# <s> after a voiceless consonant



## Dymn

Hallo zusammen,

I often hear by many people who otherwise speak with a run-of-the-mill standard accent, the _s _being pronounced as a voiceless /s/ rather than /z/, after another voiceless consonant. This occurs both within a word and also across word boundaries. For example: _tatsächlich, Aufmerksamkeit, Absatz,_ _hat sie, das so_, etc.

I've never heard this phenomenon being described, so I wonder, how common is it?

Danke schön


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## Kajjo

Dymn said:


> I've never heard this phenomenon being described, so I wonder, how common is it?


This is non-standard German and occurs quite frequently in Southern accents if the speaker has a dialectal background.

This is one of the issues that is very difficult to train off for people affected by it. It sounds pretty wrong and awful for standard-speakers, but oh-so-normal for Southern accents, even if other facets of their language are pretty standard.

Standard: _reisen /z/,  reißen /s/_
but in Southern accents both with /s/


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## berndf

Kajjo said:


> This is non-standard German and occurs quite frequently in Southern accents if the speaker has a dialectal background.
> 
> This is one of the issues that is very difficult to train off for people affected by it. It sounds pretty wrong and awful for standard-speakers, but oh-so-normal for Southern accents, even if other facets of their language are pretty standard.
> 
> Standard: _reisen /z/,  reißen /s/_
> but in Southern accents both with /s/


That's not what he is talking about. He asked about assimilation of [ z ] to [ s ] *after an unvoiced consonant*.

In my mind, this can happen independently of region of origin of speaker.


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## Frank78

Dymn said:


> I've never heard this phenomenon being described, so I wonder, how common is it?



All /z/ for me in your examples.


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## Kajjo

berndf said:


> In my mind, this can happen independently of region of origin of speaker.


I cant imagine it to happen to standard speakers in cases like "Absatz" oder "tatsächlich". No, that is a Southern accent issue.

Cases like "hat sie" or "das so" or "is(t) so" might be different.


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## berndf

The reason why I am hesitant is this: when asked how I would pronounce those words I would instinctively also say "with voiced s". But when I say them with an unvoiced s it doesn't feel so unfamiliar and I am not really sure how I say them when I am not asked this question; and that's what matters. Furthermore I doubt that a native speaker (independent of region) would recognize the difference in rapid speech.


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## Kajjo

berndf said:


> Furthermore I doubt they a native speaker (independent of region) would recognize the difference in rapid speech.


Also mir zieht sich immer alles zusammen, wenn ich diesen ß-Akzent höre und Wörter wie "ßaufen, ßache, eine Reiße" fallen eigentlich krass und störend auf.

In Fällen wie "hat sie, isso" hat es wohl tatsächlich mit dem Zusammenziehen der Silben und Laute zu tun, aber Wörter wie "Absatz" kann ich quasi gar nicht wie "Abßatz" sprechen, ebensowenig "Aufmerkßamkeit". Also das klingt schon grauslich und erfordert regelrechte Anstrengung für einen Standardsprecher. Ich glaube nicht, dass das ein normales Phänomen wie Assimilation ist.

Gerade "Aufmerksamkeit" hat doch ein sehr klares /z/. Ne, das würde mir ganz sicher auffallen, auch in schneller Sprache.


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## berndf

Kajjo said:


> Also mir zieht sich immer alles zusammen, wenn ich diesen ß-Akzent höre und Wörter wie "ßaufen, ßache, eine Reiße" fallen eigentlich krass und störend auf.


Darum geht es hier doch gar nicht. Ich verstehe nicht, warum du wieder mit solchen Beispielen kommst.


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## berndf

Kajjo said:


> aber Wörter wie "Absatz" kann ich quasi gar nicht wie "Abßatz" sprechen, ebensowenig "Aufmerkßamkeit".


Nee, wie ß würde ich es auch nicht sprechen. Das würde aber auch bedeuten, dass man es etwas länger spricht. Kurz und stimmlos kann ich mir vorstellen. Phonemisch wäre das immer noch /z/, phonetisch aber [ s ]. In bin mir, wie gesagt, nicht sicher; weder in die eine noch in die andere Richtung. Ich denke, das müsste experimentell überprüft werden.


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## bearded

Kajjo said:


> Wörter wie "Absatz"


Is the B in 'Absatz' really a fully ''voiceless consonant''?


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## berndf

bearded said:


> Is the B in 'Absatz' really a fully ''voiceless consonant''?


