German pronunciation a with umlaut how to#

So here, pronounce the English word вЂћBOOTвЂњ and pay attention to where your tongue is in your mouth. ItвЂ™s impossible, right? And it also sounds hilarious.Д®xercise 2: See the word Back in the upper righthand corner of the chart? Those are the vowel sounds you make when your tongue is in the back of your mouth and close to your palate. Now, stick your tongue ALLL the way out like youвЂ™re having your tonsils checkedвЂ“nice and flatвЂ“and try to pronounce the word. To get a feeling for this, pronounce the English word вЂћHEATвЂњ вЂ“ and note where your tongue is. ItвЂ™s just a handy map of the vowel sounds we can make based on the position of our tongue within the oral cavity.Дid you have any idea your tongue was so talented?Д«efore we really dive into umlauts, letвЂ™s get you warmed up with some tongue twisting:Д®xercise 1: See the word Front in the upper lefthand corner of the chart above? Those are the vowel sounds you make when your tongue is up there high and tight, closest to your teeth. The vowel sounds depicted on the chart above are all English vowel sounds, btw.В If youвЂ™re unfamiliar with the IPA vowel chart, donвЂ™t panic.

To get started, letвЂ™s refer to our old, handy-dandy friend, the IPA vowel chart: So IвЂ™ve decided toВ share with you my fail-proof tricks to getting German umlauts right the first time. After scouring google to see if I could find a how-to guide that featured my useful tricks, I came up empty handed. There are a lot of (terrible) guides to pronouncing German umlauts on the internet, be they written instructions or YouTube videos. Okay, so how do I pronounce them already!? So the vowel with the umlaut sounds markedly different than the vowel sounds without it, and these particular vowels, which donвЂ™t exist in English, are infamously difficult for German learners to produce.

Phonological phenomenon 2 вЂ“ umlaut: when the two little dots appear in German, or in some other languages, they mark a sound shift.

German pronunciation a with umlaut how to#

You see these little guys sometimes in English inВ words like naive or Noel, but often we leave them away becauseвЂ“letвЂ™s get realвЂ“who honestly needs those dots to know how to pronounce the word вЂћcooperateвЂњ properly? This oneвЂ™s for you, snooty fans of The New Yorker: in the word coГ¶perate, the diaeresis is making it clear to the reader that weвЂ™re dealing with a word that has four syllables (CO-op-er-ate) rather than three (COOP-er-ate). Phonological phenomenon 1 вЂ“ diaeresis: when the two little dots are marking a diaeresis or hiatus, it marksВ a vowel letter that is not pronounced as part of a digraphВ or diphthong. The diacritical mark itself is used in several languages to mark two distinct phonological phenomena: The diacritical mark we see in the case of Г„ Г– and Гњ is most commonly referred to as a diaeresis in English, or umlaut or trema (zu Deutsch: Tremazeichen). When I first started discovering foreign languages, I was immediately drawn to all of the beautiful diacritical marks that English orthography lacks (with the exception of words borrowed from French or other foreign languages OR if youвЂ™re reading The New Yorker, which you should). I guarantee it!В And I promise IвЂ™ll give you more to go on than other explanations IвЂ™ve come across (вЂћwell Г– kind of sounds like XXX in the English word XXXвЂњвЂ“Not a helpful way to explain it!) If youвЂ™ve ever asked yourself that question, look no further! Today weвЂ™ll learn all about them AND IвЂ™ll teach you how to pronounce them correctly (in German). But what the heck are the dots anyway, and what exactly do they do? Since diacritics are largely missing in English, all it takes to make a word look Гјber-adorable is sprinkling a few of them over an otherwise familiar-looking vowel.

Nothing like a few dots to take your boring-looking word from bore to score. We Americans just canвЂ™t get enough of these European-ish little dotsВ (IвЂ™m looking at you, scornfully,В HГ¤agen-Dazs).