German Language Help Needed
 

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

Ich möchte meine Reservierung rückbestätigen, bitte.

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..

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

Thank You !

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

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

I was actually talking about standard high German.

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

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

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

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

<<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

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

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

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

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.

>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 ;-)

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?)

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

logos,

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

Any Hamburgers here? what do you think?

hsv where are you!

Sure, that exactly what I want to say :-). Although those Niederbayern sometimes drive me crazy.

Oh no, logos! Is Bavarian a German dialect? I always thought there are Germans and there are Bavarians. And that Bavaria is not Germany.

I did say German is a special Bavarian dialect, didn't I ? Must be, if it wouldn't, we wouldn't be able to understand you.

But do YOU understand what we are saying? ;-)

Now I understand..., we Bavarians are bilangual by nature.

mnss,

I was following this thread, but have no idea whatsoever how I would describe the pronounciation of the "ch" letters to an Englsih speaker.

That said, everything else has been said, I guess. There indeed are two seperate pronounciations depending on the vocal preceding the "ch". One is more guttural than the other.

Apart from that, I am definitely torn whether I would consider Bavarians as Germans ( ;-) ). As I used to live there for a couple of years, I certainly do appreciate some of their lifestyle options - beergardens and "Brezn" come to mind, but to call that back-of-the-woods rural accent prevailing down there a language of its own is completely unacceptable! Now, the true billingual speakers in Germany would be us North Germans, of course, being able to speak proper German and "Plattdeutsch" ;-).

A cheerful "Hummel Hummel - Mors Mors" to all of you - and special ones to logos in Munich and Ingo in Dresden!

And to throw in my 5 Swiss Francs, if you can say Chuchikaeschtli correctly, then you've passed the "I can speak the Swiss German dialect" test.

cake box :-)?

It is good we share a common language, otherwise how would people understand what the other person is saying. I hope it isn't cheese cake :-) :-)

kitchen cabinet. 3:-O

Autsch... :-)

Küche=Chuchi

Rex, in Russian there are two similar but different letters, one of which is transliterated as "sh" and the other as "shch." The one transliterated "sh" is pronounced farther back in the mouth than "sh" is pronounced in English. The one transliterated "shch" can be pronounced in two different ways: some Russians pronounce it more or less as we pronounce "sh" in English, while others pronounce it more or less as we would pronounce "sh-ch" in English. ("Fresh cheese" is sometimes used as an example of how to pronounce it; in German, it's transliterated "schtsch.")

I don't remember (if I ever knew) whether the two different ways to pronounce this letter are a regional distinction, or a class distinction, or what.

Afraid I have nothing for the OP, but I too need "German Language Help." In Munich next month, we'll encounter Bavarian dialect. Now I'm listening to tapes to refresh my very, very rusty "Hochdeutsch" from college (decades ago), but wondering if it's a waste of time. Is the Bavarian dialect really very hard to understand?

Of course I mean, is it hard for someone with very skimpy German to understand?

They tell me it is even more diffiult to understand people from the Amberg area

Don't worry everybody will answer in high German, if you address them in high German ;-)

logos,

at least which you consider to be High German...:-)

:D

OK, So which one are Bavarians more likely to speak better: Proper High German or English?

mnss--I hope that many of the people we encounter will be fluent in English, as that's the only way I'll actually communicate. But, for the sake of politeness, I want at least to make an effort in the local tongue, before my pitiful attempts exhaust the patience of the German dealing with me.