Good question (Intuitively, I would say yes). Probably best not to complicate the issue with that as well and restrict the discussion to more unambiguous examples of which there are enough.


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## Kajjo

bearded said:


> Is the B in 'Absatz' really a fully ''voiceless consonant''?


Yes, the coda devoicing (Auslautverhärtugn) works also for prefixes and most breaks between composita elements.

The "b" is [p] but of course not aspirated in this position.


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## Dymn

I don't know in German, but I find it very hard to pronounce /kz tz pz sz/ because consonants in a cluster must have the same voiced quality in Catalan. Anyway I guess it's still better to say /gz dz bz zz/ than /ks ts ps ss/ in those cases, especially because Germans are deaf to voicedness in coda position.


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## Kajjo

Dymn said:


> but I find it very hard to pronounce /kz tz pz sz/ because consonants in a cluster must have the same voiced quality in Catalan


In my limited experience with Spanish/Catalan speakers this might be a consequence of not clearly enough pronounce the breaks between prefixes and composita elements and the next element of a word. Maybe try to pronounce the syllables more separately.

The cluster [ks] is like German "x" and as such voiceless. Words like "Auf-merk-sam-keit" do NOT contain a [ks] cluster. The syllable break in [merk-sam] makes it possible to pronounce "sam" with /z/. The "k" and "s" are NOT part of the same syllable, so they cannot form a cluster.


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## Hutschi

What is voiceless?
I think the essence is the contrast to voiced.

Unvoiced sounds like t, p, k are aspirated and voiced sounds are not aspirated in case of these sounds.
But there are also other possible contrasts.
I would never speak a German d like an English one, except I want to speak extremely clear.

In case of s I speak a voiced s but in the north they hear an unvoiced s.
ß is very sharp.

A very voiced s is only in children songs like "summ, summ, summ, Bienchen summ herum“.

In our case, I speak "tatsächlich" with a hart aspirated t at the begin, but with aspirated "t" which sounds soft but is hard in other contrasts.

It is surely regionally different.

As child I spoke "und" with a really voiced d at the end.
This is because I learned much of the standard language by reading.
My L1 was a Franconian dialect.
The result is that I overpronounce some words.
I do seldom omit endings.
But my vowel and consonant system is influenced by Saxonian, Franconian dialect and guessing words by rules.

The advantage is that I'm open for differences in speech. 
In case of s I do not hear much difference except in songs.

ß is very sharp. S has two qualities, soft and unvoiced. I would not call it voiced but a little bit voiced.


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## Hutschi

Standard German phonology - Wikipedia


> /b, d, ɡ, z, ʒ/ are voiceless in most southern varieties of German. For clarity, they are often transcribed as [b̥, d̥, ɡ̊, z̥, ʒ̊].



In the article they give many hints but it is too long for quotation.

So I just quote following:




> The voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/ are aspirated except when preceded by a sibilant. Many southern dialects do not aspirate /p t k/, and some northern ones do so only in a stressed position. The voiceless affricates /pf/, /ts/, and /tʃ/ are never aspirated,[67] and neither are any other consonants besides the aforementioned /p, t, k/.[67]


Standard German phonology - Wikipedia
The essence is that there is no official standard. There are regional varieties, and there are several books with proposals how to speak or with standards for purposes like radio and tv.


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## Kajjo

Hutschi said:


> Unvoiced sounds like t, p, k are aspirated and voiced sounds are not aspirated in case of these sounds.


No. Unvoiced sounds are not always equally strong aspirated in standard German pronunciation. Intensity of aspiration depends on the position inside the syllable.

There are no voiced versions of t, p, k in standard German pronunciation. The voiced equivalents are d, b, g.



Hutschi said:


> It is surely regionally different.


Standard German pronunciation is not, but dialectal or accented pronunciations of course vary.


Hutschi said:


> The essence is that there is no official standard.


There is a clear standard pronunciation. I refer for the Duden.

It might be a topic of politics and ideology whether to follow any standards or to deny them. German language teachers have a very clear outline of standard pronunciation. Only between natives there is this modern course of not clearly stating that some dialects use wrong pronunciation when measured against standard prounciation. I don't get it. If people are proud on dialects and accents, then clearly state that they differ. They obviously do.


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## berndf

The discussion is drifting away. This is not about all sorts of variants but about a very specific situation. Especially the questions how lenis and fortis plosives are distinguished is an entirely different question with its own issues.

