mindless mutterings

[darkoshi]

Wait a minute... is "house shoes" a common American/English synonym for slippers, or not?

Do I only think it is, because it's the common German term, and it's pronounced basically the same in German (Hausschuhe) and English, and because my German mom may have used the term with me when I was growing up?

(Similarly, I used to think "short-armed" and "long-armed" (shirts) was a normal thing to say, until I learned that the correct English term was "short-sleeved" and "long-sleeved".)

..

For some reason, today the German word "Schiess-stoff" came to mind. I thought it was the word for gunpowder, but there's another word, Schiesspulver for the latter. Stoff means material.

https://www.spektrum.de/lexikon/chemie/schiessstoffe/8229
That page says that Shiess-stoff is a general term for both gunpowder and rocket fuel.

Anyway, I was thinking about how hard that word would be for an American to pronounce.
Sh - ee - ss - sht - off

Sort of like the "She sells seashells" phrase, except the middle of the work is an S sound followed immediately by a SH sound, and then a T sound.

("St" at the beginning of a word is pronounced "sht" in German. And since Schiess-stoff is a compound word, it is pronounced that way in there too.)

You can click the "listen" icon on the Google translate page to hear it:
https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=schiessstoff

Hum. "Strumpf" and "Strumpfhosen" must also be hard for Americans to pronounce.
Sh-t-r and m-p-f-h
https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=strumpfhosen
But the English word triumph is similar.

Comments

[redsixwing]

I've heard "house shoes." My grandmother called her slippers that. I also came to realize later in life that a lot of the things she cooked were German food, so there may have been a connection there.

"Schiess-stoff" isn't terribly difficult for me, but I speak two languages relatively well (and one badly) so the range of sounds I'm comfortable with is larger than most people I know. I'm mostly concerned I don't separate the "ss" and "st" sufficiently.

"Strumpfhosen" is mostly interesting for the flipped 'r' sound; I know a lot of people who struggle with that. Having the 't' right before it wouldn't make it any easier.

I also wouldn't have guessed at the first vowel sound on sight, but then, I don't speak German.

[darkoshi]

I have a lot of difficulty with Spanish trilled 'r's.
The German r sound is usually made in the back of the mouth, I think (I can trill it back there ok) but according to this page it depends on the region: http://www.joycep.myweb.port.ac.uk/pronounce/consonr.html
So in southern Germany, they may pronounce it like the Spanish trilled r; I'm not very sure even though I lived there.

I'm not sure how good my own pronunciation is. Sometimes things sound better in my head than when I actually say them.

Russian seems difficult to me because it often has multiple consonants together. That's why it amuses me to realize that I can say German words with probably the same number of consonants together, just different combinations of letters.

I just now realized that the first time you click the Listen icon on the Google translate page, it reads the word or phrase in normal speed. If you click it a 2nd time, it reads it at a slower speed.

And it is fun writing nonsensical things and having Google read it out loud, in both German and English. For example:

https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=ganz%20richtig%20und%20rote%20salat%20runter%20unter%20der%20r%C3%BCblikuchen%20und%20da%20war%20eine%20grass%20gruener%20Frosch!

Hah; you can even click different languages for the left box, and then it reads it out with a different accent!