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In general mastering German is harder than mastering French for an English speaker

I've heard lots of people say this. I don't know any French, so can't comment.

I guess I don't notice the letter differences so much. I suppose having German family corrupted my sense of how letters are pronounced ;-)

As for "eu" and "äu", could this be a thing similar to "ss" vs "ß"? In any case, when reading German, I don't find these pairs a problem. Of course when writing German, they obviously are, so I stand corrected on this, though I did say "generally" and not "always". As others have commented, its probably a one-way thing: reading is definitely much much easier than writing.

for instance I live in "Treptow", which is pronounced as it would be in English, not with a "v" sound on the end

Place names don't seem have as regular pronunciation as normal words.



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