There is in my mind no doubt that the standard pronunciation of <s> is these situations is /z/. It makes no sense argue about that. The question that remains to be answered is if standard speakers occasionally realize this /z/ devoiced ([z̥]).

My tentative answer to this is that it may happen but without phonemic neutralization, i.e. the devoiced [z̥] remains distinguishable from the sound represented by the letter <ß>.


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## Dymn

One of the people who exhibit this phenomenon is Mirko Drotschmann. He's from in Baden-Württemberg (so, the south*), but he speaks a very normal-accented Standard German. I can't post videos so look for "Warum es die Nato gibt" on Youtube. He clearly doesn't pronounce a fully voiced /z/ at 2:00 (_und sich_) and 6:23 (_wirksam_), but on closer inspection I've found some other instances in which he does pronounce it voiced.

* I'm not sure if the entirety of BW counts as the south. At least it's Upper German area. I watch the Tagesschau and when I hear people with a strong accent I look them up out of curiosity to know where they're from. Most of them happen to be from Bavaria, some also from BW, and I think specifically the southern half of the state, like Joachim Löw. But it's not restricted to those places I guess. The other day I watched a video from Saxony and most of the interviewed people used that ß-Akzent Kajjo describes. It surprised me to find it so up north, in Middle German territory.

Edit: Talking about the Tagesschau, just another example. Susanne Dauber, from Halle, "Tagesschau 25.11.2019" on YT, 0:28 (_aufmerksam_).


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## berndf

Dymn said:


> I'm not sure if the entirety of BW counts as the south.


The limit is very roughly the motorway A6. Areas of BW north of it are Central German speaking.


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## Kajjo

Dymn said:


> He's from in Baden-Württemberg (so, the south


That explains it all. He surely speaks quite good standard German, but his remaining voiceless /z/ realisations are a relict of his dialectal influence. He speaks /z/ at a word start (probably trained and consciously) a lot better than many /z/ inside words.

Don't make to much out of it. This is just a non-standard influence on his otherwise standard German pronunciation.


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## eamp

Kajjo said:


> Also mir zieht sich immer alles zusammen, wenn ich diesen ß-Akzent höre und Wörter wie "ßaufen, ßache, eine Reiße" fallen eigentlich krass und störend auf.


Ist von der anderen Seite aus genauso, glaube mir. Junge Mädchen hier affektieren leider immer häufiger die deutsche Aussprache, die sie von irgendwelchen YouTube-Tussis übernehmen. Schaudert mich jedes mal, wenn ich das in der U-Bahn höre.


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## Hutschi

The original question has two points:

1, standard pronunciation
2. devoicing in special forms.

The first is not cleared until now between us. I will not discuss it here. Only: Speaking dialects is not wrong. But this thread is not about dialects but about variants of standard language. I learned there are varaiants, Kajjo teaches there are none.
But lets assume there is and it is the Duden one for thi discussion.

Then theroretically the "s" has to be voiced when it is the first sound of a syllable._ *Edit*: Not in all words, there are lots of exceptions, see Kajjo #30)_
And as Kajjo stated, the plosives (t,p,k) have to be aspirated.

But there is more: 2.
It is about consonants that follow each other, and there is the phenomenon which occurs frequently: Assimilation. (Bernd, #3)
Assimilation is a kind of language effect you may like or not, it occurs.
And this changes the sound of consonants.


So they do not speak standard, when I follow Kajjo.

I found another effect: I heard People in TV news speaking very clear [z] - in all positions.
Other speakers of news speak sometimes  and sometimes [z].
In many cases I hear news speakers speaking somethin between the two sounds at the beginning of words. At least I do not hear a difference.

Nevertheless almost all show some kinds of assimilation, example: one used "isses" (statt "ist es") This is definitely not a standard word. But it is the spoken form of such a word and usually we use standard spelling.
"ss" is one "s" sound only, and "t" is omitted.


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## Frank78

Dymn said:


> One of the people who exhibit this phenomenon is Mirko Drotschmann. He's from in Baden-Württemberg (so, the south*), but he speaks a very normal-accented Standard German. I can't post videos so look for "Warum es die Nato gibt" on Youtube. He clearly doesn't pronounce a fully voiced /z/ at 2:00 (_und sich_) and 6:23 (_wirksam_), but on closer inspection I've found some other instances in which he does pronounce it voiced.



I hear /z/ in both cases.



