LalSalaamComrade@lemmy.ml to The German language@lemmy.ml · 3 months ago

How do I pronounce "Ich"?

LalSalaamComrade@lemmy.ml to The German language@lemmy.ml · 3 months ago

The “Ich” sound is confusing - I am having problem reaching that sound. Is it “ick”, as in icky, “ich” as in sandwich, or “ish”, as in feverish?

Chat

Ledivin@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
arrow-up
1·
3 months ago
It’s closer to ick than ish, but is throatier? The “ck” should be a little softer and pull it back towards your throat

The German language@lemmy.ml

german@lemmy.ml

Create a post

You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !german@lemmy.ml

A community dedicated to the German language. Eine der deutschen Sprache gewidmete Community.

There are a few guidelines that should be considered:

Please keep the discussions in either German or English.
Follow the rules found on the Lemmy main page.
There are no dumb questions, if you want to know something, you’re welcome to ask!

FAQ

What are ä, ü, ö, and ß?

The first three letters are umlauts, or Umlaute in German. The ‘ä’ sounds like the ‘ai’ in ‘air’ and is represented by /ɛ/ in the IPA. The ‘ü’ sounds like the French ‘u’ and can be produced by pronouncing ‘ee’ in ‘free’ but with rounded lips. IT is represented by /y/ in the IPA. The ‘ö’ roughly corresponds to the ‘i’ in ‘bird’ in accents like the one of New Zealand. Alternatively it is the same vowel sound in ‘may’ in, amongst others, General American English, but with rounded lips. It is represented by /ø/ in the IPA. The last letter, ß, is either called ‘Eszett’ (SZ) or ‘Scharfes S’ (sharp s) depending on where you are. It is the sound of ‘s’ in words like ‘sudden’. The capital versions of these letters are Ä, Ü, Ö, and ẞ, but ẞ is not used that commonly and has not been an official letter for that long. If your keyboard layout does not support these letters, they can be substituted by: ‘ae’, ‘ue’, ‘oe’ and ‘ss’.

What is grammatical gender?

Grammatical gender is a system used to put nouns into different “classes”. The name ‘grammatical gender’ is a little bit misleading however, since the grammatical gender does not have to correspond to the gender of the person or object you are talking about. And while Germans grammatical gender system does make the name seem logical, some languages classify words not as ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’, and ‘neuter’, but as things like ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’. Unfortunately there is no way of knowing which gender each word is without learning it. That’s why you are recommended to at least learn each noun together with their article(der, die, das). There are some indicators which can help you, but for many words you’ll have to learn it.

Which accent/dialect should I learn?

While learning different dialects & accents might sound like a useful thing to do, in reality you will be able to speak Standard High German to virtually anyone. Therefore the recommended accent is definitely the standardised one. There are things like the Standard Austrian and Standard Swiss German accents, but if you do not plan to specifically go there, Standard High German is usually the best decision, especially since most material will be made for it.

Visibility: Public

This community can be federated to other instances and be posted/commented in by their users.

1 user / day
3 users / week
1 user / month
16 users / 6 months
1 local subscriber
87 subscribers
2 Posts
7 Comments
Modlog

mods:
bloom@lemmy.ml