Is German a phonetic language???

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MackMallone
Is German a phonetic language???

Postby MackMallone » 2004-11-08, 16:42

I don't think German is phonetic, But I think it is far more phonetic than English and French

b/d/g becomes unvoiced at the end of words
z is pronounced ts = not phonetic
ei/eu/äu pronounced AI/OY/OY = not phonetic
ai and au are pronounced phonetically
same, then = not phonetic
K/G before N are pronounced = phonetic
P can be silent in very colloquial German in PF combinations
E is a schwa at the end of words
W is pronounced v, and V is pronounced f = not phonetic
Ä Ü Ö are pronounced totally different than the original vowels = not phonetic.
S before a consonant is pronounced sch.
Ig is pronounced iç not ig or ik.
ß is pronounced ss and not B


SILENT LETTERS = NOT PHONETIC
Silent O: Schoen. Tour
Silent A: Maedchen
Silent U: Muendung
Silent E: Knie, Nie (not silent in Tier)
Silent T: Etwas, Netz
Silent H: Heute, Gehen, Stehen, Thema = not phonetic
Silent C: Stock, Nach, Schön
Silent D: Stadt
Silent R: Tier

IRREGULARITIES FOR V
Lava, Vase, Vulkan.Vulgär

REDUNDANCIES
Netz = z is already pronounced ts
Stadt instead of Statt
Gehen, why not Geeen

vowels
There are two sounds for i [i:] and [I]
There are two sounds for u [u:] and [U]
There are two sounds for e [e:] and [E]
There are two sounds for o [o:] and [O]
There are two sounds for a [a:] and [A]
There are two sounds for ä [E:] and [æ]
There are two sounds for ö [2:] and [9]
There are two sounds for ü [y:] and [Y]

We can never know when a vowel is long or not, we have to mesmorize the word.

senatortombstone

Re: Is German a phonetic language???

Postby senatortombstone » 2004-11-08, 18:27

I have been learning German for over two years and I can tell you that nearly all of the prnounciation rules are followed.

AU=nOW, ÄU,EU=bOY always

S, at the begining is always pronounced as Z, in zoo

Z is always pronounced TS, as in footsore

SCH alwas equal to english SH

SP, ST, at beingin gof word is always SH-T, SH-P

W is always prounouced like V

V is always pronounced as F, except in words of foreign origin.

Saaropean, Kubi, Amiceko could provide better examples than I.

elgrande

Re: Is German a phonetic language???

Postby elgrande » 2004-11-08, 19:50

The short answer is no, but you REALLY have no idea how German is spelt or pronounced or what phonemic spelling is nor do you even know how many phonemes German has. I can't understand how you dare show your ignorance in this way.

And I'm really fed up with trying to tell you all the stuff. Remember when I quoted that passage from Duden? It took me quite some time to find it, translate it and post it here just because I wanted to help you improve your German. But you didn't learn a bit from it nor did you thank me for it. You don't want any help or to hear any reasonable arguments from other people including native speakers, you just want to spam us with your nonsense threads that are about the same topic over and over again.

senatortombstone, if you should have any questions about any specific point of German spelling or pronunciation, you can ask me in a private message or in a separate thread and I'll answer if I feel competent to. But here I fear that any reasonable argument, however well-founded, will simply be ignored or at least forgotten again within minutes and will be nothing but a waste of time.

