On Sat, May 05, 2018 at 11:35:14AM +0200, Andreas Eder wrote: > On Sa 05 Mai 2018 at 01:15, Tadziu Hoffmann <hoffm...@usm.uni-muenchen.de> > wrote: > > (BTW, most Germans who use it also pronounce it wrong, > > namely as in "ich" instead of as in "Bach".) > > What do you mean by that? The sound of the 'ch' is the same in both > cases.
It depends on the dialect, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German_phonology#Ich-Laut_and_ach-Laut describes the difference in "standard German" - it's essentially about whether the sound is produced towards the front or back of the mouth. > 'Andreas ( a german native speaker :-) ) I don't know which dialect you speak; many southern dialects use [x] for both "ich" and "Bach", rather than [ç] for "ich" and [x] for "Bach". But as a native English speaker, I can certainly say that there are aspects of my own language's phonology that weren't obvious to me without a lot of attention that didn't come automatically! The Scottish "loch", and hence TeX per Knuth, is indeed pronounced with the [x] sound. (In fact, Irish and Scottish Gaelic both have a similar scheme for pronouncing "ch" as standard German does: if it's surrounded by front vowels, traditionally called "slender", then it's [ç], while if it's surrounded by back or "broad" vowels then it's [x]. I don't know whether the similarity to German is one of common evolution, borrowing, or just coincidence.) -- Colin Watson [cjwat...@debian.org]
