Speaking German like a Native

[sos-the-rope 619]

20 hours ago, TurMech said:

I have never met or seen anybody, who learned the language in his/her adult years, and speak like a native. 

In the video below, you can listen to somebody, who successfully passed the Goethe C2 exam. You can judge yourself, whether it sounds like a native.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8VN2keDjzk

 

I used to hang around with a language tutor at a high profile institution in Frankfurt.

 

One time I used a German word and he told me it was incorrect. I told him where I'd learned it.

 

Later he told me he checked Duden and it was real.

[sos-the-rope 619]

On 12/12/2022, 08:56:57, murphaph said:

The most important thing is the accent. If you work on the accent it hides all manner of grammatical errors because the other party isn't sitting there, ears pricked listening for them. Native English speakers are so used to hearing their language used by non-natives that we couldn't be arsed "catching people out" but for many Germans it's still a novelty to hear their language spoken by non-native speakers so they listen much more intently. If they feel you speak like them (the accent) then they drop this "error detector" mode and just listen to what you are saying. That's been my experience anyway.

 

There'a that, and I think partly the culture of having "correctness" drummed in to you from an early age. You are only getting grilled as much as a native speaker was used to growing up.

[alexunterwegs 540]

I spoke fluent Dutch before I arrived in Germany and found that a help and a hindrance. Firstly, Dutch is a Germanic language so there are equivalents for a lot of words and if you don't know, you can guess and maybe 70% of your attempts would be right. The other 30% just accept as failed attempts. It tends to work a lot easier in northern Germany, with plattdeutsch not dissimilar. In the West some of pronunciations remind me of Dutch. 

Southern Germany is a different ball game. The further south you get, the more difficult it gets. Schwabisch, and all the variations of Baierisch. The dialect in Osterreich is a real strain. My favourite German club Borussia MG, had an Austrian trainer and I could only pick up about half of what he was saying. I think he spoke even faster when they lost.  

 

[LukeSkywalker 7,594]

21 hours ago, TurMech said:

I have never met or seen anybody, who learned the language in his/her adult years, and speak like a native. 

In the video below, you can listen to somebody, who successfully passed the Goethe C2 exam. You can judge yourself, whether it sounds like a native.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8VN2keDjzk

I think he did really well, but for C2 he could have done more to reduce his strong French accent.

[alexunterwegs 540]

 

A basic difficulty for native English speakers is pronounciation of the letter 'R' which is a natural giveaway to someone's ethnic roots. It is alot more guttural in German, as it is in Dutch and indeed in many other European languages. The Scottish 'R' is actually not dissimilar to the German R.