Voted Best Answer
Jul 27, 2014 - 05:55 PM
My roommate is from here in Virginia but lived in Germany for almost 20 years. He is totally fluent in high German & in the local Franken dialect used where he lived. He says the soft "sh" pronunciation is more prevalent down south & he knew Nora must me from the Munich area after hearing her speak one sentence. The small village where he lived about halfway between Munich & Frankfurt was more gutteral & ch was more of a hard K. Several times I complained to him that I was confused for the same reasons you give & that getting it right was very important to me. But he assures me that, although it depends on where you are as to how it's pronounced, most everyone will understand either pronunciation since there are so many different dialects in Germany anyway. A couple of years ago we watched a German zombie movie on Netflix & in one scene an old woman could be heard on the other end of the phonecall. My roommate almost busted a gut laughing at her accent & was amazed that I couldn't tell how "country" she sounded. I think that's when I decided I had to learn German. Good Luck! Joey