OpticalLimits

German lens manufacturers pronunciation made easy !!

davethebirder

Hi guys, have we been tripping over our tongues trying to pronounce some German lenses manufacturers names correctly ?? .... making fools of ourselves at a local photography shop counters trying to make ourselves understood ?? .....

This video can put all that behind us ..... hold your head high while ordering lenses like a pro with perfect articulation with aplomb ..........

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=How+to+pronounce+Schneider-Kreuznach&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:57e9be78,vid:iW_iBmUC_Xc,st:0

have fun ....... 😉

tonyadams

I remember standing at the camera counter, awkwardly saying “Schneider-Kreuznach” and both the staff and I laughed. Now watching this video, I feel much better, at least I don’t have to worry about mispronouncing it anymore. [font=Arial]Steal Brainrot Game[/font]

me

Now that you've heard them ... can you actually pronounce them? ;-)

davethebirder

Klaus wrote
Now that you've heard them ... can you actually pronounce them? ;-)

I come from a Latvian mother and grandparents who lived in Germany after the Russians invaded Latvia soon after the start of the war, unfortunately my mothers brother (my uncle) was shot during the Latvian take over of Riga..... but in reality as a youngster the little German I learnt was confined to two visits to Germany and my grandparents visits to England .... but yes I can pronounce them quite well and the video guy speaks very clearly which is a great help ...

However, I found German pronunciation far easier than French to copy as most of the sounds are in the English language whereas French has many sounds that the English can't detect let alone pronounce ..... if you don't want an accent you have to start young and I started at the age of forty, so my English accent remains though I'm fluent in French.

I wondered Klaus, do you still retain a German accent ??

me

I wondered Klaus, do you still retain a German accent ??

I'm afraid so. We left Germany very late when I was 43.
Although I hope that my "th" is better than the German average at least. ;-)

stoppingdown

Well, I must say that I was mostly ok! My only relevant errors:

Voigtländer: almost (first part wrong, I pronounced the 'i')
Rodenstock: almost (wrong first 'o')
Summicron etc...: ok, with the exception of the leading 'S' pronunciation
Planar etc..: ok, but I wrongly put the accent on first vocal

Obviously you would notice an accent. All in all, I have the impression that from Italian it's less difficult than from English.

me

I'm no language expert, but I think the pronunciation of German is very close to how you do it in Latin. So it's not surprising that Italian people don't struggle as much with German words as Anglos.

German is a pretty horrible language - especially the definite articles. E.g. nobody on Mother Earth could explain why it is "der Schrank" (English "the closet", with the male definite article "der") instead of "das Schrank" - "das" would be a neutral definite article, at least. You have to memorize so much absolutely useless stuff that adds no meaningful additional context/information at all.

davethebirder

My mother used to say that German was a complicated language in terms of grammar, she also spoke Russian, Latvian, a little French and her English was perfect (with an accent that I only noticed on the phone). She worked in a small electronics factory and at occasional business meetings in Germany she would act as a translator.
English is an easier language to learn as we don't have masculine and feminine nouns to grapple with, not to mention that "adverbs" (words that describe a verb and end in "ly") are becoming a thing of the past and slang is taking over grammar, "th" is also dying btw.

REFLEXIVE VERBS as in:
We had a nice day out, didn't we?
that was a nice dinner, wasn't it?
they are late, aren't they?
nice weather, isn't it?
etc etc etc .... ie you make a statement in the positive and look for confirmation asking a question in the negative .... all that grammar is slowly being replaced by: ... init ... (isn't it) with a glottal stop on the letter "T"

Glottal stops .... the effect of cutting a consonant abruptly ....

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=How+to+Pronounce+the+Glottal+Stop%2FGlottal+T+and+When+is+it+Used

In short English is going downhill fast ....

PS: It's one thing to repeat German lens pronunciations when you're listening to them in the video, but it is altogether a different story to pronounce them correctly a few days later ... 🙂