's an excellent blogpost that explains the vowel system of modern RP (which he calls "Standard Southern British" or "SSB") in a way no other source on British English phonetics has
Obviously, I massively simplified my explanation for this video. But the fact that Germans still apparently mishear my [æ~a] as [ɛ] suggests to me that at least in my case, I'm still pronouncing the vowel sound a little higher than [a]. I do belong to a slightly older generation (I'm in my mid-50s), and certainly my father's family's pronunciation was/is a lot closer to [æ] -- his sister basically sounded like Joyce Grenfell.
@@rewboss Yes, the fact that Germans sometimes hear your "a" in "Hamburg" as [ɛ] rather than [a] does seem to suggest that your /æ/ is more [æ]-like than [a], but I wonder if that was more because that was what they were expecting from a English native speaker.
Speaking based on my experience with Malay native speakers who, similar to German native speakers, perceive British English [a] in "Harry" as Malay's [ɛ], I notice that even when I point out the [a]-ness of British English "Harry", they still hear it as [ɛ] and say that that's what they were taught in their English classes, making them expect to hear "H[ɛ]rry" instead of "H[a]rry" from since when they were taught the language.
All that said, in comparison to the modern British English /æ/ or [a], German and Malay /a/ is usually a lot backer somewhere around [ä-ɐ] so it might just be that English /æ/ regardless if it's [æ] or [a] is just much more similar to German /ɛ/ than German /a/ which makes whatever I'm arguing here meaningless.
hmm, your "a" sound in Hamburg sounds great to my German ears. What gives away German is not your nativ language is the transition from Ham to Burg - this one I usually hear in Germany way more contracted. The "M" sound happens by simply closing my lips after the "Ha" and right after the lips touch the "burg" comes out.
Disclaimer: not an expert, just a German native with a reasonable English (with an eye-watering / ear bleeding German accent though) :D
I noticed your specific way of pronouncing 'Hamburg' as well in other videos. TBH, in this video, when you said 'Hamburg' in the beginning it did still sound like 'Hämburg' to me and when you said 'Hämburg' it sounded as if you were saying 'Hemburg'.
Years ago when I ran a language exchange group here in Spain a 1 to 1 session led to my spending ages repeating "todo". I was new learner of Spanish and needed to change my pronunciation of the 'd' from the hard sound of English. My partner was very strict but like you, after the first 10 or so I couldnt tell the difference between her and my pronunciation. Its sort of semi 'th'.
Language exchange is a brilliant way to expand vovabulary and improve pronunciation. But grammar needs to be learned the hard way I think.
I was stoked when you pointed out the O in american "boss" is closer to an A than an O, or somewhere in the middle lol. At least that's what the phoneticly written form looked like
It's almost the same in both dialects. The sound you're thinking of as "an A" is an open vowel, and the sound you're thinking of as "an O" is a back vowel; the "o" in "boss" is usually pronounced in both dialects as an open back vowel, so of course it sounds similar to both. The main difference is that the British pronunciation is "rounded" and the American pronunciation is "unrounded".
Reminds me of when I first went to the U.S. as a high school student and my classmates asked me about my interests, which included "James Bond". And I pronounced just like Bond, James Bond did himself. And they had never really noticed that but naturally pronounced it as "James Bahnd". I pretty much adapted to that but managed to get back to normal over the decades.
well it means we say words like "bother", "father", and "farther" with the same vowels. not all americans do, but many do, and also some canadians like me do so too
Quality Content.
I live in Hamburg and have for all my life - your German pronunciation of Hamburg is perfect - no problem at all.
Andrew being pedantic is one of the best content RUclips offers me
This is just a great video to clear up why my accent sucks and why I can't even hear it :D Thanks a lot!
As a native (American) English speaker, I am very used to hearing English spoken by people from nearly every country, not including the wide variations in native English speakers from England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. As a result, whether the non-native English speaker is from France, Germany, Mexico, Russia, Japan, Italy, or any other country, I am adept at understanding them, even if their pronunciation is quite off from a native English speaker. Conversely, while learning German, I have wondered whether native German speakers struggle a bit more hearing non-German speakers because they are encountering vastly fewer people who are learning German.
I'm from the US and I clearly hear your special pronunciation. Can't just say "ahhhhhh" ?
That's how I pronounce the A in Hamburg.
HAH-MBURG
I don't know why you can't hear this, it seems like one of the easier vowel sounds in German.
