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Comment by madez | Hacker News Reader

I like the analogies, but I'd like to nitpick, if I may.

"While the grammar is mostly regular here, two things make this challenging: the nonsensical assignment of genders to nouns and (...)"

The given examples for weird assignment of genders are inadequate because they are explained by common rules.

Das Mädchen: Diminutive words are always neutral, and Mädchen is the diminutive of Magd.

Die Männlichkeit: Words ending on 'keit', 'heit', or 'ung' are always female.

"..., but imagine trying to hear the difference between Rat and Rad over a bad phone line."

It does not make a difference if the phone line is good or bad; the words Rat and Rad are pronounced identical, thanks to the Auslautverhärtung.

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FWIW, for me as a Ukrainian, both of this examples would be natural because in Ukrainian we have some similar rules. Diminutives of a particular form are always neutral gender (e.g. дівчатко / divchatko). And words meaning properties / traits are always female even if a trait would be characteristic of a male (e.g. чоловічість).

> the words Rat and Rad are pronounced identical, thanks to the Auslautverhärtung.

Are they though?

> Ich habe einen Rat für dich.

> Ich habe ein Rad für dich.

And at least spoken, it can be difficult to understand, if someone said "einen" or "ein"; if they would care for the difference at all.

Yea if you are not making an effort to pronounce it formal you'd say

> Ich hab 'nen Rat für dich

> Ich hab 'n Rad für dich

where they sound the same.

You can go one step further replacing ich with ick. :)

But then it can be

> Ick hab 'nen Rad/Rat für dich.

either way!

Yes, they are pronounced identically.

I couldn't believe it. Neither could my fellow students in Phonetics and Phonology.

But the spectrogram doesn't lie. Looks exactly the same.

Why is it difficult to believe that there are phonetic collisions? There are even lexical collisions with _different_ phonetics like in Weg vs weg.

The rules behind the shift in pronunciation can be looked up by searching for Auslautverhärtung. Isn't this A1-level German?

Because the final consonant is actually pronounced softly in related forms ("Rad/Räder" vs. "Rat/Räte"), German speakers tend to "hear" a difference, purely by association, that isn't there phonetically.

> Because the final consonant is actually pronounced softly in related forms ("Rad/Räder" vs. "Rat/Räte")

Because it isn't anymore the final consonant in the listed related forms. The rule is that simple. Note that it also affects some vowels.

> German speakers tend to "hear" a difference, purely by association, that isn't there phonetically.

This is so annoying. Some then try to prove you wrong and try to stress the soft consonants at the end of words until realizing that it sounds stupid and wrong. Such stubbornness.

As a native speaker: Generally no, but it depends.

The "t" in "Rat" is pronounced much harder than the "d" in "Rad" is. BUT: The more and more you go into the north of Germany, lets say Hamburg for example, they have a very similar pronouncing of "t" and "d". Both often sound very hard (more like an "t"). Whereas people in the south tend to pronounce both letters more soft, like a "d".

But in general they are pronounced differently.

in standard high German, which you'll find for example in Hanover, Rad and Rat are phonetically completely identical.

In dialects they may be pronounced differently.

Please don't use "High German" in English to mean (some perceived) "Standard German". It's bad (and incorrect) enough to use "Hochdeutsch" in German, but "High German" has a specific meaning in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_German_languages and the dialect spoken in Hannover is not in fact a High German one.

Wikipedia calls it Standard (High) German. To be more specific, I meant German Standard High German.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German

Right, but that standard is more about the written standard language than about the language as spoken in Hannover. I know it's a trope that TV news announcers supposedly pronounce things like they are pronounced in Hannover, but that pronounciation is not a standard.

And for whatever it's worth, the Auslautverhärtung you referred to in several places in this thread is also just a Northern regional thing: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auslautverh%C3%A4rtung / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final-obstruent_devoicing#Germ...

Here (eastern Austria) "Rad" and "Rat" (can) sound different.

There is a defacto standard, and telling otherwise to non-speakers is just misleading. Auslautverhärtung is part of that standard.

What is the ending of the pronunciation of 'und' in your region? Is it 'd' or 't'?

> There is a defacto standard

Yes, for TV news announcers.

> Auslautverhärtung is part of that standard.

Says who? Not Wikipedia, which says that that's a regionalism and quotes sources. Where is the standard codified?

> What is the ending of the pronunciation of 'und' in your region? Is it 'd' or 't'?

This is a trick question: If I answer the same as you pronounce it, you'll say "see, it's standard!", and if I answer the other way, you'll say "well, it's not my fault that you don't speak Standard German™".

That said, it's 'd'. If anything, it's softened further and half swallowed to say something like "un'".

> Where is the standard codified?

You answer yourself:

> Yes, for TV news announcers.

> If anything, it's softened further and half swallowed to say something like "un'".

Do you have a recording of that?

Besides that, I wonder why you are so confrontative. I don't mean to.

> You answer yourself:

No, I meant, where is the standard issued by the Kultusministerkonferenz, like there is for Standard German spelling? A convention is not a standard.

> Do you have a recording of that?

I'd say it kind of like the Swiss German speaker here: https://forvo.com/word/und/#gsw

And coming back to the original Rat/Rad distinction, https://forvo.com/word/rat/#de and https://forvo.com/word/rad/#de do sound different. The second "Rad" speaker (from southern Germany) makes almost no 'd' or 't' sound at all, but the same speaker pronounces "Rat" with a very hard and clear 't'.

>> There is a defacto standard

> Yes, for TV news announcers.

and for everything else on TV, netflix, etc. What else would define a standard?

> What else would define a standard?

Why would there have to be a standard? My point is exactly that there isn't one that captures how actual people actually speak German. There is one for written German that everyone agrees on, but not for spoken German. And that's completely fine.

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