German /a/ and /6/ (IPA ɐ)

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German /a/ and /6/ (IPA

Postby Saaropean » 2004-06-17, 14:06

In the Phonetics and Phonology part of the course "Introduction to General Linguistics" I had a few years ago, the teacher said the usual German /a/ was somewhere between a front vowel [a] (IPA: [a]) and a central [6] (IPA: [ɐ]). I think that corresponds pretty much to the way I pronounce /a/ and /6/. I think I make a difference between /a/ and /6/, but it's only very slight.

During the last week, I was confronted with two dialects that pronounce those two phonemes in a very different way:
:arrow: Hessian (as spoken in Frankfurt/Main) pronounces /a/ as [a] (further in front than the /a/ I pronounce) and /6/ as [E]. In diphthongs, /6/ is dropped, for example the first name "Herbert" is pronounced ["hEbEt] there.
:arrow: Basel German (an Alemannic/Swiss German dialect) pronounces /a/ as [a] (somewhere between Hessian and High German pronunciation I'd say) and /6/ as [@4]. Their /r/ (or at least the /r/ articulated by one speaker at a colloquium yesterday) seems to be an alveolar tap. In diphthongs, /6/ is pronounced [4], and adjacent words are bound in speech. For example "Wortart" is pronounced ["vO4.tart] instead of ["vO6t.?a_"6t]

When I tried to imitate that Hessian /a/, I realized it's more difficult in pure vowels than in diphthongs ([aI] and [aU]). When I imitate Swabian, my /a/ is more frontal, too, but it's different from the Hessian one. In some dialects of my region (particularly in Neunkirchen), there is a distinction between [a] and [6] where the [a] doesn't sound like any of the previously mentioned ones.

I know the phonetic alphabet is just a convention, and it's quite to describe the exact sound of a language's vowels. In fact, even someone who speaks a language very well can be exposed by the vowels s/he articulates...

elgrande

Re: German /a/ and /6/ (IPA

Postby elgrande » 2004-06-17, 17:45

Wow, seems to be complicated than I would have expected.

I've told you before that I don't distinguish the two sounds. I'm not sure which of the two I actually use in final positions, though. Perhaps I even use them in free variation. The difference isn't actually audible to me, not in other people's accents either.

Could you put a soundfile online where you pronounce pairs with [a] and with [6], as in "Alkoholika - Alkoholiker", "Opa - Oper", etc., so I might get a chance to hear the difference? I'm not planning to change my accent in this respect, but it'd still be interesting. But just pronounce them naturally; when I actually _have to_ disambiguate words like "Alkoholika"/"Alkoholiker" I tend to lengthen the "a" in the first and to pronounce the "er" in the second as a diphthong or even pronounce a consonantal "r", but that would sound very weird to me in normal speech and not be natural at all.

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Re: German /a/ and /6/ (IPA

Postby Saaropean » 2004-06-17, 17:56

elgrande wrote:Could you put a soundfile online where you pronounce pairs with [a] and with [6], as in "Alkoholika - Alkoholiker", "Opa - Oper", etc., so I might get a chance to hear the difference?

Before getting my mic and uploading sound files, let me tell you the difference in my pronunciation:
I pronounce a final A half-long (something between the A in "Wall" and the one in "Wal"), and a final ER about as short as a schwa and with the mouth not opened as wide as for /a/...


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