"Wow your dog is wery tall! Must be hard to
get him under control. Or do you have him
since many years already?"
Okay that was tricky but I tried to include
as many typical mistakes as possible because
today I’ll tell you about 5 mistakes Germans
tend to make when speaking English – even
when their English skills are pretty advanced
- and how to avoid them!
Hallo, Servus, and welcome back to my channel!
My name is Felicia, I’m originally from
Munich Germany but have been living here in
Cincinnati Ohio on and off since 2016.
So as you guys probably know I usually talk
about German American culture differences
on my channel but every now and then I also
talk about language related topics – if
you haven’t seen my other videos about English
words that Germans use incorrectly or German
words that English speakers use all the time
or the one about false cognates – make sure
to check them out. But today I’m going to
talk about 5 common mistakes that German speakers
make when speaking English. And some of these
are things that even advanced speakers still
make - mistakes that I make too. So if you’re
German, I hope this is helpful for you, and
if you’re an English native speaker, maybe
you’ll recognize some of these mistakes!
Of course, these are just a few of many typical
mistakes that German natives make in English
and of course this isn’t meant to be critical
in any way. I’ve made many of these mistakes
myself and I still make mistakes in every
single one of my videos for everyone to hear.
Making mistakes is normal when speaking a
second language and you should not feel discouraged
to speak it just because you make mistakes.
These are just things that I wish people had
pointed out to me a lot more and a lot earlier
so I just thought I’d share these things
with you guys! There’s three points regarding
pronunciation and then two points about grammar.
The first mistake on my list is the pronunciation
of the English V. Many Germans pronounce the
English V the same way as the English W. So
they’ll say wery instead of very. I hear
this one a lot and it makes me cringe every
time but I think this is really just kind
of an overcompensation. I think this is because
the English W sound doesn’t exist in German
so that sound, sounds very typical English
to Germans and we concentrate a lot of on
not using the German W sound which is W. Because
obviously we don’t wanna say "vhere are
you from?" but "where are you from?" But we
take it one step too far and kind of think
that we can never make the German W sound.
Now the tricky thing is that the German W
sound is the same as the sound for V in English.
But because the German brain is like “I
can’t say that sound in order to sound English”
we go ahead and pronounce Vs like Ws as well
and say things like wery or to wote instead
of to vote.
I actually remember that the very first time
I was in the US, which was for a high school
exchange between the sister cities of Munich
and Cincinnati in 10th grade, the American
and German exchange students went on a sightseeing
tour together and one of the main streets
in Cincinnati is called Vine street, with
V, and I remember that my exchange partner
kept saying “Why do all Germans wanna call
it wine street? There’s no w, it’s not
the beverage! It’s Vine!” And I think
that’s when I first realized that there
was a difference. I'm pretty sure that I said
"wine" too back then.
The second mistake has to do with the difference
between voiced and voiceless consonants. There
are numerous examples for this but two common
consonants that this happens with are Ds and
S-sounds – especially when they’re at
the end of a word. In English they’re often
supposed to be voiced, but since that Isn’t
really a thing in the German language, many
German speakers do this wrong and we also
don’t really hear the difference. This is
something that I actually wasn’t aware of
for the longest time.
Let’s look at the word brand or Brand. This
is the perfect example because this word actually
does exist in both languages with the exact
same spelling but as you can hear, the ending
is pronounced very differently. Brand – Brand.
In English it’s voiced, stimmhaft, brand,
so it’s much softer while in German it’s
voiceless, stimmlos, Brand. We actually don’t
make a difference between the D and T sound
at the end of a word in German, we always
pronounce it like a t. So for all the Germans
out there, if you want improve your English
pronunciation, this is something to pay attention
to. Another example would be “hard”. Many
Germany pronounce it like “heart” which
makes it sound like the heart instead of hard.
And similar mistakes happen with other consonants
as well, one example would be the word “is.”
Germans oftentimes say is instead of is. We
actually use that exact same word in colloquial
German too, with the voiceless s, so it’s
tricky to pronounce it differently when speaking
English. Or for plural forms this can also
be an issue, as in eyes "die Augen." If a
German says “my ice” instead of “my
eyes” it almost sounds like ice, like ice
cubes to an English speaker.
So, many of you watching this video probably
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And the last pronunciation tip has to do with
the letter L. So in English there are 2 different
L – sounds – the light L – lll and the
dark L. Germans often get this one wrong and
there’s a simple reason for that. In the
German language we only have the light L so
we’re not even used to hearing a difference
there. The light L in English is used at the
beginning of words for example, like in “light”
or “look” or “listen” while the dark
L is mostly at the end of words. But Germans
oftentimes just use the light L there as well.
