A lot of these. Sound like french sounds too. Ä sounds like the "ei" in "hein?" Ö sounds like "eu" Ü sounds like the general french "u" like you mentioned
Just started learning German days ago. für is one of the first words l encounter. I tried to pronounce it using google translate , but with no success I watched many videos on German umlauts , and your video was the one that make google translate recognise my pronunciation from the first time, so thank you so very much. You are really brilliant.
This is the best explanation of German umlauts I've found on youtube. It should be very helpful. Especially since getting an umlaut wrong is one of the most common mistakes that Americans make who try to speak German. I'm always impressed when Americans do it right.
Don't worry about your room, I mean, Einstein once said, "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?'" ... well, I really don't know if it applies to a whole place haha, but you get the point . Tschüss und danke vielmals !
i hate to be the devil's advocate but there's a significant difference between a cluttered desk and a messy desk... likewise for a bedroom, and a mind ;-)
I'd argue a cluttered mind is fine, it's a disoragnised mind that is bad. You can have a lot going on and be fine, so long as you learn to manage and control it and allow your mind to rest every once in a while. If everything is in a contsant spiral or a contsant mess, then things get bad. But busy is not the same as messy.
My family has been in America for about 8 generations now and we spell our last name as Oost. In Dutch my last name is Öst (I do understand this is a Deutsch lesson and does not necessarily work for Dutch). This helped a lot though.
It seems German Ä is very close to Russian Э. Good to know. The bad thing is that in Russian we don't give a damn about vowel length.:D So it is something I have to practise.
Definitely, it's exactly the same sound in spoken language; strictly speaking, there is a difference, but you'll be fine going with э :) Yeah, the length-thing annoys a lot of people, haha :D Now ask me how much your o-a-thing frustrates me! :D
Katja, You are such a great teacher. It blows my mind that you don't even seem to have an accent where as I've spoken to so many german speakers who have strong accents and can be hard to understand.
The note that studying French makes German umlaute much easier is SO TRUE! the French Connection also applies for the German R-sound, btw. But you probably already know that.
Great video. I'm practicing my English and now learning German, so... this was awesome. It helped me to understand more the spoken English and the pronunciation in German, with the umlaut vocals. Thank you 😁😄
i was having such a hard time distinguishing the difference between o umlaut and u umlaut. like, i could hear rhe difference, but didn't know how to make them sound different. your video has helped me a lot. thank you so much
Danke für dieses Video! Ich habe meinem Freund schon tausend mal versucht das ü bei zu bringen und hatte nie erfolg. Nach deinem Video kann er es jetzt endlich aussprechen! 😍😍😍
Wow I didn't know that German has 15 vowels according to the International Phonetic Language. Spanish, my native tongue, just has 5 vowels which are very different from each other (plain a e i o u). That's why it's so difficult for me to even recognize them. I think having Spanish as first language is some sort of handicap when it comes to learn foreign tongues (at least phonetically speaking) since we don't have that wide variety of vowel sounds. On the other hand, foreign speakers can learn Spanish phonetics quite easily. I've met foreigners that after just 3 months learning Spanish can speak it fluently! Meanwhile, I'm still struggling with my French and my German. Sometimes I feel nobody understands what I say.
Love how pronunciation of Deutsch quite alike with the British English accent from the South such as anyone from Poole Harbour, far less Rrs being used~
Nice video, it helped me a lot! I'm a portuguese speaker, and, as a begginer the Umlaute sounds has been quite difficult for me, until I saw that. :) Thank you very much!
Hi Katia! I have a really big problem with the german ''R''...I mostly do it like the French one.. So,I want to ask if you can upload a video where to show us some rules about it.. :D
In French, there are two "u" sounds, one being the sound associated with the umlaut in German & the other being the "oo" sound made in "boo" in English. The first is made when there is the letter "u" by itself. The second is made with the vowel combination "ou." There are also examples in words like "un" where neither of those sounds are made, but that is another thing entirely. Forgive me if this came off as at all rude, five years of French with people who butcher French pronunciation has made me a bit uptight about these things. Your video was very helpful & much appreciated though, danke.
Ä and Ö are no problem, we have those in Swedish also and they sound exactly the same! Ü kinda sounds like a Swedish Y when used as a vowel, maybe just a tad longer. The hardest sounds for me are the the German -ch and -sch! Especially when these sounds appear several times in the same sentence! :) For example "Du sprichst schlecht" breaks my tongue! I'm not sure if that sentence is even remotely correct, though! :)
koch is not far off from the Welsh corch, so I don't find it that bad. The Ö is kind of simular to the w with circumfrlex, the a is like air without the r or the rising tone, the U I struggled with because that's not a sound you really have in either English or Welsh.
I was writing to my online penpal from Berlin about having problems with umlaute, she's studying sinology and I took Chinese in high school, and she showed me the Chinese characters that sound similar to the umlaute. It was really helpful to me and make me thankful that I learned some Chinese before picking up German.
