[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] GARY WARNER-Need some help with surnames starting w...

[PnSWork at aol.com]

Hi Gary,
 
    I'll take first shot since I'm here on the West  Coast.
Otto can correct or add to my ramblings.
 
> One last thing, since I have this cast of experts 
> at  hand.   Please, it you would, tell me and the 
> rest of the  list, the proper way to say words 
> that include an ä,ö,ü, and ß.   I am interested 
> to know if they sound the same in all German  
> words (assuming the same dialect).   I am also 
>  interested in how the sounds differ in the two 
> most common German  dialects, which not knowing 
> any better I assume are high and low  
> German.    Since you all know how to make those 
>  sounds, the biggest challenge might be in using a 
> word to describe each  sound that I can already say
> in English.

This is actually a very difficult request without the ability
to actually hear the sounds.  There are many pronunciations
in other languages which cannot be represented with an
English pronunciation of any combination of letters.  The
best we can do is approximate.
 
The German umlauts are an example of this.  The ä vowel is
fairly easy, because it sounds exactly like a short 'e'.  The
others, however, are more problematical.
 
The next easiest is the ö vowel.  An rough approximation is
to add a soft 'r' sound after the vowel and pronounce is as if  it
were written "er" in English.  an example of this would be  the
word "können."  An English speaker could pronounce this as
if it were written as "kernen" and it would be recognizable.   The
accent would be atrocious, but a German would understand it.
 
The ü vowel is the most difficult one to get right (in my opinion)
but it too has an approximation for English speakers.   Substituting
the combination "ew" (as in the English word "few") gets you close.
An example here would be the German word "über".  Pronouncing
it as if it were written "ewber" would be recognizable (albeit with a
horrible English accent!).
 
The ß is not a vowel, and it can readily be replaced by a double 's'
(ss).  In fact, many modern German written communications  already
make this replacement.  an example of this is muss instead of  muß.
German dictionaries treat the ß as if it were "ss" when listing words
in alphabetical order.  Pronunciation is exactly the same.
 
There are many more dialects than just two.  Low German
(plattdeutsch) is only one of many.  Swabian, Bavarian, and  Swiss
German are just a few that come to mind.  It also might not be  right
to call High German (Hochdeutsch) a dialect.  I'll defer to the  native
Germans, though, on this one.
 
Take care,
 
    -Paul