Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

Judith: Hallo, [ich heiße] Judith.
Chuck: Hi, I am Chuck.
Judith: [Sie hören Germanpod101.com]!
Chuck: You are listening to germanpod101.com this is accent improvement series, lesson 11.
Judith: [Willkommen]!
Chuck: Welcome to another lesson by germanpod101.
Judith: This lesson is one part of the accent improvement series.
Chuck: You can find the rest of the lessons at
Judith: Germanpod101.com.
Chuck: Our goal in the accent improvement series is to help you improve your pronunciation so that you sound more and more like a native speaker.
Judith: However, to really improve it’s not enough that you listen to the lessons.
Chuck: You also need to practice the pronunciation of the words and phrases over and over on your own.
Judith: To practice the phrases, go to the germanpod101.com, access the learning center and use the line by line dialogue tool.
Chuck: If you find that you have a lot of trouble with one particular word however, go to the vocabulary section of the learning center and listen to the pronunciation of just that one word over and over.
Judith: In the learning center, you can also record your own pronunciation and compare it to mine.
Chuck: Today we will look at how to pronounce the letter combinations sch, st and sp in German.
Judith: Unfortunately, they are not completely straightforward.
Chuck: So how about you give us a sample phrase so we can hear them.
Judith: Sure. [Hastig schauten die Spieler auf und hörten die Staunachrichten].
Chuck: The players looked up in a hurry and listened to the traffic news. Say that sentence again please but this time a bit slower.
Judith: I will try [Hastig schauten die Spieler auf und hörten die Staunachrichten].
Chuck: This is also very important because this is a phrase you are very likely to use. Now the German letter combination sch is pronounced just like the English sh. So it’s easy and we – I really don’t need so much time dissecting that.
Judith: However there are two other German letter combinations that require our attention. One is st and the other sp.
Chuck: Yeah, be careful with this. I hear a lot of English speakers making this mistake. When st occurs at the beginning of a word, it’s pronounced like a combination of sch or in English sh and t.
Judith: Sh and t. For example, try the words [stehen] or stark.
Chuck: Don’t pronounce them [stehen] or stark, it just sounds really horrible. However when this letter combination occurs in the middle of a word or at the end of it, it’s pronounced like [ß] or in English s and t.
Judith: St [hastig] or [Du hast].
Chuck: You probably won’t have a problem with that because well, that’s the way you usually pronounce st right but it’s a similar pronunciation with sp. Sp at the beginning of the word sounds like a combination of [sh] and p.
Judith: For example, in the word [spielen].
Chuck: However in the middle of a word sp is pronounced like [ß] or the English s and p.
Judith: [Sp] For example [Despot]. There is no word with sp at the end.
Chuck: And special case are the words with prefixes.
Judith: If the base word is pronounced with [sp] or [st] sound, this is still the case with the other prefix even though the letter combination is technically in the middle of the word now.
Chuck: It would just be too crazy to suddenly pronounce it differently and then revert it back when the prefix splits off and so on.
Judith: For example [anstehen, Beispiel] and [beanpruchen]. Study today’s sample phrase which contains several examples of the [st, sp] and also cases where these letter combinations are pronounced [st] or [sp].
Chuck: Can you remind us what that sample sentence was again?
Judith: [Hastig schauten die Spieler auf und hörten die Staunachrichten].
Chuck: Now please go to the learning center at germanpod101.com and practice.
Judith: And be sure to tune in again for our next lesson.
Chuck: See you next time.
Judith: [Bis nächstes Mal]!

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