Dymn said:


> Edit: Talking about the Tagesschau, just another example. Susanne Dauber, from Halle, "Tagesschau 25.11.2019" on YT, 0:28 (_aufmerksam_).



Yes, that sounds like an /s/. But that could also be a technical problem. Through a lot of microphones the s-sounds sound stronger, i.e. more like an /s/ or even a lisp, than they actually are.


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## berndf

Dymn said:


> One of the people who exhibit this phenomenon is Mirko Drotschmann. He's from in Baden-Württemberg (so, the south*), but he speaks a very normal-accented Standard German. I can't post videos so look for "Warum es die Nato gibt" on Youtube. He clearly doesn't pronounce a fully voiced /z/ at 2:00 (_und sich_) and 6:23 (_wirksam_), but on closer inspection I've found some other instances in which he does pronounce it voiced.


This is the /z/ of _und sich_ at 2:00. No shadow of a doubt that it is fully voiced.


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## Hutschi

nochmal zurück zu #1:


Ich habe den Begriff der Koartikulation gefunden: Er bedeutet, dass bestimmte Stimmorgane bereits beginnen, sich in die richtige Position für den folgenden Laut zu bringen, sodass die Laute anders klingen, als wenn sie einzeln gesprochen werden. Es ist ähnlich der Assimilation, würde aber den Effekt noch besser erklären.
Koartikulation – Wikipedia


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## Red Arrow

Does this really only happen in the south? In the Netherlands and Flanders, it is standard to pronounce /pz tz kz fz sz xz/ as [ps ts ks fs s xs].


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## berndf

Red Arrow said:


> Does this really only happen in the south? In the Netherlands and Flanders, it is standard to pronounce /pz tz kz fz sz xz/ as [ps ts ks fs s xs].


The N-S issue in German is different: Upper German does not have [z] *at all; nowhere*. This assimilation effect, if it exists, can only occur in Northern and Central accents.


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## Hutschi

Standard pronunciation is kind of a prescriptive ideal. It is useful in theatres and in radio news. But almost nobody speaks only standard pronunciation (one of the three or four standards).

I listened to a lot of news now and found that the realisation of "s" itself and of things like "ps, ts, etc." changes from speaker to speaker and in many cases also in case of one speaker from one to another word.  It also depends on speed, stress and intonation.

I did not even feel a difference when I did not take care to hear one - because of the brain filters.

I think ist is similar to colors. If you have two blue colors in your culture, you will see two. If you have one, you see one. You see different colors, of course.  But only in case you need them, you will classify them into different categories.

So I think we must not only onsider the sender but also the receiver.

For me as from the south, it was difficult to hear voiced s if it is spoken fast.
I hear it as unvoiced if not take special care.

The speakers have to change from daily colloquial language to standard pronunciation, I am sure they make mistakes in this, too. There is no area or accent where standard pronunciation is spoken in daily live.
You have to speak slowly and to avoid assimilation. But you cannot do it if you do not haave special training for it.

So it is right that in "tatsächlich" the two words should be spoken quite separately with aspirated "t" in standard pronunciation. In usual conversation, almost nobody speaks this kind of standard.
So some linguists introduced a kind of weaked standard pronunciation (gemäßigte Standardlautung).

So depending on the kind of standard, there are also differences.

I think, there is a varity of different realizations of plosives and other consonants+s in coll. language of daily live. In this register they are correct. They are only wrong in one of the standard pronunciations.


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## Kajjo

Hutschi said:


> Then theroretically the "s" has to be voiced when it is the first sound of a syllable.


No, there are voiced and voiceless onset "s" in German. What is rare is voiceless-s in the onset of the first syllable of a German word, apart from foreign loanwords.

voiceless onset-s in first syllable (only loanwords): _Scientology, Séance, Server, Surfer_
voiced with onset-s in first syllable: _sehr, so, singen, sicher, saufen_

voiced onset-s in non-first syllables: _Wiese, Hase, Kurse_
voiceless onset-s in non-first syllables: _reißen, wissen, Klasse_

Coda-s (last sound of syllable) is always voiceless in German (_coda devoicing, Auslautverhärtung_): _aus, was, das, Haus, Kuss_
the same is true for coda consonant clusters: _ist, Brust, grotesk_



Hutschi said:


> 1, standard pronunciation
> 2. devoicing in special forms.


Standard pronunciation is a clear, straight-forward issue. The title question makes a lot of sense if we interpret it as "Do standard speakers exhibit this feature (sometimes) at the discussed position?" It could be a feature that has just not be described, yet.

