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So, I've told you I need an orthography source, but what do I want to know exactly? Below is the list.

  • Letter-sound and sound-letter correspondence: Basically, I want to know which sounds each letter has and when to use each letter to represent a sound. For example, for a letter-sound correspondence I can mention that 《l》 seems to be mute at times (such as in "selbst") but pronounced as [l] in others. For a sound-letter correspondence I can mention the letter pairs z/c and v/f, which can be realized with the same sound, [ts] and [f] respectively but are used instead of the other in very specific word positions or even types of words.

  • Diacritic usage: It refers to the quality each diacritic (comma, hifen, two dots...) have and when each should be used.

  • Other miscellaneous information about the orthography of the language, such as when to use capital and non-capital letters, the story of the german orthography encompassing its various standardizations up to the reform currently in use etc.

That's it! I've consulted wikipedia, a couple blogs and a number of English-written German grammars but the content in all were given only shallowly, thus not informing me as much as I'd like. The language of the source can be any from these: German, English, Italian, Portuguese. I don't know nothing of German at the moment but to just know the perfect source - even if it is written in german, would be a great thing in itself.

Hatchet
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Duarte Alfonso Martin
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  • This is a question for German Language SE. – Janka Mar 04 '19 at 19:01
  • @Janka The mere fact that a question may be on topic on another SE site does not make off topic here. – Tsundoku Mar 04 '19 at 19:19
  • In that case, please crosspost as there will be probably more answers if asked at the right place. – Janka Mar 04 '19 at 20:27
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    FYI: The l in selbst isn't silent. Ask a German native speaker to pronounce the nonexisting word sebst and you will hear the difference. Even knowing all the consonants, random clusters will give you a headache and the only way to fight den Hemmschuh, die Feststellbremse, die Sumpfpflanze is to know a lot of vocabulary so you can identify syllables. – Janka Mar 04 '19 at 21:16
  • FYI2: German does not use diacritics. Ä, ö, ü are vowels of their own. The dots originally were an e in old German handwriting, but only a few people are aware of this. Other elements than letters are a matter of Zeichensetzung. Search for that term for information. Capitalization of words is a matter of Rechtschreibung. The most used source are the books from the Duden publisher. A Schülerduden –intended for German schoolkids from 7th grade– should be sufficient for your needs on both topics. – Janka Mar 04 '19 at 21:26
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    As a general rule, please don't cross-post. – Hatchet Mar 06 '19 at 17:50
  • @Janka, why did you say random consonants give headaches and why by acquiring vocabulary do I learn how to identify syllables? – Duarte Alfonso Martin Mar 08 '19 at 19:38
  • How do you expect to pronounce the stst in Feststellbremse? The answer depends on the German dialect, but High German prefers [stʃt]. Why? Because the first st is the ending of the syllable, while the next is the start of the next one. Longer German words are built from shorter words of about 3 to 6 letters each. Knowing that vocabulary of short words very well will help you identify syllable boundaries in longer words (and will help you explore a vast amount of other vocabulary.) – Janka Mar 08 '19 at 20:29
  • If you listen to German speakers, you will notice they make a very short pause at component boundaries within compounds and a short pause between words. That's a very distinctive feature of High German and will help you understanding speech. Some dialects do this to a lesser extent. Even native German speakers from other regions have problems understanding such speakers. – Janka Mar 08 '19 at 20:36
  • Oh, I understood. Indeed, there are some quite long words in German and their pronunciation can be tricky if you don't know which lexical components they are made of. Do you have any advice for knowing the smaller words? – Duarte Alfonso Martin Mar 08 '19 at 21:11

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