Pronunciation, episode 5: de harde G en sch =========================================== EN: Pronunciation, episode five. The sound everyone warns you about, the letter combination nobody warns you about, and two spelling pairs that aren't pronunciation problems at all - they're spelling problems wearing a disguise. EN: First, the G. It is not the g of good. It's a fricative made at the back of the throat - the same sound as the ch in the Scottish loch, or the j in the Spanish José. Air scraping past a narrowed throat. NL: goed. gaan. gracht. EN: Good, to go, canal. And the letters ch make exactly the same sound as g in most positions: NL: acht. licht. nacht. EN: Eight, light, night. Which is a small gift - two spellings you only have to learn one sound for. EN: Now, an important caveat, because you'll hear both. The Netherlands is split by its rivers. North of them - Amsterdam, Utrecht, the whole Randstad - you get the harde G, the scraping one you've just heard. South of them, in Brabant and Limburg and across Flanders, you get the zachte G, softer and further forward in the mouth, much closer to a breathy h. NL: Gezellig. Gezellig. EN: Both are correct Dutch. Neither is an accent to be corrected. Learn one, understand both - and since you're learning in the Randstad, the hard one is the one to aim at. EN: Now the combination that catches everyone: sch. It is not the English sh. It's two separate sounds run together - an s, and then that throat-scrape. NL: school. schoen. schrijven. EN: School, shoe, to write. S, then ch. Say it as sh and you've said a different word, or no word at all. It appears in the middle of words too: NL: verschrikkelijk. EN: Terrible - and worth practising precisely because it's such a mouthful. Ver-sch-rik-ke-lijk. EN: And now the exception, which is genuinely counterintuitive. When sch comes at the END of a word in the ending -isch, the ch goes completely silent. It's pronounced as if it were spelled i-e-s. NL: fantastisch. logisch. historisch. EN: Fantastic, logical, historical. Fantasties. Logies. Historis. All that machinery at the start of a word, and at the end it just evaporates. Dutch people do not think of this as an exception; they will look puzzled if you point it out. EN: Next, the two pairs that look like pronunciation problems and aren't. Ei and ij are the same sound. Not similar - identical. NL: reis. ijs. EN: Trip, ice. Dutch schoolchildren call them the korte ei and the lange ij, and that naming is purely about which one you write. There is no audible difference to learn. Same story with au and ou: NL: blauw. oud. EN: Blue, old. One sound, two spellings. EN: Which means these are dictation problems, not speaking problems. You'll never mispronounce them. You will absolutely misspell them, and so does every Dutch person - it's the classic native spelling error, and there's no rule for it. You memorise which words take which. EN: One vowel left worth isolating: eu. It's not a diphthong and it's not the English you. It's the vowel in the French peur or the German ö - lips rounded, tongue forward. NL: deur. neus. kleur. EN: Door, nose, colour. If you've had any French or German, borrow the vowel wholesale. If you haven't: say the ay of say, then round your lips without moving your tongue. EN: Today's Brueghel proverb, chosen entirely so you have to say sch twice. NL: Men moet de schapen scheren, maar niet villen. NL: Men moet de schapen scheren, maar niet villen. EN: Literally: one must shear the sheep, but not skin them. Meaning: take a reasonable profit, but don't destroy the source of it - the same idea as killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Schapen, scheren. S, then scrape. Example: NL: Verhoog de huur niet te veel: schapen scheren, maar niet villen. EN: Don't raise the rent too far - shear them, don't skin them. EN: That's episode five. NL: Prettige dag verder!