I think the -urg is the trickier part of the word and for sure the part where I reveal that I'm not a native speaker.
Oh and I almost forgot, this is great video, thank you 👍🏼
British Received Pronounciation doesn't have the "ahhh" sound you're describing. In General American English, the vowel in words like "pot", "lava", and "father" is pretty close to the first vowel in the Standard German pronounciation of "Hamburg". However, in RP, they pronounce those words much further back in the mouth, so it doesn't sound like the German vowel at all.
So, when speaking German, British RP speakers have to either a.) Learn how to pronounce a new vowel, b.) Use the vowel of "pot", "lava", and "father", or c.) Use the vowel of "hat", "can", and "stack". Options b and c both sound wrong to Germans, but RP speakers usually go with option c (I guess they think it's closer to the correct vowel).
Very interesting, that sounds quite plausible 👍🏻
Reminds me of when I first heard of paleontologist Robert Bakker in a German documentary, and heard his name pronounced either "Becker" or "Bucker" throughout! 😊
Great video that pleases the viewers/listeners!
(which / that ?)
I am utterly fascinated. Really and honestly... that was so much food for thought. 😅
As some anecdotes fitting the subject, I can report that one of my colleagues from Greece was literally not able to hear the difference between ä and e - and ö/ü and i in German.
Whereas I was taught in school that in pronounciation, there was no difference between 'man' and 'men' - it took me years and listening to so and so many pop songs to realise that: "Wait a moment, of course there is". And the English word "hear" or "near" are NOT pronounced the same way like the German "hier". (That next to none of our English teachers were native speakers, did not help.) - The "man"/"men" revelation came, btw. by listening to Jackson Browne's "Lives in the balance". "There are shadows on the faces of the mEn, that sell the guns..." I never could unhear the difference afterwards.
However: I can actually hear many differences between English or American and German pronounciation, but speaking - well, that's something else entirely. Let's put it like that: My spoken English is nowhere near as good as your German. And probably never will be.
On another note, there are literally Germans who have trouble discerning all the German sounds, too.
When I was younger, I had a speech impediment... my "sch" to most people would sound like the "ch" in "ich". Even though I produced it differently. And eventually I was told that "there are people (from wherever) who do it just the same". I lived in Northern Germany most of the times, so I never met them, and eventually I figured out how to pronounce sch correctly and trained myself out of speaking unintelligible whenever a sch was in the word. (My absolute personal nightmare was the wonderful word Tischtennisschläger .)
Then, I moved to the Rheinland, precisely the lower Niederrhein (unterer Niederrhein), and I realised that this was the region I had often been asked for or told about as a kid.
I find it quite bewildering: All pple raised and born here can write perfectly clear German und use "sch" and soft "ch" correctly _in writing_.
And in contrast to me as a kid, they can reproduce both sounds correctly as well. They can produce a "ch" and they also can produce a "sch". However, they do not seem to hear the difference at all and are using them interchangeably. One time it's "ich", one time it's "isch", one time it's "frech" and one time "fresch" - and both the words "Kirsche" and "Kirche" can and will, for the same person, at different times, mean both the fruit or the building. Or the other way round. For some people it's as if they were throwing dice to decide with sound to chose.
(And no, not all Niederrhein natives do this, of course. But those people I know who do are all deeply rooted here and have all their ancestry in the region, so I guess it has to do something with the local dialect. But I could be wrong, of course.)
I was told the reason behind the sch/ch might be that the original local dialect was/is heavy on the sch and in trying to not to do that, ppl kind of went into the opposite direction and the pronunciation got totally mixed up.
@@hypatian9093 Ah, that makes sense. Especially as they do it almost exclusively when _not_ speaking dialect.
Thank you! 😀
I felt that issue so much when I was on my Erasmus exchange in Aberdeen. A lot of the teachers there (from all around the english speaking world, so, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Canada and I think even Australia?) had issues with pronouncing my name, changing Lena to "Lina" even when I said it the German way because they couldn't hear the difference. Same with my flatmates from the US. And I was in an English lit course, which kinda made it worse... xD But I figured it was something like this and just started listening to the anglified version.
The long e always sounds like what would be an i in German.
When pronouncing foreign words the vowel is also commonly made into an 'ay' sound
The German e is hard to find anywhere in English, not? I would suggest common French and Spanish word's pronunciation to explain the German e. Merci, merde / Peso, terra, España, Ecuador
"Et cetera" is a phrase with very similiar pronunciation of the e.
