WolverineDK wrote on 2021-09-04, 17:49:

I mean Doornkat did mention, you could use "u and e" instead of just u. The famous musician Chris Hülsbeck is also known as Chris Huelsbeck. After all, it is not rocket science. It is the pronunciation, that is the hard part. Not the word.

That reminds me of something!
The "üÜ" seems to be the hardest or strangest umlaut for non-native / English speakers.
Instead of "über", English people say "uber", for example.
Which sounds like the name of a car sharing company. 😉

The "äÄ" is audible in English words such as "cat", "tomato" (AE), "rage" etc.
Likewise, the "öÖ" is sligjtly audible in "murder".

Last but not least, the German "ei" (sounds like "eye") and "ie" (sounds a bit like e or eew) are confusing sometimes, I imagine.

Likewise, the "ch" sound..
It's not pronounced like a "k".. Except in Berlin. 🙄
Rather, it sounds like a hissing sound. Like a little baby kitten that tries to hiss.
The "sch" sounds a bit more mature, like a "sshh!" which a librarian would make in a library.

All of this reminds me of an old, old story of my family, by the way.
It was about a delayed arrival of two family members due to a roadwork (they came by car):
One of those two relatives that live/d in the US had trouble pronouncing the word "Umleitung" that was written on the traffic sign (loop way, redirection etc).
The outcome was um-le-tang vs. oom-lay-toong (I hope I got that translation right) .
My grandma had a hard time understanding what happened, because the word was sounding like total gibberish.
After one of them wrote it down, everything became clear and they all had a laugh. ^^

Edit : Just to make clear, I'm not making fun of anyone.
Just like with dialects, English-ified words have their reason and their own history.
After all, we all use loan words at some point.
It's just the failed approach of intercommunication itself that is sometimes somewhat hilarious. 😆

Jo22 : as you probably can see. I am from Denmark, which is the northern neighbour of Germany. Also before WWII Denmark used a lot of German words, or took German words, and made them "Danish". Danish was before WWII the most Germanic sounding language of the Scandinavian languages. We capitalised all nouns, whether they were city names, or "normal" nouns. Which means øl was written Øl (the word means beer, and where the word ale comes from). æ/Æ is pronounced like ä/Ä , ø/Ø is pronounced like ö/Ö , å/Å is the only letter that has to be learned/heard to know what it is. Back in the old days, æ was also written as ae (which they are a combination off), ø was written written as oe. and in some old names, such as Oehlenschläger (as in Adam Oehlenschläger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Oehlenschl%C3%A4ger ) but å/Å was written as aa, and some citynames like Aarhus (pronounced Orhoos). But the other sound of å is a different beast, unless you either learn, or know how to pronounce it .

The "ch" sound you mentioned, depends on where you are in the German speaking countries. But personally, I use the "hissing" sound of "ch". the "sh" I use as the way you mentioned. And all the other stuff. I do not speak German, even though I can pronounce German without a hitch. But I think it is a beautiful language, and the history about the Germanic languages, and of sub-groups and what not, is an interesting deep dive. If you are either a polyglot or a linguistic researcher and what have you.

And brostenen: Don't call the Copenhagen dialect a "peasant dialect". we used to have four distinct dialects(if not five because of the two in Vesterbro) , and if you count at least two more, such as the Valby dialect and the Frederiksberg dialect. Then we are up to six or seven different dialects. I was raised in Copenhagen and lived there as a child, and I know the different dialects. It is basically an insult, and I do NOT see it as funny. And I am understood by Scanian, Swedish and Norwegian people. Because of my clear Danish. And some times I deliberately speak a TINY bit slower so all the syllables can be heard. And when I switch to speaking English I sound like a British fellow.

Office has lots of handy keyboard shortcuts:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/key … b1-d60407d13c35

Unfortunately these don't seem to work anywhere else