I'm A1 just started off this journey but I already learned DIE can mean THE how by immersing myself in the language I just watch video for begginers and try to understand by context and this is how I got to this video I looked up DIE AUMLAUTE
the Ä you pronounce ''È'' like in French, the ö is the sound of the normal ''E'' in French and the ü is the normal ''U'' in French so for people who speak French it's very easy
French/French-speaking persons have no difficulties in pronuncing the Umlaute letters really~ Ö is also like œ in french : œuf Thankyou for the explanation^^
It seems to me that the umlaut sound is analogous to the English digraph (th). A very hard sound to produce for a non-native speaker of English. When I was a senior in high school, it took me ten minutes to teach a German girl how to produce it correctly. It was hard to explain the difference between the voiced and voiceless dental fricatives. I think it's nice for you to explain the different phonetics behind the sounds.
*Umlaute, not Umlauts btw. Not trying to be rude or mean, I just see people writing 'Umlauts' a lot of time and it doesn't really make sense since it's a german word and the plural form is 'Umlaute'. Just meant as a little tip for the future!
Hi there, I am really grateful for finding you video! I am currently learning german and I'm trying to speak it fluently, which is hard because I live in an area that no one care to learn it with me -.-, but anyways I just wanted to thank you for the video you made and I pray that you make more. I wish I knew someone like you person so i can have someone to speak german with.. I wanna become trilingual already :/. But yes! Thanks again, and I hope you don't mind if i message you a random times to ask you some questions about the language.
For me, the hardest is Ö. Cuz it sound similar with Ü. The pronunciation for Ü is very similar with Ü in Mandarin (Mandarin/Chinese is a subject in my highschool). And Ä is sounds like E in Bahasa Indonesia. You help me to understand how to pronounce them. Even though I already have a German friend, I don't want to bother him too much with my questions. 😅
For me the hardest sounds in German are ü, ö, the soft CH sound, and the german R. (My native language is Spanish). A few simple looking words pack a bunch of these sounds, making them for me some of the hardest to pronounce decently enough: Bücher, Küche (that ü and then the soft CH sound: two difficult sounds together) Zürich (the ü, then R, then the final soft CH, so 3 difficult sounds all together. Not that the starting Z is an easy one to nail either) Französich (probably more difficult than Zürich, has 3 difficult sounds together: R, ö, and then CH, but with the Z in the middle of it all)
c8adec Pero no hablo francés :P Cierto, al menos suena parecida. Pero mira la pronunciación de la palabra "Brot" en forvo.com (hay que hacer click en las flechitas azules): www.forvo.com/word/brot/#de Yo puedo acercarme un poco a la primera pronunciación. La segunda e incluso la tercera son cuasi-imposibles para mí, no puedo mover mi paladar así.
Raul Saavedra All three of them are fine, though; it depends a bit on the region you're from. I will try and do an episode on it, although I don't feel I'm too proficient at producing different German "r"-sounds, either. I can't do the original, very glottal-sounding version for the life of me. And that is the one that was long considered ideal.
Deutsch für Euch Great thanks much Katja! Gee good thing the very glottal version is not considered ideal anymore then. Imagine if it's troublesome even for you, what would be left for us :S
Unless I'm mistaken (and sorry if it's already been said), I believe the French "queue" is very similar to the ö sound, I use that as well as the verb möchte to remember.
Ah seeing umlauts makes me want æ and œ reinstated to common usage. I read a few comments, I have tried this trill/roll on the R but I think my mouth is incapable of doing it. I have lazy English mouth syndrome (LEMS).
You should make a video addressing "machen" because I know what it means but you guys use to in so many situations that you usually wouldn't use that word in English? If that makes sense? Like today I saw a german caption in a picture that said: fotos machen and I just don't understand when to use machen. Omg help xD
One kind request for the benefit of all viewers, Please talk slowly with gaps between words. Doing so will really help us in learning difficult words and pronunciations.
Glad that you are back, Katja! Very helpful video, after that first one on pronuntiation which was already extremely helpful. Here you make like 5000 different faces, watching it at 3:18 I came to a realization: the celebrity you resemble most should be Kirsten Dunst :D (Even though you do have a kind of Linda Evangelista smile :) Best luck with your exams!
Deutsch für Euch Well, you're a woman with a thousand faces :) In general you don't look like Kirsten, you have cuter features I'd say. But in some of those thousand faces you make (I mean that in a good way) you totally resemble her, like exactly at 3:18, when you are looking upwards trying to think of a word. You're smile is not like Kirsten's though. When you say "euch" in "Deutsch für euch", you always smile, like at 0:06 in this video. Yours reminds me of Linda Evangelista's smile.
let s go katja! i m happy that you is ok-you re very sweet,funny and pretty teacher. I am learning german more and more. Danke schön -rafael,from brazil,contagem,mg.
