Re: OT: German pronunciation question

Quoting Harald Stoiber <hstoiber@...>:

> Greetings people, :-))
>
> As a german native speaker, I would answer "no" to Andreas' question.
> Knowing Swiss, German and Austrian German (the latter is my native
> one),
> I cannot think of a case where one of these consonants would be
> unvoiced.
> I tried to pronounce it that way for several example words - such as
> streicheln, gähnen, lang, Esel, zahm, wahr - and I found it extremely
> difficult to make unvoiced /m/, /n/, /N/, /r/ or even /l/.
>
> Tristan is right that final /r/ is not often pronounced seperately.
> Directly following "e" it becomes a schwa sound. Otherwise, as in
> "wahr", it is typically dropped completely with a very very soft trace
> of schwa being the only remainder.
>
> Of course, trailing /r/ can also be pronounced audibly. To my ears
> this
> would sound somewhat unusual, stern or even pedantic. But the
> Austrians
> are widely known to pronounce some words rather, let's say, relaxed.
> *gg*
Ah thanks. Oh-well, there went that theory; I'm trying to figure out why my
German teacher is complaining about my pronunciation of words ending in such
consonants. He's saying he's hearing tiny little e's at the end of them, which I
certainly can't hear in my own pronunciation. Problem is, he has no linguistic
education, so talking phone*ics with him isn't easy.

                                                  Andreas