I don't differentiate between [a] and [ʌ] here. Both occur, but the difference isn't always between German and English. (According to the current IPA rules, the German sound is actually written [ä] or [a̠], or unofficially [ᴀ] (small capital A). Especially the umlaut spelling is misleading and fits much better to more recent British English [a], while the German one, as opposed to orthographic ä in German, Slovak &c., is more central between front and back, in other words, less on the E side.)

The English back [ɑ] as in 'father' occurs, but rarely, even more rarely as a variant of the first two. The back rounded [ɒ] is rather rare, too; usually he doesn't make a difference between [ɒ] as in "lot" and [ɔ] as in "thought". By these and the other signs I actually mean the sounds traditionally associated; British English has more or less shifted them to [ɔ] and [o:], but phoneticians still mostly write [ɒ] and [ɔ:].

Most vowels, even close ones in stressed open syllables, are short. Most consonants aren't aspirated. I think he doesn't have a [z] (fortis vs lenis is hard to hear, though). There's quite a bandwidth of variation for all of those anyway.

No [ç] as in "ich", it's all [x] or even [χ].

The words in italics are rare, or he used to speak them but hasn't for a while.

No order. 

( List of about 100 words.Collapse )

Leo's not an early talker, but that might be because he doesn't only hear English from me and German from his mother, but French, Spanish, Ivrit, several forms of Swiss German and the like at the creche, and a variety of non-native accents, eg Standard German with a Swiss accent, or Ivrit with a Spanish one. I don't worry much, frankly.

Not counting phrases like "More milk!", his first sentence was spoken in Yola. He told me to sit on one mini chair, then took the second to the other side of the table and declared "iːx ˈsɪtðɛə̯", that is "Ich sit there." Never mind the lack of rhoticity, which was hardly typical of Yola.