I feel tempted to start insulting the original poster at this point, which is quite unusual for me, but I'll try to pull myself together. :x :x :x

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Postby frank74 » 2004-11-08, 20:53

German as a spoken language is as "phonetic" as any other spoken language, but of course you wonder whether the spelling is phonetic. Entirely phonetically spelled languages are extremely rare (I think Finnish is probably the most accurately and constant spelled language in Europe). Whether you think something is phonetic depends on the sound values you give to letters or letter combinations. If these values or rules are applied constant, you might say it is very phonetic. There are, however, several problems:
First of all, a written language is always an abstraction of the actual spoken one. Since most languages involve dialects, a written language is hardly ever coping the whole spectrum of that language. as soon as you have phonetic spelling for a part of the language it excludes another immediately. Maybe written languages are never really spoken...
Secondly, alphabets, including the latin one we use, do not contain all the sounds a language has, so you will have to make combinations (e.g. sh and th in English). Also some sounds can be double in an alfabeth: k-q-c can have the same value.
Thirdly, some letters may not be pronounced, but can have functions like stress or vowel length.
Furthermore, written languages can contain all kinds of "historic loads", e.g. words that are spelled differently than expected to indicate etymology or words are spelled in the way they used to be pronounced in the past (very common in English).
Lastely, some spellings are caused by grammatical derivations.

MackMallone wrote:I don't think German is phonetic, But I think it is far more phonetic than English and French

It is indeed true that German has a more regular pronunciation than English, but to my opinion also French is regular. But in German, contrary to French, usually most letters are pronounced. I think that German has a fairly phonectic pronunciation. Or is at least very regular (though regular is not the same as phonetic:
senatortombstone wrote:I have been learning German for over two years and I can tell you that nearly all of the prnounciation rules are followed.



Problematic, though, are vowels, particularly e/i. And many examples you give indeed show deviations from absolute phonetic spelling. But there are some comments and corrections:

z is pronounced ts = not phonetic
but it is regular
ei/eu/äu pronounced AI/OY/OY = not phonetic
eu/äu are pronounced oi
W is pronounced v, and V is pronounced f = not phonetic
Actually w is pronounced differently than w AND v in English. v=f is indeed not phonetic
Ä Ü Ö are pronounced totally different than the original vowels = not phonetic.
They ARE phonetic, as they should be considered as different letters rather than derivations. However, they can be long and short, and ä can sometimes be pronounced [e] instead of the official [æ]. This is a case of a shortage of letters in the latin alphabeth.
Ig is pronounced iç not ig or ik.
In the middle and south of Germany -ig is actually pronounced as [ik], in the north as [iç]. g is used because of this, but there is also a grammatical cause: adjectives are conjugated when folled by an noun, and then it is pronounced as [ig]: lustig [lustik/ç] becomes das lustige Lied [das lusti:ge li:t], the merry song. So there is a reason for spelling words in an unphonetic fashion.
ß is pronounced ss and not B
ß ("eszet" [es-tset]) is not a B, but a combination of the gothic/old German letters s and z. It is used to indicate a sharp s instead of a soft s (which is a [z]). Example: Straße. The eszet indicates that it is pronounced as [shtra:se] (sharp s after a long vowel), Strase would be [shtra:ze] and Strasse [shtrase]


SILENT LETTERS = NOT PHONETIC
Silent O: Schoen. Tour
schoen should be spelled schön, tour is an unchanged French word. In a regular, adjusted spelling it would be "Tur".
Silent A: Maedchen
Like oe= ö, ae= ä: Mädchen
Silent U: Muendung
again, ue= ü, Mündung
Silent E: Knie, Nie (not silent in Tier)
true, it is not really phonetic, but regular. The e indicates i is long and not short
Silent T: Etwas, Netz
t is NOT silent in etwas, but fully pronounced: [ætwas]
Silent H: Heute, Gehen, Stehen, Thema = not phonetic
h is always pronounced in heute, and officially pronounced in stehen and gehen, of which exist several versions: e.g. stehen: [shte:hen, shte:n, shte:en].
Silent C: Stock, Nach, Schön
c in ck-combination is used to indicate that the vowel before is short (see below). "ch" and "sch" are used becaus the latin alfabeth lacks letters for [x], [ç] and [sh] , I use sh since I don't now the alt-code for the actual phonetic letter)
Silent D: Stadt
This is an example of historic load: in old German it was stade or staede (like in old English and Dutch, too). It could be spelled as Statt (as you indicated already below), and plural: Stäte (the vowel is long than). So Städte, as it is spelled now, is completely non-phonetic AND irregular!
Silent R: Tier
R is notoriously difficult in German: including all dialects it can be everything between tong-tip r and French-like throat-r (though not the English "are") and a or silent at the end of a word or syllable. It depends on where you are from or how "socially upperclass" you try to speak.

