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-   -   German Language Help Needed (https://www.fodors.com/community/europe/german-language-help-needed-556233/)

eurotravler Sep 4th, 2005 09:05 AM

German Language Help Needed
 
How do you say " I would like to reconfirm my reservation" in German.

logos999 Sep 4th, 2005 09:12 AM

Ich möchte meine Reservierung rückbestätigen, bitte.

mnss Sep 4th, 2005 10:05 AM

I wonder if you know how to pronounce that correctly though!

Please never pronounce ich "itsh"!

The sound of ch in both "ich" and " möchte" is fifty precent "sh" and fifty percent "h"

It sounds like a cobra about to spit her venom actually!

I wonder if that sound is exclusive to German?

I don't know how else to explain it! Goodluck though..

diddl_maus Sep 4th, 2005 10:34 AM

I was told by my german friend that the sound in Ich and Nicht is a little like a cat hissing.

eurotravler Sep 4th, 2005 11:31 AM

Thank You !

Underhill Sep 4th, 2005 12:31 PM

Your grandmother must have been from southern Germany. In the north, where my grandmother came from, "ich" is pronounced "ikh."

logos999 Sep 4th, 2005 01:16 PM

"ikh" is local Berlin dialect for "Ich", while "E" would be Bavarian. :-)

mnss Sep 4th, 2005 01:39 PM

I was actually talking about standard high German.

mnss Sep 4th, 2005 01:44 PM

Ch is only pronounced kh when preceded by a,u,au,o!

Pronouncing Ich and Nicht "Ikh"
and "Nikht"? how weird is that!!!

logos999 Sep 4th, 2005 01:56 PM

I am not quite sure what you mean by "kh" Why would a dialect be weired?

logos999 Sep 4th, 2005 02:16 PM

Got it. You mean "ch" like in the hebrew word "lachaim" when you write "ik"?

rex Sep 4th, 2005 02:25 PM

<<I wonder if that sound is exclusive to German?>>

No, not at all - - Hebrew (already mentioned), Greek, Russian, Dutch, Scottish, probably countless others...

Best wishes,

Rex

mnss Sep 4th, 2005 02:26 PM

I mena kh like in rauch, boch, auch machen and so on :)

mnss Sep 4th, 2005 02:28 PM

rex, the "kha" sound is found in so many languages, but I ment the ch as in "sicher" !

mnss Sep 4th, 2005 02:30 PM

I mean logos, you must have watched TV and heard standard German. The sound of "ch" in "sicher" and "machen" is totally different !

rex Sep 4th, 2005 03:29 PM

Hmmm... I get your point, I guess. Definitely different from machen. Maybe not so different from ich (in some parts of Germany).

There must be similar sounds in some languages - - probably several European languages, and other continents (well.... Asia), I would suppose.

logos999 Sep 4th, 2005 09:45 PM

>you must have watched TV and heard standard German.
Right, I am watching to much TV. But only the Bavarian channels "Bayrischer Rundfunk" and "BR Alpha". ;-) and it's somtimes hard to find people around me who speak "decent" German. It's mostly Prussian nowadays ;-)

rex Sep 5th, 2005 05:42 AM

The word Bayrischer is a reminder of how these subtle variations do exist in German, and have a very real regional variation. Curious if these regional variations exist in Russian also - - for example in the letter "shch" (as in Khrushchev) - - more similar? or more different than "Fischer"? (and quite different again from sicher, nicht wahr?)

logos999 Sep 5th, 2005 08:14 AM

But I do believe there are slight differences between Prussian and Russian ;-) ;-)

Ingo Sep 5th, 2005 09:56 AM

logos,

you don't mean to say that Bavarian dialect is "decent" German, eh? LOL!


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