Re: Speaking without a foreign accent

From: Ekkehard Dengler (ED-RS_at_t-online.de)
Date: 11/15/04 

Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 00:46:24 +0100

"Torsten Poulin" <t_usenet_drop@hotmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:2vrqnfF2nsncfU1@uni-berlin.de...
> Ekkehard Dengler wrote:
>
> > Almost every learner of German finds it difficult to get their
> > head round the three genders and the distinction between
> > umlauted and non-umlauted vowels. I don't know how many times
> > I've had exasperated non-native speakers ask me how on earth
> > Germans know what gender a given nouns is or when to use the
> > bloody umlaut. To which the only honest answer would be: "They
> > don't always, but tend not to worry about it, because they're
> > native speakers and feel they're infallible by definition."
> > In reality, most people seem incapable of speaking or writing
> > without making mistakes. I'm not talking about regional
> > standards or any other kind of norm, believe me. It amazes me
> > how many examples of crassly aberrant usage German television
> > and radio provide on a daily basis. Yesterday's howlers include
> > "das Willen" [= "der Wille"] and "das Getummel" [= "das
> > Getümmel"].
>
> Apart from being possibly caused by false starts or other kinds
> of noise, is it really unthinkable that what your are hearing is
> interference from a regional substrate?

Hi Torsten.

It isn't unthinkable, just extremely unlikely, because gender is among the
few things that don't vary much from dialect to dialect. I appreciate your
account of the recent rearrangement of gender classes in Danish, by the way,
but I really don't think that that's what's happening in Germany. My
impression is that people are just becoming increasingly indifferent, if
that's possible.

Regards,
Ekkehard

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