Foreign Words

Foreign words should be transcribed with a certain adaption to German pronunciation habits. As there are hardly any conventions for this type of transcription (the DUDEN only provides the 'original' pronunciations), we can only give some rough guidelines here. It is generally advisable to avoid exaggerations, transcriptions should represent a reasonably talented speaker (so no 'Mock German English', please!). The native pronunciation remains the reference.

A table giving an overview about the phoneme mapping between German, English and French can be seen here.

• Voiced plosives, fricatives and affricates are substituted by their voiceless opponents when occurring in the coda ('auslautverhärtung').

  
  

  Example:	big	bIg	(engl)
  	»»»»»»»»	bIk	(dt)
  	Deneuve	d@n'2:v	(frz)
  	»»»»»»»»	d@n'2:f	(dt)

  
  
• /s/, on the other hand, is produced voiced when occuring in the onset of a syllable.

  
  

  Example:	Dolby-Surround	d''Qlbis@r'aUnd
  	»»»»»»»»	d''Olbiz9r'aUnt

Vowel qualities have to be mainly modified in view of the German pronunciation of English words:

• English distinguishes between more closed /e/ and more open /{/. For the German pronunciation, /E/ should be used in both cases.

  
  

  Example:	Brenda	br'end@
  	»»»»»»»»	br'Enda
  	BigDaddy	bIgd'{di
  	»»»»»»»»	bIkd'Edi

  
  
• English /V/ has to be replaced with German /a/. Those two qualities are not very different, anyway, and using the German symbol helps reducing the number of additional phonemes.

  
  

  Example:	brother	br'VD@
  	»»»»»»»»	br'aD6

  
  
• English /Q/ has to be replaced with German /O/ (Note: /Q/ does not stand for glottal stop here, but for a open back rounded vowel quality)

  
  

  Example:	McDonalds	m@kd'Qn@ldz
  	»»»»»»»»	m@kd'On@lts

  
  
• English final /@/, often respresented by the graphemes <-er> or <-a>, is replaced with /6/ or /a/ depending on the orthography.

  
  

  Example:	brother	br'VD@
  	»»»»»»»»	br'aD6
  	Brenda	br'end@
  	»»»»»»»»	br'Enda

  
  
• English /@/ can be replaced with German /9/ when occurring in an unstressed position.

  
  

  Example:	Dolby-Surround	d''Qlbis@r'aUnd
  	»»»»»»»»	d''Olbiz9r'aUnt

  
  
• English further back /A:/ has to be replaced with German /a:/.

  
  

  Example:	Hugh Grant	hju:grA:nt
  	»»»»»»»»	hj''u:gr'a:nt

  
  
• The English Diphthong /eI/ has to be replaced with the German Monophthong /e:/.

  
  

  Example:	Take-Away	t'eIk@v''eI
  	»»»»»»»»	t'e:kEv''e:

  
  
• English /3:/ has to be replaced with German /96/:

  
  

  Example:	Worst-Case	w3:stkeIs
  	»»»»»»»»	v96stke:s

  
  This example shows also, that the typical English /w/ has to be replaced with /v/ for German pronunciations.

The French nasalisation of vowels can be indicated by adding a tilde after the relevant vowel. Note that the tilde should be placed before a following lengthening symbol ':'.

Example:

Restaurant

rEstor'a~:

English 'th', which has to be transcribed as /T/ and /D/ respectively, as well as the voiced fricative /Z/ and the voiced affricate /dZ/ (English, French, Italian, ...) should not be changed - that is unless they occur in the coda and are subject to the 'auslautverhärtung'.

Example:	brother	br'aD6
	Regie	reZ'i:
	Giardino	dZard'i:no

When transcribing words from less common languages it is advisable to look at the orthography in order to decide on what could be the most likely German pronunciation.

Example:	Tarragona	tarraG'ona	(span)
	»»»»»»»»	tarag'ona	(dt)

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