Pronunciation is not one of the great challenges of the German language. If you know the rules, you immediately know how to pronounce a German word – with very few exceptions. It’s very different in English, for example.
Nevertheless, there can be problems. Often these problems are related to the mother tongue of the learner(s).
Let’s take Nancy from the USA as an example. Nancy was actually making good progress, but every encounter with the German preposition ‘zwischen’ made her panic. Nancy tried again and again, but the result sounded – frankly – pretty terrible.
Eventually, she wanted to give up. She said, “My tongue just can’t do it.”
My answer: “I don’t think American tongues are different from German ones. The problem must be somewhere higher up in the mind.”
Nancy reacted slightly indignantly: “What do you mean by that.”
Did I want to doubt her intelligence?
“No, Nancy – I just think we’re not dealing with a biological phenomenon here, but with a mental block.”
That reassured Nancy, but it didn’t really help her yet. Then I had an idea. I wrote a fantasy word on the whiteboard: ‘tsvition’.
“Nancy, can you please read that word?”
Nancy reacted immediately: “zwischen”. In perfect German pronunciation.
So it really wasn’t her tongue, but obviously her brain had a problem processing the combination of letters, especially the ‘zw’, which was unusual for her. ‘tsvition‘ looked so much more familiar to her English mindset.than this horryfying ‘zwischen‘.
Unfortunately, some phonetic difficulties can be overcome in this way, but not all. I myself have had the experience that, despite all my efforts, I did not succeed in making certain Swedish sounds sound really Swedish. And a lot of Germans permanently fail to produce the English ‘th’.
This often leaves us with an unmistakable accent, even if we already speak a foreign language quite well. But that’s not all too bad – is it?