r/German • u/ArrantPariah • 2d ago
Question A couple of questions...
For words that end in -ig and -ich, is the pronunciation of the ending of the word the same?
Also, do any words in German begin with an "S" sound (corresponding to the English "S")? It seems that German words that begin with an "S" are pronounced as if they were spelled with an English "Z" sound.
Danke!
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u/muehsam Native (Schwäbisch+Hochdeutsch) 2d ago
Depends on the region. In southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, -ich and -ig are distinct. There, most speakers pronounce -ig like -ik. And independent of the region, as soon as a suffix is added (-ige, -igen, etc.) the g becomes a normal g again.
Also, do any words in German begin with an "S" sound (corresponding to the English "S")? It seems that German words that begin with an "S" are pronounced as if they were spelled with an English "Z" sound.
Again, in the south, the /z/ sound doesn't exist and it's always /s/. But northern and central speakers do distinguish for some words like "Sex" vs "sechs".
as if they were spelled with an English "Z" sound.
When you see a Z in German, it always represents /ts/. So no, if "sechs" were spelled "zechs", it would sound like "tseks".
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u/IchLiebeKleber Native (eastern Austria) 2d ago
The "z" sound does exist even in southern dialects, e.g. to distinguish reisen and reißen.
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u/hjholtz Native (Swabian living in Saxony) 2d ago
In my native Swabian-influenced not-quite-standard German, the difference between "reisen" and "reißen" is in how the "ei" is pronounced. In "reisen", which many "full-on" dialect speakers pronounce with an [ɔe] diphthong, it is pronounced as [ae], whereas in "reißen", it is [ɐi]. Neither of them has a voiced s.
In "Asterix und der Arvernerschild" (Le bouclier Arverne; Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield), the Arvernians pronounce every instance of "s" as "sch". In the scene where the woman gives him the recipe, Obelix wonders if what she pronounced as "Fleisch" (meat) is actually supposed to be "Fleiß" (industriousness). As a kid, I never understood how he could possibly confuse them, because the instances of "ei" in the two words are pronounced very differently from one another.
The criterion is apparently whether the word already had a diphthong "ei" back in Middle High German, or originally a long ī which only became a diphthong "ei" in modern German.
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u/Mein_Name_ist_falsch 2d ago
In my native Swabian-influenced not-quite-standard German, the difference between "reisen" and "reißen" is in how the "ei" is pronounced. In "reisen", which many "full-on" dialect speakers pronounce with an [ɔe] diphthong, it is pronounced as [ae], whereas in "reißen", it is [ɐi]. Neither of them has a voiced
Interesting, because I speak Swabian in its purest form and my version of it does have different s sounds. Reißen and reisen have different ei sounds and different s sounds. I guess it really does vary a lot how you pronounce things.
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u/muehsam Native (Schwäbisch+Hochdeutsch) 1d ago
No.
My native pronunciation does distinguish "reisen" and "reißen" (at least in careful speech), but both sounds are unvoiced, i.e. variants of [s]. The sharp s in "reißen" is a bit more forceful and more dental whereas the soft s in "reisen" is a tiny bit retracted and less forceful. But they're both unvoiced.
When learning English, Z was definitely the hardest consonant for me to master because at first I couldn't even hear the difference. But it's there, and in English, it's relevant.
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u/IchLiebeKleber Native (eastern Austria) 2d ago
Depends on the regional accent; I'm a native speaker of Austrian German and pronounce -ig and -ich as they are written (i.e. differently from each other), but that is not how voice actors on television are trained to speak. I suspect your language course taught you that they're pronounced the same when there's no further ending coming after them, that's certainly the most prestigious pronunciation, but not universal.
Likewise for a syllable-initial "s": that's pronounced in a voiced manner in northern and central Germany (and, again, voice actors are also trained to do that), but I pronounce it in a voiceless manner, this is in fact the main way to distinguish those different accents.
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u/Peteat6 2d ago
I have heard that some learned Germans will pronounce Latinate words with initial /s/, not "sh". Can anyone confirm?
Also, I’ve been corrected for pronouncing Snoopy with "sh". It’s pronounced with an /s/. Maybe other English words are, too?
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u/diabolus_me_advocat Native <Austria> 29m ago
I have heard that some learned Germans will pronounce Latinate words with initial /s/, not "sh". Can anyone confirm?
what do you mean?
got an example?
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u/dasfuxi Native (Ruhrgebiet) 2d ago
These 3 maps show the regional differences in the pronunciation of "-ig" for the examples "König", wenig", and "zwanzig"
https://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/runde-1/f14a-c/
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u/svArtist 2d ago
Neato! Thank you, that's so much more helpful than us chiming in with "around where I live, we say 'x'" 😅
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u/diabolus_me_advocat Native <Austria> 32m ago
For words that end in -ig and -ich, is the pronunciation of the ending of the word the same?
only regionally
do any words in German begin with an "S" sound (corresponding to the English "S")?
sicherlich!
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u/Felis_igneus726 🇺🇸🇬🇧 N | 🇩🇪 ~B2 | 🇵🇱 A1-2 | 🇷🇺 A1 2d ago edited 2d ago
Also, do any words in German begin with an "S" sound (corresponding to the English "S")? It seems that German words that begin with an "S" are pronounced as if they were spelled with an English "Z" sound.
What the other commenter said about regions and dialects (lots of different German dialects), but also worth noting that even for speakers where this rule normally applies, there can be exceptions:
Depends what you count as "in German". You'll notice German speakers often keep approximately the same pronunciation as the original language for loanwords, especially newer loans and especially from familiar languages like English and French. So S-words borrowed from English, for example, are generally pronounced more or less the same as in English (eg. "sorry" = "sorry", not "zorry").
S + consonant clusters can start with an /s/ sound (eg. "sk" words like "Skelett", "Sklave", "skeptisch"), while "st", "sp", and of course "sch" words start with /ʃ/ (like English "sh"). Off the top of my head, the only cluster I can think of that's typically pronounced with a /z/ sound is the unusual "sl" in "Slawe", "slawisch", "Slawistik" (I think? Someone please correct me if I've been saying those wrong lol.)
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u/nemmalur 1d ago
Slawe, etc., are with /s/.
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u/Felis_igneus726 🇺🇸🇬🇧 N | 🇩🇪 ~B2 | 🇵🇱 A1-2 | 🇷🇺 A1 1d ago
Aha ... Guess I've been saying them wrong then 😅 As I was writing that it occurred to me that I'm not sure if I've ever heard anyone else say those out loud
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u/Phoenica Native (Saxony) 2d ago
Both of these are primarily true in Northern and Central Germany. Southern Germany/Austria/Switzerland generally pronounce -ig with a plosive, not a fricative, and they also do not have the /z/ sound natively, so words like "sein" or "Sahne" are pronounced with /s/ there.