However, I don't think it is. I speak all the examples with /z/ and many other standard speaking natives here, too.

The title question would make no sense to me if we interpret it as "do accents or dialects exist where this happens?". Of course, there are all kinds of accents and dialects and all kinds of mixtures between standard and accents due to upbringing and training. So yes, it will happen to some speakers. But it is not a feature of general standard German speaking natives.


Hutschi said:


> Speaking dialects is not wrong.


Wrong or right are of course always measured against a reference.

If I _want _to speak proper Bavarian (as full dialect, not as accent) I have to accept that a native Bavarian speaker corrects me and tells me I pronounce some words wrong -- with the reference being proper Bavarian.

If I want to speak proper Standard German, then I have to accept someone telling me if I pronounce certain words wrong compared to standard pronunciation as given by the Duden.



Hutschi said:


> Assimilation is a kind of language effect you may like or not, it occurs. And this changes the sound of consonants.


Of course, assimilation exists. Certain assimilation features can be part of standard language, others are not. There is a standard pronunciation and as soon as you clearly deviate from it, it is not full standard anymore. Of course, in real life there are many reasons to deviate from perfect standard pronunciation, e.g. mumbling, whispering, colloqiual style and naturally all kinds of accents and regional varieties.

Personally, I speak very good standard pronunciation, but there are certain features of Hamburg accents in my pronunciation, particularly when I speak carefree. Why should I even start to discuss whether "genug" pronounced as "genuch" is right or wrong. It is wrong given the reference of standard pronunciation, it is right with the reference of Hamburg accent. I do not see any sense in the latter, though. I would never teach Hamburg accent to a German learner and claim "it is just a variant". It is clearly non-standard. Period.

I would consider it ridiculous if you were to insist of me having to write "wrong with reference to standard pronunciation" every time I write that a certain "pronunciation is wrong". Of course the underlined part is implicitly meant whenever we talk about right or wrong pronunciation. Our normal reference is standard German, for spelling as well as for pronunciation. If I were to write about dialects or accent, I would _clearly state _that and I expect you would do the same.



Hutschi said:


> one used "isses" (statt "ist es") This is definitely not a standard word. But it is the spoken form of such a word


"Isses" is non-standard. It is wrong if you intend to pronounce like standard German. From my perspective it is not just "a spoken form" but a new construct formed by assimilation and contraction. I won't call "I am" and "I`m" the same word either. Contractions are not the "same" in the narrower sense of the term.

"Isses" is not a variant of "ist es", but a colloquial contraction, maybe similar to "gotta" in English.


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## berndf

Kajjo said:


> voiceless onset-s in first syllable (only loanwords): _Scientology, Séance, Server, Surfer_
> voiced with onset-s in first syllable: _sehr, so, singen, sicher, saufen_
> 
> voiced onset-s in non-first syllables: _Wiese, Hase, Kurse_
> voiceless onset-s in non-first syllables: _reißen, wissen, Klasse_
> 
> Coda-s (last sound of syllable) is always voiceless in German (_coda devoicing, Auslautverhärtung_): _aus, was, das, Haus, Kuss_


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## Hutschi

Thank you, I did not know this about onset syllables:


Kajjo said:


> No, there are voiced and voiceless onset "s" in German. What is rare is voiceless-s in the onset of the first syllable of a German word, apart from foreign loanwords.
> 
> voiceless onset-s in first syllable (only loanwords): _Scientology, Séance, Server, Surfer_
> voiced with onset-s in first syllable: _sehr, so, singen, sicher, saufen_
> 
> voiced onset-s in non-first syllables: _Wiese, Hase, Kurse_
> voiceless onset-s in non-first syllables: _reißen, wissen, Klasse_
> 
> Coda-s (last sound of syllable) is always voiceless in German (_coda devoicing, Auslautverhärtung_): _aus, was, das, Haus, Kuss_



I made a note with a reference to Kajjo #30 in my entry.



What is the status in the other direction: "st" as in "ist"?


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## berndf

Hutschi said:


> What is the status in the other direction: "st" as in "ist"?


Covered by this (though Kajjo's description is not complete):


Kajjo said:


> Coda-s (last sound of syllable) is always voiceless in German (_coda devoicing, Auslautverhärtung_): _aus, was, das, Haus, Kuss_


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## Hutschi

I asked because it is _not _ the last sound.
I speak it unvoiced, but I do not know the northern rules.