IRREGULARITIES FOR V
Lava, Vase, Vulkan.Vulgär

REDUNDANCIES
Netz = z is already pronounced ts
Stadt instead of Statt
Gehen, why not Geeen
gehen: see above

vowels
This is indeed true!
There are two sounds for i [i:] and [I
There are two sounds for u [u:] and [U]
There are two sounds for e [e:] and [E]
There are two sounds for o [o:] and [O]
There are two sounds for a [a:] and [A]
There are two sounds for ä [E:] and [æ]
There are two sounds for ö [2:] and [9]
There are two sounds for ü [y:] and [Y]

MackMallone wrote:We can never know when a vowel is long or not, we have to mesmorize the word.

There are several ways to indicate whether a vowel is short or long in German, although there are cases where you have to learn it by heart:
-a double consonant usually indicates a short vowel, a single a long vowel: stumm (silent, dumb), Ton (clay), Tonne (barrel). However, Mann (man) and man (one, people, they as in people say, one says) are both [man]. For k, ck is used instead of kk: Sack (sack), gucken (to look, see)
-h after a vowel indicates it is long:
Stahl (steal) [shta:l], Stall (stable, shed, sty) [shtal]
-e after i:
Stiel (stalk, stem) [shti:l], still (silent) [shtil][/i]

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Postby Liisi » 2004-11-08, 22:04

frank74 wrote:Actually w is pronounced differently than w AND v in English. v=f is indeed not phonetic


I've got one (serious) question. Why German v ([f]) is not phonetic? My logic says it's just another way of spelling the same sound, not less phonetic than f in English. But I'm just a beginner in German, and I don't know much about phonetics. I'm also wondering how does German w differ from English v, but that's probably difficult to explain in a forum (without sound). Thanks anyone who can answer.

MackMallone

Postby MackMallone » 2004-11-08, 22:54

Lilsi, German V isn't phonetic ... unlike w, there can be two sounds for German V, [f] and [v] while w´is always [v]...
Even though most of the time v is pronounced f, this is by no means a rule, as v in the middle of a word can be pronounced v, and there are many words beginning with v that are pronounced v.

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Postby Saaropean » 2004-11-09, 10:18

The letter V is pronounced [f] in German (like English F). Except in loan words from Latin and French, where it's pronounced [v] (like English V). That's why Vater ("father", Germanic word) is pronounced ["fa:t6], and Vase ("vase", French word) is pronounced ["va:z@].

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Postby Nukalurk » 2004-11-10, 1:08

I heard that the story 'ß' evolved out of s and z" is a Prussian "legend" and that it actually developed from the two variants of 's' in the Fraktur script.

Saaropean, what do you think about it?

ha£igh

Postby ha£igh » 2004-11-10, 4:24

if you like phonetics try hindi ~_~ i think it is the most phonetic language (pls dont flame me if its not luinginazis) theres no silent letters or anything and individual letters are pretty much always pronounced the same no matter how/where they are used.

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Postby Saaropean » 2004-11-10, 10:11

Amikeco wrote:I heard that the story 'ß' evolved out of s and z" is a Prussian "legend" and that it actually developed from the two variants of 's' in the Fraktur script.

Yes, in fraktur there are two variants of S: s at the end of a word, ſ (looks almost like 'f') in other positions. Just like σ and ς in Greek.
ß developped from a ſs (SS, similar to 'fs') or ſʒ (SZ, similar to 'f3') ligature.
I don't know which one is right, and which explanation is a "legend". Maybe both are true. :P
It's definitely not the same letter as β (Greek beta).


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