"ch" sound

[Christianmonkey]

I'm sorry, I don't know enough German to post in German here, but I have a question. How do you make the "ch" sound as in "ich","mich" and "nicht"? I've heard it spoken before, but I still can't seem to get it right. Danke!

 

[soda]

it sounds like the spanisch "j", javez, la jarra, joven, mujer, ...
I can't think of any word in english that has this sound... so if you haven't learnd it in your younger years its very hard to learn it now.

for us the "th" sound is something we don't use in german. that's one reason why we have this funny accent when we speak english...

 

[Ainuhina]

or if you know scottish english...it's similar to the sound at the end of Loch

yes, the th is quite hard for us Germans...one reason why we try to avoid it

 

[Christianmonkey]

Yeah, that's one of the things I love about English, is the "th". Because I only know of 2 other languages: Icelandic and Greek. But this "ch" is annoying me. I read somewhere that it's like the "h" in the English word "hue". But then I listen to it and doesn't really sound like that. How do you make it? Maybe you could try your best to tell where to put my tongue and stuff like that. One site said air has to pass over your tongue to get it right.

 

[Ainuhina]

yeah, that with the air over your tounge is right....just tried it out...

you've got to shape your lmouth like you do when doing an "a" sound.....and then just let the air flow over your tounge (which is behind your lower teeth) and use your voice....it's a voiced sound....

Hope that helps you somewhat...I'm not a linguist so I can say that this is right but that's how I do it

 

[Christianmonkey]

If you don't mind and have a microphone, maybe you could record yourself saying a couple of words with the "ch"?

 

[Ainuhina]

I don't know if this will work....

but you could try www.leo.org - you can actually listen to the words there....and they do the sound correct...

just type in some word with the ch sound in it and press the small button behind the German word.....

 

[Bulldog]

Yeah, that's one of the things I love about English, is the "th". Because I only know of 2 other languages: Icelandic and Greek.

Greek only has one of them (the unvoiced one). Icelandic has both, and Welsh has the voiced one. Standard Arabic and many Arabic spoken dialects have both sounds as well.

 

[Christianmonkey]

Thanks for that site, but it confused me a little bit. When it said "ich" and "nicht" it sounded like "ish" and "nisht". What's up with that? I know that in some Rammstein songs they said them like that, but I thought was just because they were singing it. A little help please.

 

[Ainuhina]

I'll go and listen to it and tell you if it's right or wrong (they did it right with the word I tried it with).....

 

[~*ZEE*~]

'ch' in German sounds like a phlegmy hiss, it comes from the back of your throat and can probably be best likened to the 'k' sound in the word kick when you draw it out and finish with a final hard kkk sound and round it off with a softness (that would be the dry hissing sound - ever heard a cockatiel hiss? It's kind of like that )

ich - kick - similar sounds Ich just has more hiss to it i.e. Ich is not pronounced ick with a hard k! More like ickh...

*shrug* hard to explain, grab a Deutsch teacher and force them to say it for you

If you ask me the 'r' sound in German is the most difficult to master - being Australian I don't tend to pronounce my r's anyway so to round it fully under my tongue is tricky

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Thanks for that site, but it confused me a little bit. When it said "ich" and "nicht" it sounded like "ish" and "nisht". What's up with that? I know that in some Rammstein songs they said them like that, but I thought was just because they were singing it. A little help please.

The sh you [think] you heard is quite similar to the ch in "nicht," "ich" etc. but it is created a bit more towards the back of your mouth. If you move your tongue from your upper incisors backwards, you first will touch on the alveolar ridge, after that there is a cavity, the hard palate. There between the back of your tongue and just this hard palate the ch is created by air friction.

Though they are similar they are not the same. Consider for example the two words "kirche" and "kirsche." They are the same, except that one takes the sh whereas the other the ch. It may be quite helful to listen to them 'side by side:'

Listen to "Kirche"
Listen to "Kirsche"


And last but not least there are a couple of accents in German which *in some case* pronouce the ch like a sh. A person who speaks a Berlin accent will pronouce the word "nicht" indeed as "nischt" or even "nüscht."

 

[Bulldog]

Thanks for that site, but it confused me a little bit. When it said "ich" and "nicht" it sounded like "ish" and "nisht". What's up with that? I know that in some Rammstein songs they said them like that, but I thought was just because they were singing it. A little help please.

I got the same impression while watching a movie with a german speaker in it.

 

[Christianmonkey]

Ok, so, the "ch" isn't in the back of the throat? Or are there different "ch"s? I know at the end of a word like "Buch" it's different.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Ok, so, the "ch" isn't in the back of the throat? Or are there different "ch"s? I know at the end of a word like "Buch" it's different.

Yes, that is a different one. I think the two sounds are known as "ach-" (in the back of the throat) and "ich-Laut" (palate).

 

[flautist]

The "ch" sound can be complicated. When "ch" is preceded by a, o, or u, it has a noise almost like you're hacking up a hairball or getting ready to spit. When it is preceded by e, i, or an umlauted vowel, it sounds like a cat hissing. At the ends of words, some regions pronounce it just like a regular k sound, while some use the above stated rules.