Ze Importance of Sinking



This has got to be one of the funniest videos I’ve ever seen. The joke derives from the fact that many Germans cannot pronounce the voiced and voiceless interdental fricatives in English (as in this thing), replacing them with /z/ and /s/ respectively. (So it’s not just the French.) Hence, the young German mistakes ‘thinking’ for ‘sinking’.

Incidentally, years ago I had a lecturer, originally German, who taught radio production. Although he had a reasonably good American accent, there were some English sounds he simply couldn’t master. One morning, during a lecture on speaking and breathing techniques, he took in a deep breath ... held both hands up to chest level ... and bellowed: ‘Hold your bress!’ I’ll never forget the laughter that ensued.