Lentil, lecture, medical, menstruation, pest
Well, the German Schwa at the end of names certainly is, considering the amount of "Heikis" and "Elkis" we get to hear from English speakers. @@sk.43821
I'm a native English speaker who has taught himself some level of German. In the case of your name, there are just some sounds that feel wrong to the foreign speaker making them. For us "e" is always short like in "pen" whereas we can choose between short "i" as in "pin" and long "ee" as in "peen". Lengthening "e" just doesn't feel right. I imagine it's a bit like non-native English speakers who don't pronounce "th" - I'm sure they can hear it differently from other sounds and that the problem is that it just feels wrong to make it.
I used to work in accommodation and there were plenty of times foreigners told me I was the only one to pronounce their name right since they arrived in Australia. That's because I'd tried to learn a bit of lots of languages in my travels and got used to making "weird" sounds.
There's also the fact that "Lina" is a name English speakers are used to.
@@schliatzke6712 Yes! This always annoys me when English speakers say words in other languages. I had a dispute with an American a few days ago when I told him of the time I was in Austria and a local woke my up by shouting "Schnee". My American friend insisted that it's pronounced "shnay". I told him well actually it's like the "e" in "pen" but longer and that German doesn't even have an "ay" sound. He insisted he was right. He doesn't actually speak German (-:
You're spot on.
Liebe Grüße aus Sommerkahl
I remember a phonetics class with the most british Brit my German University could possibly have found (Mr. Peter James, big shoutout, loved the man!). He kept insisting that I did not use the correct phoneme for a sort of humming sound that can be written as an S (too lazy to look up the IPA). Took me frickin' years to even be able to hear that bloody sound... It was Jeremy Clarkson who finally gave me a reference ze German Sprachzentrum I have could understand. It's the th in Blithering when he calls Richard Hammond a Blithering idiot... Still can't really pronounce it though, especially not in it's natural, shorter form as an S.
The last Hamburg I think is spot on. The first couple of them sounds like the General American ham, which is actually hæm, so more front than the German ham.
This is brilliant. I laughed so hard.
Keep it up!
I wouldn't be able to pinpoint the phonetic and linguistic details like that, but my initial impression was that "a" in your "Ham" is sitting closer to the front of the mouth , while, as a native German speaker, mine would be more towards the back. Since the front of the mouth is, coincidentally, also where the German "ä" resides, as well, the impression of "ä" might come about, even if you're not saying the umlaut.
Of course, that's just in comparison to my personal pronunciation. Other native speakers from different regions might have different impressions. And, having said all that, your German is still absolutely excellent!
Thank you for getting technical!
Very interesting that even after 30 years and getting into details like this, you still cannot hear that at the end you clearly said "Hämburg" again. At least for my German ears...
Have you tried using the "a"-sound as in "cAr" or "mArdi Gras"? I think this would be a better approximation for English Native speakers to get Hamburg and Hannover right
Thanks, that's a very good explanation.
There are 7 distinct simple vowels in German language: a, ä=e, i, o, ö, u , ü. As a German, I think the way a German brain works is that all incoming simple (not diphthong) vowel sounds will get recognised as one of these 7, so the entire diagram of vowel sounds you showed would get divided into 7 non-overlapping regions. When generating a vowel sound, a sound somewhere inside its region will get generated. Even though I might be able to distinguish and separately pronounce several versions inside a region, I'm not used to making an effort, because the difference is not important in German. The sounds e and ä are a special case, the difference between them has become unimportant, but the distinct letters still exist. I can still exaggerate the pronunciation of e and ä in order to make clear how to spell a word, but usually they are not distinguishable. Both e and ä pronunciation vary over a wide range. There are words that differ only by this vowel, like Lärche (a tree) and Lerche (a bird), but I cannot hear the difference between the two without context. The English words "man" and "men" both fall into this same e/ä category. I can clearly hear the difference when you pronounce them, but as a German I'm not used to the fact that this difference is important. The vowel sound in English "hum" clearly falls into the "a" category, the same as Hamburg. I never realised that these sounds are different. It would be more obvious if the English language used different letters for each sound.
e is not equal to ä
@@VoodaGod Where are you from? There may be regional differences. I definitely pronounce e and ä the same when they appear in the same place. When hearing this sound, I cannot tell how to spell it correctly, unless I happen to know. For most everyday German words I tend to know, but if I don't know, like when somebody say their name, I cannot tell whether to write "Bäcker" or "Becker" without asking.
i'm from bavaria, and to me there is a clear difference between "messen" & "mästen", "Ferien" & "Fähre", "Gewehr" & "Gewähr" if you speak clearly
@@VoodaGod Yes, if you speak clearly. Except you don't. Well, I don't, and people around me don't. Maybe that's different in Bavaria. I'll have to pay attention when listening to Bavarians next time ...
