New Post
Search
Help[Facts] German pronounciation question
In Germany, s is pronounced like English z. But my question is, do Germans say foriegn names with z sound too? Example, would German pronounced Svitlana with s or would German say "zvitlana"?
1
Replies
In Germany, the letter S is usually pronounced /z/ when between vowels or in the beginning of a word when followed by a vowel (Sara, Lisa). Otherwise it's pronounced /s/ (Sven, Esther).
Svetlana is quite common among people of russian origin and I've always heard it pronounced /s/.
In my experiance, germans are quite good at using the correct pronounciation of foreign names (apart from nasal pronunciations and the French J). I've met Sami, Sydney and Soline and the S was pronounced /s/ by germans.
"zvitlana" would be quite a tongue twister for germans.
Svetlana is quite common among people of russian origin and I've always heard it pronounced /s/.
In my experiance, germans are quite good at using the correct pronounciation of foreign names (apart from nasal pronunciations and the French J). I've met Sami, Sydney and Soline and the S was pronounced /s/ by germans.
"zvitlana" would be quite a tongue twister for germans.
2
Would German person say my name (Anastasiya) with two s sound and not like anashtaziya?
1
Anashtaziya would reveal a strong regional and dialectal background (Southwestern Germany, specially Schwaben), speaker of High German or other regional variants would not do this. In Standard German, st becomes sht only at the beginning of a word.
And there is a style by some speakers of High German (not me) to differentiate between native and foreign words by using either sht or st depending on the etymology. This leads to minimal pairs like Stiel /SHTEEL/ "trunk" and Stil /STEEL/ "style". It consider this as "showing off with learned etymological knowledge".
And there is a style by some speakers of High German (not me) to differentiate between native and foreign words by using either sht or st depending on the etymology. This leads to minimal pairs like Stiel /SHTEEL/ "trunk" and Stil /STEEL/ "style". It consider this as "showing off with learned etymological knowledge".
2
Located in Germany I can say that Germans mostly use "spelling pronunciations" when seeing unknown foreign names (this is essentially any name beyond English and French). And there is an unwritten rule to put the stress on the penultimate syllable.
So when Germans see Svitlana they read zvit-LA-na.
This is the High German side of the story. Another side is that the initial /z/ sound has a very small base in German dialects. Dialectal speakers will use /s/ initially.
So when Germans see Svitlana they read zvit-LA-na.
This is the High German side of the story. Another side is that the initial /z/ sound has a very small base in German dialects. Dialectal speakers will use /s/ initially.
This message was edited today, 8:59 AM
2
They don't just say any S as the English Z.
Any S before a T is SH not Z. 'Stau' (traffic jam) for example is said with a SH sound at the beginning. So is the name Stefan. The name Sven is also not said with a Z sound, but just a regular S. I'd assume they'd use the Sven sound for Svitlana too.
Edit: it probably depends if in the foreign name the S is followed by a vowel or not.
Any S before a T is SH not Z. 'Stau' (traffic jam) for example is said with a SH sound at the beginning. So is the name Stefan. The name Sven is also not said with a Z sound, but just a regular S. I'd assume they'd use the Sven sound for Svitlana too.
Edit: it probably depends if in the foreign name the S is followed by a vowel or not.
This message was edited today, 7:15 AM
2
Well I knew sh, before t, but I didn't know before v.
But what if it was like Sanya or Slava? and maybe Svitlana would still be said with s? Like in Russian е is pronounced "ye" normally but in foreign names it is "eh". So I wondered if German maybe does similar thing here?
I think ss (ß) is always s sound, would I want to use this for if I wanted German to pronounce these names with s or would Germans assume that foreign name with s is prounced same?
But what if it was like Sanya or Slava? and maybe Svitlana would still be said with s? Like in Russian е is pronounced "ye" normally but in foreign names it is "eh". So I wondered if German maybe does similar thing here?
I think ss (ß) is always s sound, would I want to use this for if I wanted German to pronounce these names with s or would Germans assume that foreign name with s is prounced same?
This message was edited today, 7:25 AM
1