Learn how to pronounce the German letter combinations ph, pf, tsch, dsch and schl
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| Judith: Hallo, [Ich heiße] Judith. |
| Chuck: Hi, I am Chuck. |
| Judith: [Sie hören germanpod101.com] |
| Chuck: You are listening to germanpod101.com this is accent improvement series, lesson 12. |
| Judith: [Willkommen]! |
| Chuck: Welcome to another accent improvement lesson by germanpod101. |
| Judith: Here you will learn about German pronunciation and develop a perfect German accent yourself. |
| Chuck: No matter if you are just starting out or already an advanced learner, it can help to work on your accent. |
| Judith: And to do that, listen carefully to this series and then practice your own pronunciation using the line by line audio tool in the learning center. There, you can also record your own pronunciation and compare it to mine. |
| Chuck: Nothing is keeping you from improving your accent. |
| Judith: Germanpod101 is there to help you. |
| Chuck: Today we shall look at some of our consonant combinations that may pose a problem to you. |
| Judith: The combinations ph, pf, tsch, dsch and [schl]. |
| Chuck: Okay. Can you give us an example sentence that contains a lot of these. |
| Judith: [Quatsch! Schlaue Philosophen reisen nicht auf Pferden in den Dschungel]. |
| Chuck: This means nonsense, smart philosophers don’t travel by horse in the jungle and Judith, this time could you say it a bit slower? You always say these things too fast. |
| Judith: [Quatsch! Schlaue Philosophen reisen nicht auf Pferden in den Dschungel]. |
| Chuck: Okay let’s take a look at the different consonant combinations in this sentence. |
| Judith: First there is tsch. This is first a t sound and then a [sch] sound. |
| Chuck: It’s much like the English ch in chat except you mustn’t forget that the German t is aspirated and it stays aspirated in this combination. |
| Judith: Actually, German’s have adopted the English word chat and it’s pronounced in a curious mix of German and English pronunciation. A German example word for the tsch is [Quatsch]! |
| Chuck: Nonsense. Dsch, this is the same as tsch except for the D in front. This resembles the English J as in jungle. |
| Judith: This combination is actually not often used but it does appear in the German word for jungle [Dschungel]. |
| Chuck: Sthl, first you pronounce a sch sound [sch], okay I will be quiet. Okay and then one of these distinct German L sounds. |
| Judith: [L] |
| Chuck: For some reason, Germans are famous in France for this consonant combination. |
| Judith: Yeah, it appears in common words like [schlau]. |
| Chuck: Smart. |
| Judith: Or [schlagen] |
| Chuck: To hit. Pf first a p sound and then an f. This is another combination that’s quite common in German and unknown in English unless you have a friend with the name of Pfeiffer. |
| Judith: Yeah and you have to remember that the P in German is also aspirated. So example words are [Pferd]. |
| Chuck: Horse. |
| Judith: And [Apfel]. |
| Chuck: Apple. Ph, this looks like a consonant combination but it’s actually just a indicative of the word for Greek. Well English also has this. |
| Judith: The ph is pronounced just like a normal F and in the latest spelling reform, most German words have actually been adapted to reflect that. For example, graphic used to be spelt with ph but cannot be spelt with an F but physique still can’t be spelled fusik, that would be weird. |
| Chuck: Could you say that sample sentence again now? |
| Judith: Sure. [Quatsch! Schlaue Philosophen reisen nicht auf Pferden in den Dschungel]. |
| Chuck: I know what we can do. For all of our listeners would cut this out and post it in the line by line dialogue section. So you can practice hearing and imitating all these sounds. |
| Judith: The best way to practice pronouncing the sounds itself is the voice recording tool. |
| Chuck: The voice recording tool in germanpod101´s learning center is really useful. |
| Judith: It is. |
| Chuck: All right. That’s it for this lesson. See you next time. |
| Judith: [Bis dann]! |
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