@@HartmutRick well yeah, many people turn e and ä into a sort halfway sound between the two, but if you're speaking clear hochdeutsch they should be distinct.
which as you say no one does in everyday life ;)
i still think saying e=ä is wrong, whereas i would agree with "eu=äu"
The A in "Hamburg" does exist in English though, especially British English. If you can tell the difference between how "bath" is pronounced in US and RP English, I find it difficult to believe you can't tell the difference between how you and Germans pronounce "Hamburg."
Though I think the sound environment also plays a role. In English, the segment "am" usually has the more closed A like in "ham" /æ/, while in German it has the lower vowel /a/. So maybe you're not used to listening for that.
He says that vowel at 3:03. It's close to the German a and also close to the English u.
Another Bavarian term for a very rural town would be 'Hinterhugelhapfing' - it's in the same vain as 'Hintertupfingen'.
And a bit of explanation:
the prefix "Hinter" in this regard means 'behind or beyond' and is or was often used for newer satelite settlements to larger villages, the same as 'Neu - New', 'Ober - Upper' or 'Unter or Nieder- Lower' So you could have a village called 'Traubling' for example - and then the next new houses UP on the hill were known as 'Obertraubling' - the other new settlement down by the river as 'Niedertraubling' and theoretically some village beyond could be called 'Hintertraubling'.
Thanks for reminding me why I didn't choose Lingusitcs as my specialization
0:15-0:18 at fist I didn't knew what the problem was. It sounded correctly. But after the direct comparisson of "ham" and "hum", I can clearly say that, at least in my ears, the english "hum" is how I have heard and spoken "ham" my entire life. I guess this "hum" sound might then be indeed the proper sound to pronounce Hamburg.
To be fair though, I guess no one could deny that "HAM"burg is actually the more correct way of pronouncing it. Or atleast somewhere inbetween ham and hum. This might be noticible when suddenly trying to speak clearly. and you start paying slightly too much atention not to mumble. For example when calling someone or dictating something ... or when making proper YT-Videos.
But during casuall talking, the mouth is lazy and "ham" becomes "hum".
I gues it's basically just a similar phenomenon as with the e-r Letter combination also sound like the "A"-sound from the "hum"-pronounciation.
As a German, or maybe as just being me, I could never hear the difference between the names Allen and Ellen. I have been told often, there is a distinct difference, but still cannot hear it. So I changed both names to: hello there.
I wondered why you made a video about my first history teacher. His name was Humburg.
Do you have a video on your ai workflow?
When you say Hamburg at 00:03 it sounds like Hamburg to me, but when you say Hamburg at 6:42, it sounds like Hämburg to me. I'm not a native German speaker, but I learned German when I was quite young, I don't remember exactly at what age I learned German, but before my teen years for sure.
Hallo Andrew, danke für dieses wirklich sehr detaillierte Video. Ich bin ebenso an solchen sprachlichen Spitzfindigkeiten interessiert und finde es auch jeder mal spannend, wenn ich in einer anderen Sprache keinen Unterschied hören kann obwohl ich es wirklich versuche. Muttersprachlich hatte ich das Glück einen baierischen Dialekt zu lernen, den kaum noch jemand beherrscht. Bairisch allgemein hat mehr Vokale als Deutsch die auch oft sinnunterscheidend sind und von moderneren Sprechern nicht mehr korrekt benutz werden. Sie hören den Unterscheid nicht...
ach ja - und lass dich nicht von bürokratischen RUclipsrn ärgern, die deine Aussprache kritisieren. Ja man hört, dass du nicht aus Hessen kommst aber unter all den RUclipsrn, die hier leben hast du eine der besten Aussprachen überhaupt! Du hast einen Grad der Sprachkenntnis erreicht, bei dem man sich in einer Unterhaltung nicht zurücknehmen würde um für dich besser verständlich zu sein.
