Didactic Thumbs (Pedantry Corner)

[osmosisch]

You're both wrong, it's Über

[SuperBiasedMan]

People, it's pronounced You-ber. Like You-stream and Yo-you-t-you-be.

[James]

If I'm not mistaken, strictly speaking the proper pronunciation of Ü doesn't exist in English. I believe it's kind of like a Y/ee sound but with with a more rounded mouth. As far as natural English phonemes go, oo is probably closest. But there are actual German-speakers on this forum so I don't know why I think anyone should care what I have to say on the subject.

You can probably trust this, though.

[jennegatron]

In all my German classes, the best way for a non-native speaker to approximate an umlaut sound is to pretend there's an immediate "e" after that vowel sound, so stringing together a "ue" is a good place to start (you can actually treat it as if it were a contraction in German if you don't have a German keyboard and be able to still communicate what you mean.) It's also a sound that's also harder to start a word with than to put in the middle of. Like grün is much easier for me to say than über.

[Bjorn]

Ubisoft?  No, you-be-soft.

[Badfinger]

Ubisoft?  No, you-be-soft.

 

Rüde.

[RyanCConnelly]

If I'm not mistaken, strictly speaking the proper pronunciation of Ü doesn't exist in English. I believe it's kind of like a Y/ee sound but with with a more rounded mouth. As far as natural English phonemes go, oo is probably closest. But there are actual German-speakers on this forum so I don't know why I think anyone should care what I have to say on the subject.

You can probably trust this, though.

 

I got this!  I'm a native English speaker with a bunch of IPA in multiple languages for work.  There is no ue/Ü in English, but it is very easy to teach.  You are very close with your description, the method in one of the textbooks I learned from says that to make a correct Ü vowel, which in IPA is [y], you say the vowel (like the vowel in the English words beat or meet), but with your mouth in the position of [o] (like the English word food).

[Ninety-Three]

Pedantic niggle of the day: a mirror set up to reflect things from one side and let you look through from the other side should clearly be called a one-way mirror, not a two-way mirror. A two-way street is a street that works the same both ways, a two-way door is a door that can be used either way, what kind of maniac would call it a two-way mirror when it only acts like a mirror one way?

[marblize]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-way_mirror

 

I always rationalized that in my brain with the fact that it shows the same scene regardless of which of the "two-ways" you look at it.

[James]

(you can actually treat it as if it were a contraction in German if you don't have a German keyboard and be able to still communicate what you mean.)

I believe that's actually what the umlaut derived from - originally it was two separate letters, then the e was written above the other vowel as a shorthand, then that became that squiggle that is the umlaut in handwriting, then it became a pair of dots. I'm always slightly disappointed when an umlaut-containing word in an umlautless context (such as a non-internationalized domain name) doesn't reintroduce the e.

Pedantic niggle of the day: a mirror set up to reflect things from one side and let you look through from the other side should clearly be called a one-way mirror, not a two-way mirror. A two-way street is a street that works the same both ways, a two-way door is a door that can be used either way, what kind of maniac would call it a two-way mirror when it only acts like a mirror one way?

That always bothered me, too. It's saying the opposite of what you mean!

[tberton]

I got this!  I'm a native English speaker with a bunch of IPA in multiple languages for work.  There is no ue/Ü in English, but it is very easy to teach.  You are very close with your description, the method in one of the textbooks I learned from says that to make a correct Ü vowel, which in IPA is [y], you say the vowel (like the vowel in the English words beat or meet), but with your mouth in the position of [o] (like the English word food).

 

This is the way I do it too. One thing: the vowel in "food" is actually . [o] is the vowel in "boat".

 

While we're on the topic of vowel sounds, my favourite thing about learning phonetics is that you can get nearly every English vowel between "b" and "t" and it's a word. Beat, bit, bait, bet, bat, but, boot, boat, bought. You miss a couple that way, but it's most of them.

[eot]

You can probably trust this, though.

I think that's slightly softer and closer to an English "oo" sound than I expected, maybe it depends on dialect. I'm not German, but I say it closer to

, which is a sharper sound.

[RyanCConnelly]

This is the way I do it too. One thing: the vowel in "food" is actually . [o] is the vowel in "boat".

 

While we're on the topic of vowel sounds, my favourite thing about learning phonetics is that you can get nearly every English vowel between "b" and "t" and it's a word. Beat, bit, bait, bet, bat, but, boot, boat, bought. You miss a couple that way, but it's most of them.

 

AHHHH you're right!  I don't know why but I always get those mixed up.  Same with voiced and unvoiced th vowels.  One is ð, one is θ and I can never remember which is which!

