Hi Barbara,
I am able to hear the two German "ch" sounds, and I might be able to do a better-than-the-average-American approximation of the sounds, but only because my grandmother was a native speaker of German and still retained her accent even while speaking English. I therefore heard the sounds when I was a child. But I have no illusions: What very little German I can speak is heavily accented.
It is interesting that we have similar idioms. A slightly old-fashioned equivalent of the German phrase "keep your ears stiff" is "keep your chin up." British English has a counterpart that is innocent in some parts of the world but is risqué in the US: Keep your pecker up. (In U.S. English, "pecker" refers to a male-only part of the anatomy the discussion of which should be left to the nfic boards; in British English, it refers to one's nose.) I suspect that the British phrase is quite old-fashioned, but I honestly don't know. If anyone from Great Britain reads this, would you enlighten me? Also, any Aussies or other people living in different English-speaking regions: What do you say?
In any event, thanks for the encouragement.
Joy,
Lynn
