-

GOTH KONUNCIATIION

Have you noticed that many foreigners, among them the Germans,
have some difficulty in learning to pronounce the English th? They
say tink for think and dis for this. The reason is that the th sound
does not exist in German. Until a German sees and hears an Eng*
lish speaking person pronounce th , he cannot know how to arrange
his tongue, teeth and jaws to reproduce the sound.
You may expect a similar experience in dealing with German
pronunciation. In developing a phonetic system for this book, we
have sometimes compromised with strict accuracy to gain simplicity,
because, no matter how many symbols we dream up to indicate
shades and tones of sounds, you can still not be sure until you hear
the sounds spoken.
Here are some tips on the important German sounds.

All German letters are pronounced as in English with the follow

ing exceptions:

VOWELS: A— ah — invariably like ah.

E — ay — always like ay, but not pronounced

after “I”, where it merely prolongs
the length of the “I”, and gives it the
sound of ee in “see”.

I — ee — pronounced like the “I” in “sit”, ex*

ceptwhen followed by “E” or “H”*
Then ee.
U— oo — always like oo .

CONSONANTS: G — tsay — like“TS”, except before “A”, "O*

and “U”: then like “K”
G— gay — always hard like the English “G”
in “gold”, except at the end of a
word, after i; then like kh.
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viii THE BERLITZ SELF-TEACHER: GERMAN
H— hah — not pronounced after vowels (AH—
EH— IH— OH— UH) . Merely
lengthens the vowel sound.

J — yot — always like the English “Y” in

“York”.

S — ess — at the beginning of a word or syl-

lable, like the English “Z”. Always
like “SH” before “T” and “P”, at
the beginning of a word or syllable.
Between two consonants, always
like “SS”.

Ex: Spanien — shpah-n’yehn — Spain

Stern — shtairn — star
Fenster — FEN-st'r — window.
V— faou — always like “F”, except in a few
foreign words.

W— very — always like the English “V”.

Y — ew-psee-lon — always like the Umlaut ü,

as explained later.

Z — tsett — always like “TSS”.

THE UMLAUT: There are three “Umlauts”: ä—ay; ö—uh ; ü—ew.

The Umlaut ii is equivalent to the French “U”
and is pronounced by pursing the lips as to
whistle and saying “EE”. We represent it ar-
bitrarily as ew
THE DIPHTHONGS: El and AI are always pronounced like long
“I” in English.

Ex: — Migh — May

Mai
Ei - Igh - egg.
EU — oy — invariably like “OY”.
ÄU — oy — composed of the Umlaut A
and U, always pronounced
like “OY”.

Ex: Fräulein — froy -line — Miss.