The correct pronunciation of th seems to be one of the bigger challenges for people who want to learn the English language. Apart from the fact that the pronunciation of th varies from word to word, some of the sounds associated with th do not exist in other languages, and may therefore be difficult or
Following up on my previous post about Edinburgh, I want to discuss the English pronunciation of Berlin. According to the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, the pronunciation is [bɜː’lɪn], suggesting that (1) the r is not pronounced, even in American English, (2) the stress is on the second syllable (many German speakers stress the first syllable when
The word please is very important when you try to be polite, and hence plays a central role in the British culture. However, it is often used incorrectly by German native speakers, and can be classified as a false friend related to the German word “Bitte”. Please vs. Welcome My first example is the use
The Greek alphabet is used in many fields, including science (mostly physics and mathematics, where one often runs out of letters to use in equations), finance, and technology. Some of you may even use it on a post card from your holiday in Greece. Once you are able to write and correctly identify a given
The words previous and last can in many cases be used interchangeably. For example, I can refer to the week before the current week either as last week or the previous week. However, the word last also has a different meaning, namely that of final or ultimate. If I were to change jobs, I could
Here is an interesting false friend for those trying to learn German. The English word stress has a number of different meanings. According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the word is used for, for example, mental pressure (as in stress management), physical pressure (for example, a stress fracture), emphasis (the boss lays great stress on
For whatever reason, many people tend to confuse the apostrophe ’ with the symbol ` when writing. Some typical examples are it`s, don`t, let`s instead of it’s, don’t, let’s The use of ` instead of ’ is quite surprising because on an English keyboard, the apostrophe is much easier and faster to type. Using either
You all use the punctuation marks “.” and “:” when writing in English. However, in my experience, many German native speakers (and quite possibly other nationals as well) fall into the false-friend trap when actually having to name these symbols. Let me refresh your memory. The symbol “.”, used at the end of sentences as
English words that are frequently used in the German language can easily become false friends when used with the same meaning in English. A classic example is Handy, the widely used term for mobile phone (or cell phone), which will certainly confuse native speakers a lot. While very few advanced speakers make the mistake of
You certainly know that the English alphabet does not contain any umlauts. However, there is a pitfall for German native speakers which often leads to incorrect pronunciation. The difficulty is that in German, the letter y is in many cases pronounced as ü. Some examples are Physik, Rhythmus, System, and typisch. A common mistake is