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I'm a simple emigrant and I'm learning the German alphabet

4/16/2025, 1:20:00 PM

Yes, yes, this isn’t a typo, I really did first pass the exam for B1, and now I’ve finally reached the letters. To be precise, first I started speaking the language, then brushed up the grammar, then there was the exam, and now pronunciation of the letters. That’s me, the linguistic Benjamin Button. In German there are letters whose names are not obvious, for example V is called “fau,” but is pronounced like “f.” And every time I call some service, they ask for the contract or order number, or the funniest thing — my inscrutable FIO spelled letter by letter — and I sit there as if in front of a red button, trying to separate different alphabets in my head and guess how that letter might sound. But you can’t say “double-u” and hope the German letter sounds the same — you can already feel that, in any case, it’s definitely not the same. And those poor operators try to figure out what I’m dictating to them. In especially bad cases I switch to English or to “S as in dollar,” but I’m very ashamed in those moments. The dumbest thing is when the phone support is answered by a robot. I sit there, sweat dripping, while I dictated a 48-digit order number, and the robot goes, “I didn’t understand anything, please say it again”… I want to throw the phone out the window. Let’s skip the moment that bots in support annoy me in general. What about you? Have you started dictating by letters fluently yet? If not, then catch in the comments a chart of the alphabet, pronunciation, and examples of pronunciations in words that I made. And here’s another masterful video I dug up for audio practice: #useful #language