SLawson

On 06/12/2013 at 7:25 PM, Hedonologist said:

Often when native English speakers attempt to use a learnt language with a native speaker, the native speaker will revert to English. Germans have a reputation for preferring to use English fluently, rather than broken German, but I've not found this to be the case with me personally.

 

Do you have any experience with this?

Yes, I've been talking to a German man online for about 18 years, and only recently been practising German with him

Thanks for replying, that's helpful to me. Although I didn't think pronouncing it different ways would have different meanings. I meant that it takes a lot of effort to learn how to pronounce R the German way which I thought is the proper way, with the gargle from back of the throat, so was wondering if I heard people pronouncing the R without coming from back of the throat, then why do some pronounce the same word with the R that sounds like gargle and some not? When I went to France and was trying to pronounce a word with R I said it the same as I do in England and they didn't understand me, but when I said the same word with the R from the back of the throat they understood me. I wasn't sure if that's the same in Germany

I was looking at a website which has native speakers saying the same word Lärm. I'm confused why two of them pronounce the R the way I read Germans pronounce it from the back of the throat, but then two of them pronounce the R the same as English?

on here: https://forvo.com/word/lärm/#de

I asked my friend in Germany on facebook by messaging, and they didn't know what I was talking about, as said it all sounded the same to them, and said you can say the R any way, so now I'm annoyed they're not helping, so I told them I would ask on the internet.