Can we give a short summary?

I will try it:

*Summary:*

We consider standard language in a simplified definition as that in the  Duden (Aussprachewörterbuch), excluding other variations of standard language here.

_*Example*_: IPA: [ˈaʊ̯fˌmɛʁkzaːmkaɪ̯t] Aufmerksamkeit – Wiktionary


Dymn said:


> ... the _s _being pronounced as a voiceless /s/ rather than /z/, after another voiceless consonant.



It is common in different degrees but not standard. Standard language is kind of an ideal and used in special situations, e.g. theatre, news in radio and tv and some others.

Standard language is base of learning German in "Deutsch für Ausländer".

voiceless /s/ is used as default in the south but can happen independently of the region.

It is result of assimilation and coarticulation processes.


----
Do you confirm this?
Edit: corrected a wrong reference


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## Kajjo

Hutschi said:


> But almost nobody speaks only standard pronunciation


In a very, very narrow sense you are right, because almost everyone has some regional accent. But in a more moderate view there are many speakers who come quite close to standard pronunciation nowadays. 

In my eyes it is wrong to claim that only professional speakers come close to standard pronunciation. They speak more enunciated, more clear and in many cases slower, because they are professionals. But apart from clarity of enunciation many people nowadays do speak pretty good standard pronunciation. It's not rare, but common nowadays in many parts of Germany. It is wrong to call standard pronunciation just a theoretical definition. It is real life for millions of people everyday.

The black-and-white perspective "if it is not absolutely 100.00% standard then it is not at all" is not really applicable to real-world exposure. What makes a lot more sense in practical considerations is the _overall phonemic distance_ of the actual pronunciation from perfect standard pronunciation. When applying this concept, there are many speakers that are pretty close to standard pronunciation and of course several accents that are quite far away from standard pronunciation. 

Myself, I exhibit a few features of Hamburg accent and I am aware of (most of) them. In total, I pronounce most words and phonems correctly and a few words deviate. In comparison, many speakers in Saxonia pronounce in their attempted standard German still most vowels, diphthongs and consonants somehow off-standard, so that considering entire words almost no words are pronounced close to standard. The overall phonemic distance is huge compared to moderate Northern accents like in Hannover or modern Hamburg.

Yes, you can argue "no one has a distance of zero" and you are right. But there are a lot of speakers with accents featuring a very close distance and there are some which are pretty far away. From my perspective, it makes no sense to ignore this fact of different distances. 



> There is no area or accent where standard pronunciation is spoken in daily live.


Standard pronunciation exists in real life, at least several millions of natives have a personal accent close enough to standard pronunciation, not only professional speakers. If non-native readers of this thread get the impression "standard is just theory" we would mislead them.



Hutschi said:


> I think ist is similar to colors. If you have two blue colors in your culture, you will see two. If you have one, you see one. You see different colors, of course. But only in case you need them, you will classify them into different categories.


Yes, that is an interesting perspective. If you are not used to distinguish a certain difference, then it often not even exists in your perception. In our example of voiced and voiceless "s" you simply listen to a word and understand "s". A distinction in voiced and voiceless is not part of your accent. 

If I listen to the same recordings, I will register words that are correctly spoken and some that are wrong -- and believe it or not, some are even bordering on not understandable for me if pronounced wrong. I got used to "eine Reiße machen" now, but it still needs some instant translation.

Typically, all German speakers have to learn to distinguish coda-s/z in Englisch, e.g. in the minimal pair eyes /z/ and ice /s/. We simply do not make this distinction and I had a hard time back then to learn it. In the beginning I didn't even got what they were talking about. So, yes, I see and feel your point of "not hearing it".

Another example is voiced and unvoiced "f", that is /f/ vs /v/. Many Southern dialects pronounce "Server" like "Surfer" and I really have a hard time to instantly translate this. What "surfers" are they talking about?! This is such a drastically wrong pronunciation that it really can lead to communication problems if not used to it.

So, back to the topic at hand: There are many regions and moderate local accents in Northern Germany, where critical consonant phonems like

/v-f/
/z-s/
/b-p/
/d-t/
/g-k/
/s-ʃ/
/ç/ (in -ig)
are all pronounced correctly. The overall phonemic distance to standard German pronunciation is pretty low in these regions. And these indicator sounds are mostly the basis of accent identification.


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## Kajjo

Hutschi said:


> What is the status in the other direction: "st" as in "ist"?