[tberton]

The way I remember those is that the latter is "theta" and thus voiceless.

[RyanCConnelly]

GENIUS

[Deadpan]

The umlaut is similar to the th sounds in English in that they have no real importance to your ability to make yourself understood, take incredibly long to get almost right, and even then native speakers can still probably tell something is off. The vowel + e thing is correct, and that's still how people spell out umlauts when the circumstances don't allow for putting it down (for instance when I have to spell my name on English forms), but I'm not sure how helpful that is to know given that the German e sound isn't exactly equal to English e sounds (this page has some approximations in the vowel column). Regardless, I'd argue that uber has been in use in English long enough to have been fully assimilated into its phonetic system.

 

At least, if you want to be a stickler about pronouncing it the German way then you should also be aware that these two languages handle the endings of the word differently, as you can hear in those pronounciation examples. So it'd be similar to oo-buh instead of oo-brr.

[brkl]

This is the way I do it too. One thing: the vowel in "food" is actually . [o] is the vowel in "boat".

While we're on the topic of vowel sounds, my favourite thing about learning phonetics is that you can get nearly every English vowel between "b" and "t" and it's a word. Beat, bit, bait, bet, bat, but, boot, boat, bought. You miss a couple that way, but it's most of them.

[o] is the second 'o' in 'robot'. The first 'o' is a dipthong that's tough to write on a mobile phone. Unless you pronounce 'robot' and 'rowboat' identically.

Pedantry!

[eot]

Yeah, I think the 'o' in food is [uː], but I could be wrong.

edit: I'm replying to the wrong thing and no one

[tberton]

[o] is the second 'o' in 'robot'. The first 'o' is a dipthong that's tough to write on a mobile phone. Unless you pronounce 'robot' and 'rowboat' identically.

Pedantry!

 

Are you sure? According to this, [o] sounds like the vowel in "boat". The second syllable in "robot" sounds a lot more like [ɑ].

[RyanCConnelly]

Are you sure? According to this, [o] sounds like the vowel in "boat". The second syllable in "robot" sounds a lot more like [ɑ].

 

No, the second o in robot would be an "open o", which is [ɔ]... ugh although now that I'm repeating it out loud I'm not sure that it wouldn't be an [a]

 

PEDANTRY!

[tberton]

I really don't think I pronounce "robot" with a [ɔ]. Might this be a regional difference?

[RyanCConnelly]

Definitely could be an affectation.  I also so rarely use IPA for English anymore, I've been living in German/Italian language for the past couple months so I'm used to using open and closed o a lot more!

In the name of Pedantry I took a look in one of my textbooks and uploaded a couple pages: http://imgur.com/a/fzDGH

Now these books are for a little more "proper" English because it's intended for classical singing, so they agree with what I said before, but even in repeating some of the examples given I can see where in a more American dialect like the one I use in everyday speech I could almost use them interchangeably.

[brkl]

You rascals made me dig out my OED.

 

These things vary a lot depending on your accent, so using words as examples is a bit of a minefield. 'Robot' was a terrible example.

 

So, I'm flummoxed by the 'boat' example. My OED says it's /bəʊt/ for British RP and /boʊt/ for US English. I'm sure there's an accent somewhere that pronounces 'boat' without a diphthong, but I've never heard of it. [o] doesn't really occur in the kind of English most often seen on the television unless you're watching Trainspotting. If you want to pronounce [y], follow RyanCConnelly's advice with your lips in the same position as the word 'food' and your tongue in the same position as the word 'free'. Probably. Then make it short.

[tberton]

Okay, I'll concede the point.

[Ozzie]

These things vary a lot depending on your accent, so using words as examples is a bit of a minefield. 'Robot' was a terrible example.

 

So, I'm flummoxed by the 'boat' example. My OED says it's /bəʊt/ for British RP and /boʊt/ for US English. I'm sure there's an accent somewhere that pronounces 'boat' without a diphthong, but I've never heard of it. [o] doesn't really occur in the kind of English most often seen on the television unless you're watching Trainspotting. If you want to pronounce [y], follow RyanCConnelly's advice with your lips in the same position as the word 'food' and your tongue in the same position as the word 'free'. Probably. Then make it short.

 

For me it doesn't work with "free", but RyanCConnelly's suggestion of "beat" or "meet" made it work for me. I found it illuminating to consciously try to form a sound per instruction that I already know how to make instinctively.

So I guess the vowel in "free" isn't formed the same way than the one in "beat". Or, alternatively, I don't know how to pronounce "free" correctly.

I form the vowel in "free" not as close to the front of my mouth than I do with the one in "beat", presumably because of the "r".