Re: pronunciation of 'pronunciation'

LanguageLover — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 22:35:11 GMT

No, they are not pronunced the same. The vowel in pronunciation is a single vowel, as in "but", whereas it is a diphtong in noun, as in "mouth".

You can hear the diphtong by having a look at the following link: http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/diphthongs.html

Hope that it helps.

Re: English is a crazy language

pemmican — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 22:12:56 GMT

>>I've never fully appreciated the noun gender rules. Is it a case of when you are young you have to study the gender of each noun (das haus = neutral noun) or are there patterns that you follow?

No, unfortunately there are no rules - at least not for the "simple" words.
There are some memory hooks for words ending in special suffixes (which also have exceptions though) eg.
- words ending in -ung, -ion, - are usually feminine
die Achtung (caution), die Warnung (warning), die Nation (nation), die Konstruktion (construction)
- words ending in -chen, -nis are usually neuter
das BrÃ¶tchen (bread roll), das Ereignis (happening)/ exception: die Finsternis (darkness)
etc.
but you can never take them for granted! You have to learn most of the nouns' genders by heart... sorry.

>>Question Pemmican!
>Is there a rule in German when it comes to a double 's' a different symbol is used? I've been told that this 'symbol' is optional and up to the user? (The symbol looks something like an overstretched letter B!)

Are you learning German?!

Yes, here there are rules - those depend on what spelling you're learning or have learned:

If you're going to follow the New spelling rules from 1996, then it is quite easy to explain:
Is this -sound following a long pronounced vowel or a diphthong, then you write it as "Ã", in all the other cases you use "ss":

-der FuÃ (foot), grÃ¼Ãen (to greet), die StraÃe (street), groÃ (big, tall, large), der SpaÃ (fun)...
-der Kuss (kiss), das KÃ¼sschen (little kiss), mÃ¼ssen (to have to), ich muss (I must), ich habe gemusst (I've had to), das Wasser (water)...

If you're going to follow the old spelling rules (mainly from 1901), then it's a bit more complex:
A word can only end in -s or -Ã, not in -ss.
Is the -sound within the word following a long pronounced vowel or a diphthong, then you write "Ã", is it followed by a short pronounced vowel, then you spell it "ss", except the s-sound is the last sound of the word, the last sound of the stem part of the word or is (mainly in inflections) immediately followed by a t:

-FuÃ, grÃ¼Ãen, StraÃe, groÃ, SpaÃ...
-KuÃ, KÃ¼Ãchen, mÃ¼ssen, ich muÃ, ich habe gemuÃt, Wasser...

In Switzerland, however, you actually always spell it "ss". "Ã" hardly occurs.

Even if you're using the new spelling, you should keep the old rules in mind, too. You don't have to use them but most of the Germans dislike the new spelling rules as they are very confusing and go on writing with old spelling rules. Even lots of newspapers, after discovering their readers don't want to accept the new rules, changed back to old spelling.

Soon after the New rules (which btw don't just affect "Ã" and "ss", but also a lot of other grammatical and spelling stuff) came out, lots of people were disappointed by the chaos the linguists produced by their changings and now just avoid the new spelling.

"Ã" is called either "sharp s", because it is always pronounced as the strong -sound, never like , or also (this one is more popular) "Eszet" - which occupy the origin of the actual letter "Ã": It has been formed by putting together the ancient German handwriting "s" and "z".

Here you can have a look at the old handwriting:

The ancient "long s" (2nd letter in 3rd line) and the ancient "z" (2nd letter in 4th line) form the letter "Ã" (4th letter in 3rd line).

Hope I could help you out.
Greetings from Germany
Pemmican

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Re: pronunciation of 'pronunciation'

Re: English is a crazy language