What do you mean with "other direction"?

A syllable consists of onset, nucleus and coda. The nucleus is usually a vowel, diphthong or syllabic consonant.

The word "ist" has no onset, but only the nucleus vowel /ɪ/ followed by a _coda consonant cluster_ "st". This is covered by my coda explanation in #30: All coda "s"-sounds are voiceless in German. So it is [ɪst] in standard pronunciation (voiceless). I added this example to #30.

The word "bist" has a /b/ onset, followed by the same as in "ist". So it is [bɪst] in standard pronunciation (voiceless).


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## berndf

The topic of this thread is /z/ devoicing after unvoiced consonants. Please remain on topic.


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## Kajjo

berndf said:


> The topic of this thread is /z/ devoicing after unvoiced consonants. Please remain on topic.


You are right. We got a bit sidetracked, but I am confident the last postings were very interesting for the thread opener.

So, back to the title topic with my personal summary:

+ Most standard speakers pronounce /z/ (without devoicing).
+ The /z/-devoicing might occur, but probably due to accent influence and not as part of standard pronunciation.
+ Several of the examples are not even really devoiced but just difficult to hear for some of us, depending on the personal accent.



Frank78 said:


> But that could also be a technical problem. Through a lot of microphones the s-sounds sound stronger, i.e. more like an /s/ or even a lisp, than they actually are.


This comment is very valuable, too, as it might explain the difficulty of clearly distinguishing some s-sounds in recordings.


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## Dymn

Frank78 said:


> I hear /z/ in both cases.





berndf said:


> This is the /z/ of _und sich_ at 2:00. No shadow of a doubt that it is fully voiced.


I don't know, I hear /ts/, but of course, it may be a problem in how my brain processes sounds, which of course differs from a German native. But anyway, this is splitting hairs I guess. I'll just pronounce it /z/ and stop giving it much thought.



berndf said:


> The topic of this thread is /z/ devoicing after unvoiced consonants. Please remain on topic.






Kajjo said:


> You are right. We got a bit sidetracked, but I am confident the last postings were very interesting for the thread opener.


They are indeed interesting. Maybe a moderator could move these posts to another thread concerning the German pronunciation standard, whether it exists at all and whether deviant accents are considered to be "correct"?


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## berndf

Dymn said:


> I don't know, I hear /ts/, but of course, it may be a problem in how my brain processes sounds, which of course differs from a German native. But anyway, this is splitting hairs I guess. I'll just pronounce it /z/ and stop giving it much thought.


Did you recognize the link of the word "This". I have isolated the /z/ from the rest of the recording. Download the file, listen to it and look at the wave form. There cannot be any doubt.


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## Dymn

Yes, I had already listened to it. I don't know that much about phonetics to know what a wave form is, but even if you say it is /tz/, it still looks like /ts/ to me.

I've done a Vocaroo with my pronunciations of _und sich. _Link. First time should be unvoiced, second time voiced.


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## Kajjo

Dymn said:


> I've done a Vocaroo with my pronunciations of _und sich. _Link. First time should be unvoiced, second time voiced.


The distinction of /z/ and /s/ is OK.

In both version you don't speak the "d", it sounds like "un sich". It is not a plosive sound at all, more like an American stop-d.

Non-plosive t and p are a typical Spanish problem when learning German. Try to clearly say "unt" with a plosive t. Hold a paper before your mouth and watch it move in the stream of air of plosive sounds like /p/ and /t/.

In sloppy speech many Germans swallow the "t", too, but then the two words are actually contracted and not separated anymore.


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## berndf

The <d> is not swallowed.  It just isn't aspirated. In both cases there is a clearly plosive, an un-aspirated [t] in the first one and a voiced [d] in the second one.

It is true that the standard pronunciation is [ʊntʰ zɪç]. This might explain why @Dymn hears a [ s ] here. He may mistake the aspiration of the /t/ (which is always [tʰ] except in the cluster <st>) for an /s/. This happens frequently with speakers of languages where no aspiration is expected in a certain context.


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## elroy

Dymn said:


> I often hear by many people who otherwise speak with a run-of-the-mill standard accent, the _s _being pronounced as a voiceless /s/ rather than /z/, after another voiceless consonant. This occurs both within a word and also across word boundaries. For example: _tatsächlich, Aufmerksamkeit, Absatz,_ _hat sie, das so_, etc.


