My [a:], let me show you it

[pne]

n_true pointed me to Forvo, where you can listen to recordings of words in many languages or record your own, and I've been recording a bunch of German words.

(I wonder who requested those words... many of them look as if they came from a political text or something.)

After each recording, it's played back to you so you can choose whether to stick with it or try again, and I've found that my long /a:/ phoneme sounds different than the sound I thought I make :) Somehow more... back and rounded or something.

My short /a/ sounds as I expect, though, even though I read that in German, the two phonemes differ only in quantity, not in quality. (Unlike the other short-long vowel pairs, which differ in both.)

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

"even though I read that in German, the two phonemes differ only in quantity, not in quality."

I've read the same but find it hard to believe it, at least in my pronunciation.