Examples would be the word “people” or
“school.” If you pronounce it with a light
L instead – people, school - it already
totally sounds like a German accent, which
there’s nothing wrong with that, native
speakers will still understand you but they
just pronounce it a little differently. More
examples where you should use the dark L are
real, always, tall, candle, or my favorite
word of all time rural. So it’ll probably
require some practice because this isn’t
exactly a natural sound for Germans to make
and I’m gonna be honest it doesn’t always
sound nice to us either but it's part of the
English language.
Now let’s get to the mistakes that aren’t
about pronunciation but more about grammar.
And the first one is one that at least my
English teachers have always pointed out but
people did it wrong anyway and even Germans
who are pretty advanced at English often get
this one wrong and I always cringe because
I always think this sounds a little weird.
So many Germans will say things like “I
live in Berlin since 2 years.” when it should
be “I have been living in Berlin for two
years.” Again, in German we don’t have
this difference between since and for, it's
always "seit" in German. And the tenses are
also one of the trickiest things for us to
master in English because in German we often
just use the present tense but in English
there’s many different tenses with many
different meanings and functions. So let’s
start with since vs. for. This one’s really
simple actually. In English you only say since
when you’re talking about a point in time,
so you can say “since yesterday”, “since
January” “since I was born” but when
you want to describe a time period, you use
for. “for 2 years”, “for 3 hours”,
“for several months”, “for a long time”.
And if the time period is still continuing
at this point, you use the present perfect
progressive, so “have been doing” something.
This indicates that the action started in
the past but has been going on ever since
and is still going on now. So when you say
“I have been living in Berlin for two years”
it means you started living there in the past
and have been doing it since and you still
live there now. And I actually don’t think
there’s any scenario where you would use
the present tense with since or for in English
like we do in German.
Now for those of you who just can’t get
used to the difference between since and for
– because since just sounds like "seit"
in German and you just always wanna use since,
you can use it if you want to but you have
to make sure that you talk about a point in
time so you could say something like “I
have been living in Berlin since two years
ago.” Then that’s a specific point in
time that you’re talking about then it’s
grammatically correct.
And the last point on my list has to do with
collective and uncountable nouns in English,
because those aren’t very common in German
so Germans often struggle with these and use
them incorrectly. I still do to this day so
this definitely belongs on the list. So in
English there are many collective nouns that
are grammatically singular but describe a
group of people or some kind of collection
of individuals and in a lot of cases you’ll
use the plural verb with them in English while
in German we use the singular verb. So Germans
often do that wrong in English. I always use
majority wrong for example. In German you
would say “Die Mehrheit der Leute ist…”
but in English you usually “The majority
of people are…”. Another one that’s
very common is police. That one’s always
plural in English so you don’t say “The
police is on its way” like you would in
German but you’d say “The police are on
their way.” And oftentimes you don’t use
an article with that either and just say “Police
are on their way.” To German ears that just
sounds kind of odd in the beginning but you
get used to it.There are also a lot of cases
where you can technically use either, the
singular or the plural verb with a collective
noun but it depends on the context it’s
used in. And overall, in British English it’s
more common to use the plural verb with those
nouns while in American English it’s more
common to use the singular verb. One example
is family. In British English you’d say
“My family are at home” while in American
English you’d say “My family is at home.”
And it’s similar with words like team, or
group, or company names. For those, it depends
on the context and where you are. On the other
hand there are so called “uncountable”
nouns where in German we have a plural version
of them while in English they only exist in
the singular form. So again, that’s something
that Germans often say wrong. Like we’ll
say “Can you give me some more informations
about that?” So we say informations instead
of information, or we'll say "my hairs are
long" instead of "my hair is long," or we'll
say “Look at all the fishes in the pond”
instead of “Look at all the fish”! So
Those are just things you’ll have to remember.
But that one actually sounds kind of cute
when German say that wrong.
So I hope this was helpful for you! Of course,
German also often struggle with pronouncing
the English TH sound and the R but that’s
something that they’re usually aware of.
But in this video I really tried to point
out things that I wish I had known earlier
and that I feel like many German aren’t
even aware of because we don’t really talk
about that in English class. So whether you
speak English as your first or as a second
language let me know in the comments below
what other typical mistakes you’ve heard
that many people aren’t aware of. I probably
have made a bunch of mistakes in this video
alone, and if you’re a native speaker let
me know which of those mistakes actually annoy
you and which don’t really bother at all.
Thank you guys so much for watching! Make
sure to give this video a thumbs if you liked
it, follow me on social media for more behind
the scenes content and you can also support
me on Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee.com. And
I hope I’ll see you next time! Tschüs!
