A cute little bunny or a hessian mercenary, pronunciation matters
- Evelyn Newhouse
- Jan 27, 2017
- 3 min read

Pronunciation can be the difference between a cute little bunny and a soldier. How is that possible, well when the diminutive of the German word for rabbit “Hase” which is “Häschen” is pronounced incorrectly it sounds an awful lot like the word hessian which is a term used for a person from Hessen (Hessia in English) or in a historical context a soldier from the German state of Hessen. Hessian mercenaries even helped in the American Revolution.

How on earth would I come to write a blog post about this issue, well it is a real thing. In German we have specific sounds and some of them look like other sounds on first look, if you do not have a strong grasp on the language. Let me explain, the very first thing that a student must learn to master a foreign language is pronunciation. In German, we use the same 24 letter alphabet as in English plus we have a few special characters that are short cuts for letter combinations that make different sounds. The Ää = ae, Öӧ = oe, Üü = ue and β = ss. Then there are frequent sounds that students must learn, for example the sch has one sound but the ch has two sounds depending on how it is used in a word. Each letter or letter combination has a distinct sound, except the ch which has two. Sometimes when words from other languages have been absorbed into German, the letters can make the sounds from the original language, for example the y can make the sound like y as in baby or y as in you.
Sounds easy, right? Well, not exactly. What would you do if you encountered the word “Häschen”? There is a sch sound in the middle, but it is the diminutive of “Hase” or rabbit and instead of reading the syllables like “Hä-schen”, it is read as “Häs-chen”. This is a mistake that I have heard many graduate students make. I believe this mistake can be avoided, by teaching German 1 in the syllable reading method.

I had the most wonderful first grade teacher Frau Reichert. After explaining the sounds of the alphabet and the different combinations she started by combining small syllables for us to practice. We would work our way up to words and clap along with the syllables of different words. I think this basic literacy idea could be incorporated into the German 1 classroom where students are already literate in their L1 or first language and just need to know how to deal with their L2 or second language. This method of learning to read is still popular in Germany and here is a link to a German website where one can read more.
http://www.legakids.net/eltern-lehrer/lernmaterialien/mildenberger-v
erlag/lesen-und-schreiben-mit-der-silbenmethode-unterstuetzen/
One of the tricks that I noticed right away is to use different colors to write the syllables of each word to help beginning readers. Our example above would therefore be written as “Häschen”. One could use this method to write vocabulary words on the board, make little matching card games with different color syllables of known vocabulary words that the students may compile or simply print out a few already made worksheets from the website. Of course, if your budget allows, a set of reading books that are already printed in this method would be very beneficial for any German 1 classroom.
The “Häschen” example is very funny when a teacher is singing the sweet children’s song “Ein Häschen in der Grube” (A bunny in the hollow) but the mispronunciation turns it into “A Hessian (soldier) in the ditch”. This little mispronunciation may be an innocent little mistake, but the change in meaning is gigantic.
Photo Sources:
Hessian Mercenaries: http://www.kriegsreisende.de/absolutismus/hessen.htm
Bunny: https://www.google.com/search?q=bunny&safe=active&espv=2&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS711US711&biw=1536&bih=710&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-hom0s-_RAhVM3mMKHaXxDEQQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=trabHhbexBb-YM%3A
Syllable Reading book: http://www.legakids.net/eltern-lehrer/lernmaterialien/mildenberger-verlag/lesen-und-schreiben-mit-der-silbenmethode-unterstuetzen/
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