Yeah, there are fine nuances, some notice them more than others.
You know, I have come to the point to realize, that your tongue was doing a hand stand from early on and mine was doing a split from early on and it is easy to say that all those proprietary phonetics are just the natural way the universe works and the other one makes a mistake.
Sometimes your locomotion control and feeling can hardly learn so much more without truely forgetting everything else, which is as easy as trying to teach a stroke patient their own language again.
Once upon a time [or your nearest cultural equivalent], I was sitting with two friends, T and V.
Preamble: T, trilingual, was born in Colombia to an Italian father and Colombian mum and then learnt English at school in Colombia, whereas V is bilingual - Yugoslavian ['cause that was once a thing] and English. Both have spent a fair portion of their life in Australia, and both speak English better (and more clearly) than many of the locals.
The conversation that blew my tiny mind: T said two words in Spanish. I heard one and V said two. I thought V (and T) were having a laugh at my expense. But then V said two words in Croatian (their cultural identity) and I heard two, but T only one.
I have since gone on to wonder if hearing a language sung creates a better/clearer reception of that language's soundscape.
I‘m not hearing a fully formed ä in the way you pronounce Hamburg, but it’s also not exactly the a-sound one hears native speakers use. Still, it’s perfectly clear what you’re talking about and that’s all that language has to accomplish, innit?
@rewboss, könnten Sie eine Literatur zur Einführung in das Thema empfehlen?
As someone who lived close to or even in Hamburg all his live, I do indeed say it more like "hum-burg". But it's clear that you are talking about "Hamburg" as opposed to "Homburg", so everything's fine. :D
After listening multiple times, I think your first vowel in Hamburg should indeed be a little more open and centred for a standard Tagesschau pronunciation. Funnily enough, in the local Hamburg dialect it actually sounds more like your version.
I admit that I am one of those who called you out for pronouncing Hamburg like Hämburg. And while I still think you do, I get it now.
Thank you for this excellent video!
One Thing I've noticed: You are opening your mouth really wide on the A in Hamburg. Try to barely open it.
0:22 Yes, it is what it sounds like. Hamburg has the same vowel as in "humming" or "butter". No idea who you listen to.. ;D
And now do it for every german accent.
Start with Niederbayrisch
@@capslock9031 Ach, ihr Bayern immer🤣
This is a fascinating topic. I'm German and would say that my English is pretty decent, but it's very hard for me to pronounce the english R correctly - it often becomes a german rolling R. So like many Germans (apparently) I'm virtually unable to say the word "Squirrel"
Um, that's because there is no R in squirrel. Try "skvö-l with the ö gliding a tiny, tiny bit into the direction of "e" at the end, but not so much it becomes a real diphthong.
A slight correction: when you say the word sit /sɪt/, the arrow is actually pointing at the vowel in the word seat /si:t/. Once the symbols are added, the ɪ symbol is correctly shown next to the vowel that's slightly more open and slightly more back.
Yep. That's what comes from having cats in the house.
Wow, that was more in depth than I was expecting but I love it!
I'm not a phoneticist, nor a linguist, except in the most amateurish and cunning sense. I am however Danish, with a childhood near the German border, and an adult life often dominated by English, both in written and spoken form. I love linguistics youtube videos, and I recall learning that Danish has more vowel sounds than most (all?) other languages.
I think it is quite funny that you pronounce "Masse" as we would say "masse" in Danish. Being by myself, I just tried to say the sounds, probably sounding very silly doing so.
I _think_ the difference is that the more "open" German sound is made by making a "grimace", like a wide smile or grin, which pulls the cheeks out to the sides and up, _before_ you even make the "h" sound.
Now let's talk about that "g" in Hamburg, which locally isn't pronounced as a "g" but moves towards a soft "ch" as in "ich". And the "r" is pretty much shaved away as well ... yeah, it gets infinitely confusing even within the same language.
to be honest, i didn't really notice your british accent sticking out in "Hamburg", but in "Masse". what i heard you say was much closer to "Mässe", rather than Masse lol
One advantage of speaking Danish is the ability to distinguish a staggering amount of sounds someone might use the character 'a' to represent 😂
Very educational I had a feeling it be the the near front/front open vowels. And to add to the men/man thing Americans tend to say [mẽn] man and [mɛn] men
Nice vid, Andrew. Not too sure about what you particularly said about German not having the "u" sound of cup? Don't you think that the "o" in kommen has the same sound? Just a thought. Cheers.
