Tips to improve your German Pronunciation
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Here are a few tips on how you can further improve your pronunciation in German.
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Many people regard the German language as complex and difficult to understand, especially those whose mother tongue is not English. Little do they know that this is just another system of communication, and it's more logical than English, while being as arbitrary as Spanish. For example, while in Spanish nouns can be female or male, in German, a third genre (neutral) is added. That is the only challenge of German, as for its grammar, it all makes sense.
What about the German pronunciation though? The W sounds like an English V, while the V sounds like an F, while the combination "eu" sounds like "oi" and "ei" sounds like "I".
Here are some tips provided by students who take German classes style that will help you pronounce German better.
Keywords
Certain words that are of common knowledge contain the main combination of letters and sounds you need to know to speak German. These are "Volkswagen" (pronounced Folks Vagen"), Einstein ("ei" as "I") and Freud ("eu" as "oi"). If you can remember how these words are pronounced, and how they sound, then you can pronounce any German words containing the same combination of letters: Euro, heissen, Wein, Vater, etc.
Videos
YouTube is a very rich source of audio listening for students interested in improving their pronunciation, in any language. You can search for videos related to the German language, but we don't recommend the typical YouTube "german lessons"; rather than that, look for videos spoken in German, and taking place in Germany. In other words, look for videos that a native German would watch. For news broadcasting search "Deutsche Welle" channel; for movies "das Leben der Anderen", "Lola rennt", "die unterfall" (in their original language needless to say); for sitcoms "mein Leben & ich", "Ein Herz und Eine Seele", "Unter Uns", etc.
Record yourself
While you watch those –or other- videos, get any recording device (it doesn't have to be very sophisticated, in fact, a regular cellphone voice recorder is enough) and choose any sentence or word that they are saying: play it, pause it, push rec, and repeat it. Listen to yourself. Which are your strengths and your weaknesses? Try to spot them, and work on them. This is the best exercise you can actually do to pronounce German better.
Courses with Native Speakers
Is your teacher of German a native German? There are sounds that only a native teacher can do, even if your German teacher is great. At German-Online-Courses.com courses are dictated only by native speaking qualified trainers, who can teach you the language while conveying the cultural nuances behind the language, and the native sounds.