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Comment by MatthewRayfield | Hacker News Reader

Can anybody explain why this works in German?

It seems like in other languages it just reads out the letters.

I'm guessing it's because those letter combinations are actually sounds in German, but not in any other languages (that I know of).

Not really. At least not on a naive level. None of "pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk" occurs in any German word.

Fatzke, Blitzkrieg, Hupverbot.

Apart from Fatzke, you are cheating. And even in Fatzke, it's not in one syllable.

Okay, compound nouns are probably not what you had in mind when you made your statement. But then again, your statement was pretty general. Regarding Fatzke: "zk" is not in one syllable either. At least not when I (or google) pronounce it. :)

> Regarding Fatzke: "zk" is not in one syllable either.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say. But since it's not compound, it's not as bad.

By the way, if you want a genuine example of strange sounds in German look at Herbst or Pfründe.

Fun fact: If you can pronounce Streichholzschächtelchen, you automatically gain German citizenship.

My first long German word was Schwarzwälderkirschtorte. Nowhere near as difficult as yours.

The standard example is supreme court vs Bundesverfassungsgericht. The chief difference is in spelling.

I had a phase, where my German looked much more English---I put spaced inside compound words and did not capitalize all nouns. I should try capitalizing all Nouns in English one Day.

It also works in Italian and Spanish, and sorta works in French -- I'm sure it has to do with the phonemes in each language and how the languages are implemented in the text-to-speech algorithm.

Chinese sounds like rapping. "I say H crazy":

http://translate.google.com/#zh-CN|zh-CN|pv%20zk%20bschk%20p...

Greek just reads the name of each letter:

http://translate.google.com/#el|el|pv%20zk%20bschk%20pv%20zk...

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