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As an English native speaker, the word "Eichhörnchen" is completely impossible to say.
As a native English speaker who had to take remedial speech in elementary school in large part because 'squirrel' was too difficult to pronounce correctly, and who is terrible at languages but learned the German world for squirrel from a random German guy over a decade ago, I saw the meme and yelled 'eichhörnchen!'
Also, I think maybe I should be German instead.
You are now a honorary german
Last time I heard this term it was from a documentary about a certain war... 😂
Maybe there's something to "fo sho ko ro do!"
Where are my Whovians?
My first boss was German and we had exactly this joke! 😅
Pfefferminz is the one I’ve never been able to pronounce.
Well... that's not how you pronounce it at all though. Like all 3 of these syllables are of.
Ikeh? Wtf Horn? Wrong. Chin? No.
It may not be too bad for you, but it's still wrong.
The “Chen” at the end has no English equivalent sounds. It didn’t exist. It’s an impossible word for anglophones to say unless they’re specifically instructed
The closest thing to the German ‘ch’ sound that I can think of is at the end of ‘latch’ maybe. There’s definitely no ‘K’ in ‘ch’ (except for some weirdos who say ‘kina’ for China).
I guess the closest thing to "-chen" in English would be "-let", as that is sometimes used as a diminutive, for example in "piglet"
There's no "K"-sound in Eichörnchen tho.
"CH" is closer to the English "SH".
I-sh-hornshen is still incorrect, but closer to it.
There are three ways to pronounce "ch" in German. The "K"-Sound is the least common one.
The third is a so called voiceless vocal fricative. You don't have those in the English language, but you might know it from Star Trek. Klingon has a lot of those sounds.
It's pretty bad.
may I then Introduce you to the Bavarian/Austrian Dialect word for the same animal
Oachkatzel which is even hard to pronounce for Native german speakers
Oak cat?
Oak kitten, but yes.
To be fair, a lot of other dialects' phonetics are hard to pronounce. Eichkätzchen wouldn't be a problem for me.
Y’all need to borrow Yiddish wewerke, with accent on the first syllable. VEH-ver-ke. Better if you use the Italian r, that is the most common.
Yiddish is 70% Middle High German
Modern High German uses the Yiddish/Hebrew Pronunciation of most letters which is why Most Dialects which are older than Modern High German sound very different to it
there are Plenty of Yiddish words that have been Borrowed and integrated into Modern High German and most Dialects
I mean, I know, I speak Yiddish. But we have p t k like Italian, Spanish, or Ukranian: unaspirated.
I find things like Swiss German much easier to understand than Stamdaych (idk how you call standard German).
https://youtube.com/shorts/BQY9fCKIJOk?si=T411Iy470OE3ZKOg
well yes exactly, Yiddish and most Dialects are based on 1000.year old Middle High German , which is almost entirely incomprehensible to a German speaker that only understands Modern High German
the almanac dialects, so Swiss German, Swabian and Vorarlbergian dialects are still the closest to MHG because the people in these areas Successfully avoided the Nazis Language standardisation plans
so it isn't actually surprising that a Yiddish speaker understands them better
Why is it difficult for German speakers? Isn't it pronounced as written?
the Dialect pronounces every single letter completely differently than in High German
So how does that sound?
..... how am I supposed to convey that through text?
You can approximate it with German spelling. I heard several German dialects when I was living in Weimar and none of them sounded like a completely different language. The sounds were very similar.
If you want to up the difficulty try saying "Quietscheentchen"
I don't.
Do Germans know how to say it?
Lol I just looked up on howtopronunce and all of them say it differently
I replayed one recording like 30 times trying to wrap my mind around the sound I was hearing for "ch." I gave up.
Speaking of different pronunciations, English speakers say "squirrel" at least 3 different ways.
/j no no no, those 3 are just shorthand for pest squirrel, game squirrel, and pet squirrel
Until I looked it up, I've never heard a native English speaker separating the u and i in squirrel into different syllables, the other differences I took as accents.
Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft has entered the chat.
Apparently I missed my chance to unite the world with my unique power to properly pronounce "squirrel" and "Eichhörnchen".
Admittedly, I'm not sure what to do with the people that call "oil" "earl" but it's probably best to just leave them behind.
If you can't spell Eichhörnchen, there's the south eastern alternative to just say Oachkatzlschwoaf.
Acorn chin.
That's how I remember this word.
(Not how to say it... Just that it means squirrel.)
Oachkatzl
As a native English speaker I do not at all understand how this is difficult