As a non-native speaker, I pronounce all of these with /z/, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard them pronounced otherwise by speakers who don’t devoice /z/ anyway.  I can see the /z/ in “das” assimilating to the /s/ in “so,” but that’s hardly remarkable.  That’s different from the other examples, where the adjacent sound is not /s/.


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## Hutschi

Kajjo said:


> In sloppy speech many Germans swallow the "t", too, but then the two words are actually contracted and not separated anymore.





berndf said:


> The <d> is not swallowed. It just isn't aspirated. In both cases there is a clearly plosive, an un-aspirated [t] in the first one and a voiced [d] in the second one.


I agree to Kajjo here. The "t" may be "swallowed" (omitted) completely after a consonant in sloppy speach.

I hear this often and use it myself in sloppy speech. Additionbally the "s" is devoiced, but I do not know whether by regional influence of my childhood or by assimilation.

To make clear what I mean:

Example: (ad hoc, not very idiomatic)

Er spricht klar *und sicher*

"und" becomes "unt" by default rules

Er spricht klar *unt sicher*

After the "t" I have problems to say /z/

"t" becomes deaspirated in my region in daily speech. This is hard to speak in "und sicher" (and you can almost not hear it.)
"d" is spoken devoiced and deaspirated. Two definitions are in concurrence.

But it goes further on:
"t" is omitted then completely and the words are put together:
Er spricht klar *unnsicher *(I write double "n" to indicate it is a short vowel and a long "n")
"s" is devoiced. I tried to speak it voiced, but it is almost impossible, while I can speak "s" in "sicher" voiced when I speak it as separate word..

It may be come from dialect, but it is used in pronunciation of standard language in sloppy speach.

This ommiting is a feature of assimilation and works with other consonants, too.

Hin und her -- becomes "hinunnher". (edit: it is connected rather strong, so I omitted the spaces)


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## Maformatiker

Hutschi said:


> Hin und her -- becomes "hinunnher". (edit: it is connected rather strong, so I omitted the spaces)


Really? This does not seem to be standard German to me. When I pronounce it, it becomes "hinnunteer". Almost like "hinunter", but with a long e.


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## Hutschi

It is sloppy rather than standard. But it does not have t.

A minimal pair is "und" vs. "unn".


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## JClaudeK

Maformatiker said:


> When I pronounce it, it becomes "hinnunteer". Almost like "hinunter", but with a long e.


Really no "h" inside for you? 
I'm very surprised to hear that.


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## Maformatiker

I tried to describe my pronunciation as I would hear it without knowing how the words are spelled. When I say hin und her in a natural quick way, the "d-h" sounds exactly like a t at the beginning of a word (like in "Teer"), but maybe it is actually a bit more aspirated as the t in "hinunter".


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## Hutschi

Indeed it depends on region and "sloppiness".

Your pronunciation is either standard or very near to it.
The "unn-pronunciation" of "und" is nonstandard.


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## berndf

JClaudeK said:


> Really no "h" inside for you?
> I'm very surprised to hear that.


In articulate speech, one would usually pronounce _hin und her_ with pre-glotalisation before each new word [hɪn ʔʊntʰ ʔheːɐ]. If one drops this pre-glotalisation in rapid speech, the aspiration of the /t/ at the end of_ und_ tends to merge with the /h/ at the onset of _her_ and it becomes a matter of interpretation if there still is an audible _h_ or not.


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## anahiseri

bearded said:


> Is the B in 'Absatz' really a fully ''voiceless consonant''?


I'd say yes, Ii imagine the word and it sounds the same as Apsatz to me. (But the s is voiced, that's for certain.


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## JClaudeK

berndf said:


> In articulate speech, one would usually pronounce _hin und her_ with pre-glotalisation before each new word [hɪn ʔʊntʰ ʔheːɐ]. If one drops this pre-glotalisation in rapid speech, the aspiration of the /t/ at the end of_ und_ tends to merge with the /h/ at the onset of _her_ and it becomes a matter of interpretation if there still is an audible _h_ or not.


Ohne hörbares _ h_, und sei es auch nur ein ansatzweises, klingt "hin und her" für mich wie die - fehlerhafte - Aussprache eines Franzosen.


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## berndf

As I said, without pre-glotalisation, it is more a question of how you described it that what it really is. In this pronunciation, the is a an audible "something" between the release if the /t/ and the /e:/. If you describe it as an /h/ or as the aspiration of the /t/ is a matter of choice. The two are completely merged.


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