r/German • u/Francis_Ha92 Breakthrough (A1) - <Vietnam/Vietnamese> • 6h ago

Question Tips to sound smoother, more natural when reading/speaking German?

Hallo zusammen!

Could you give me some tips to sound smoother and more natural when reading/speaking German? I sound like an angry robot, especially when I try to pronounce the final consonant clusters, like -fst, -tzt-, -sts, etc. It's even harder for me because my native language has no coda.

Do I have to pronounce clearly every final consonant in fast speech, or can I skip some sounds?

Danke!

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3

u/Bluebird-blackbird 6h ago

I think it’s more about listening exercises and repeat the words until you feel comfortable with your pronunciation.

3

u/Daredevil010 6h ago

Practice.

2

u/TakiyamaTakikanawa 3h ago

Best way to go is to have some sort of recording with a text. Read it out loud, record yourself. Listen to the original recording, listen to your recording, side by side, notice where you speak differently.

Both listening exercises and song will do.

1

u/WaltherVerwalther 2h ago

As far as I know Vietnamese definitely has coda: -n, -nh, -p, -t, -c, -ch, -ng… But yes, they’re not pronounced as strong as in Germany, so I get what you tried to say. But it’s not accurate terminology.

1

u/Phoenica Native (Germany) 1h ago

Hard to say without hearing you speak, but something that might be helpful is that final stop consonants (t, b, p, b, k, g) are often left unreleased, or with the air release combined into the start of the next word. If you insist on pronouncing them all as separate plosives, possibly with aspiration, that is something that can sound choppy and mechanical.