h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"a" is pronounced as in the English "hat".

It is not long drawn out. Americans tend to do this, or even to make it sound like "aw" as in "bawdy" or "Lord".

When pronouncing English words with an "a" in them, Germans seem to think that it should be pronounced "e" as in "met". So the mistake is on both sides. If people just pronounced it the way they would in their own languages there would be no problem.

So, the letter "a" is a short vowel.

At the beginning of the word, it will start with the "glottal stop"

It may be slightly elongated at the end of a word, but never emphasised. The Hamburger suburb "Altona" springs to mind (pronounced All-te-nar, with the emphasis on the first syllable)

To elongate the vowel, we have other letters like h, r, or a. A double a will be found in a word of Danish or Dutch origin. (Kierkegaard, Maas)

Examples using the other letters would be "Park" - pronounced exactly like in English, with the somewhat subdued German "r".
"Fahrt" - meaning journey, which comes from "fahren" - to travel or drive .... or run (a machine or trial).

The letter ä or you can write it "ae", if you don't have time to programme the ä on your keyboard, is pronounced like the questioning "eh?" - only slightly more constricted at the back of the throat.

There is no exact equivalent in English. If you take a word like "Präsentation" though, there is very little difference between the "ä" sound and an "e".

I just wanted to tell you how much I'm enjoying this, TC. I hope I'll be able to take it all in.

, or

It's me again. I'm leaving for a long weekend and I'd like to know if you are going to give the lessons 7 days a week?

Yes, but I have decided to reduce the size of the portions, so it'll be easier to catch up.

Er Hatifnat - work and the Real World left me no time to post a lesson on Saturday. So the answer is revised to read - at weekends I shall just do one lesson.

Do have fun trying out the sounds.