Adventures in German Part 1: “Floppysheep”

At the beginning of my relationship with my German husband, I was determined to learn his language.  Not strictly necessary, of course, as he speaks perfect English. But the hard-working masochist in me said “hey, turnabout is fair play!”

One of my many failures in the language has to do with pronounciation of German vowel sounds. In addition to the problematic umlauted vowels (“ä”, “ö”, “ü”) — which every beginner in the German language knows are built only for mouths that have spoken German since birth — the German language includes subtler differences in long and short vowels. These are easy for English-speakers to pronounce, but dastardly hard to recognize and remember where and when they appear. Read more “Adventures in German Part 1: “Floppysheep”” →