The "o" in "kommen" is rounded /o/, whereas the "u" in "cup" is unrounded /ʌ/.
@@rzeka Thanks but I don't seem to hear it that way when pronounced. Cheers.
When you pronounced 'hum' you got the german 'ham' perfectly
What if you tried the a in the English word "hard" , made it short and put into Hamburg?
Just sounds more like I, (as a Norwegian) perceive their way of saying it. Any closer?
Great! :)
To me it's sounds like HHHHamburg :D Thank you for the very informative Video 👍
I did in fact notice that your pronunciation of the "a" in Hamburg is slightly more open than I would pronounce it - but then again, I grew up in Lower Bavaria ("Opfe'soft"), so what measure am I. But at least the way I hear it, your "Hamburg" sounds closer to how people from Hamburg itself tend to say it than how it's said in Standard German.
For that, he'd have to call it "Hamburch".
Hey Andrew, ich hätte da auch mal eine Idee für ein Video: Das stumme "h" in der deutschen Buchstabenkombination "th", was insbesondere für englische Muttersprachler verwirrend ist. Inklusive der Evolution der deutschen Sprache in diesem Punkt und des Wegfalls des "h" in vielen Fällen. (Vergleiche altmodisch "Thal" und modern "Tal", speziell "Neanderthal/Neanderthaler" und modern "Neandertal/Neandertaler", Namen wie "Thomas", "Thor" oder auch alternative Schreibweisen wie "Arthur" vs. "Artur" oder "Thorsten" vs. "Torsten".)
Im Englischen ist das "th" ja ein eigenständiger Laut, und es folgt in der Regel ein kurzer Vokal. Auf Deutsch ist das "h" an der Stelle stumm und dient vor allem dazu, zu verdeutlichen, dass der anchfolgende Vokal lang ausgesprochen werden soll.
Greetings from HAMBURG :D
To my American ears your Hamburg vowel sounds like the slightly open [æ] 😂 but the German [a] is very bright so that might account for it
In the years that I have been travelling to Germany, I have noticed that there isn't quite an "ah" sound. Near the city of Mannheim their is a village called Marnhiem. But if a German was to say "Marnhiem" I would struggle to tell that apart from Mannhiem. Also I have noticed that German doesn't have the sound of "oo" in the way that English does. With the nearest to "oo" being "Ü", which sounds slightly different.
To me the "ah" sound is in the words Fall and Pfahl (btw, I cannot hear the difference between these two words). For "oo" what about the word Umlaut?
@@LythaWausW That doesn't match either. The German "u" is made with pecked lips (as is "ü"), while the English "oo" is made with the lips in a neutral position, like the German "a".
And then there are real "Hamburger" like me. We say "Hamburch" ... no hard g in it :D
Easy way around this. Just refer to that hole in the map of lower saxony as "Buxtehue-Ost".
For me (Sothern Lower Saxony) it's "Hamburch", there might even be an "a" between u + r ;)
Which AI noise/echo remover are you using? It's quite good.
I am currently writing my Masters in phonetics at Uni and I really don't want to be the stereotype of a pedantic german, but.... I get kinda triggered by the rhotic sound in RP being transcribed as [r] (an alveolar trill).
When did he transcribe it as [r]? When he transcribed his channel name, he used phonemic transcription, and /r/ is a perfectly acceptable symbol for the any rhotic phoneme.
@@rzeka yes, I know as a phonemic transcription it‘s fine, but he also framed it in the context of phonetics with the IPA and not phonology, in which the symbols don‘t really matter
@@MoLauer He put it inside // so I think it's fine. I thought // always means phonemic transcription and [] always means phonetic transcription.
@@rzeka believe me, I know. I think I was just reminded that a lot of monophilologies like English studies and german studies, don't know how to use IPA. Also the rest of his point where all made in relation to phonetics, not phonology. He should have used [] instead.
To me, that "Hum"-burg sounded really good. 😅
another reason is that hardware and software for recording and playing the spoken words also sometimes cause shift that different people listening casually perceive as different sounds or even words then when you speak face to face. "I misheared" you is not nessensary the receipients fault.
But then again, i heard this... so...
Interestingly, I can hear both and also somehow like switch between what I want to hear.
Have you tried pronuncing it Humburg when speaking to Germans?
I always pronounced your channel name in a german way which sounds more like „ref boss“ in english.😅