How do you pronounce certain letters in German?

 

Dear students or teachers in German classes,


after completing a course at the Goethe Institute, I am able to teach German.  During the lessons I noticed a few things.

For example, Spaniards have the feeling that they can't speak SCH!This is wrong! One student told me the story that she wanted to buy a mattress with Puerto Rican Spanish. The woman in Spain didn't know what she meant until she remembered she meant "conchon". Spaniards usually pronounce the "ch" like a hard sh. You have to show them the connection that they have the sh but as a ch. Then it is easier for them to pronounce words like ship or school or even the word different. It is not far from the hard sh to the soft sh. They pronounce the ch in chic correctly. Because they go back to their native language! I showed this to a Spanish student and he had no more problems with the SCH when you point it out. The same problem occurs in English.

Another letter in American is the Z. In German it corresponds to a TS. They have to tell you that. They fall back on their native language and pronounce it differently.


 Another word where there is difficulty is the word patient or nation. Especially the word patient I have heard with an English th. It is not . The word patient we pronounce as if there were an s after the t, but we don't spell it that way. I am spelling both words wrong now but the way we speak it. We speak patsient or natsion. But we write patient or nation.


Another problem that comes up is the Ö. It is pronounced similarly to Colonel in English.

For the Ü there is only the word Tryn (town in Scotland) or Sylt. It has to be learned. Often we pronounce y like an ü. The word "Menu" goes in the same direction

Some people have difficulty with the T. You have to know that. We pronounce the D with the tongue on the lower row of teeth and the T with the tongue on the upper row of teeth. I did not test the latter. This caught my eye!

They have also to learn the double ones as Äu and au , eu and so on You must say them that they must be careful when you have two vocals together.They must look for it.

I also noticed that many go back to their mother tongue for the lower case letters e and a. This is where the accent usually comes from.
More info about my lessons are on the following page.

https://unterrichtdeutschonlinespezial.blogspot.com/2022/06/deutschunterricht-online-spezial-oder.html