Germany Pronunciation

With a little bit of effort, you can make yourself easily understood in German. German pronunciation, for the most part, is consistent with spelling. There are no silent letters, and all nouns are capitalized.

German vowels and diphthongs also differ from their English counterparts. An umlaut over a letter (e.g., ü) makes the pronunciation longer and more rounded. An umlaut is sometimes replaced by an E following the vowel, so that “schön” becomes “schoen.” Germans are very forgiving toward foreigners who butcher their mother tongue. There is, however, one important exception: place names. If you learn nothing else in German, learn to pronounce the names of cities properly. Berlin is “bare-LEEN,” Hamburg is “HAHM-boorg,” Munich “MEUWN-shen,” and Bayreuth is “BUY-royt.”

Different pronounciations for certain letters and dipthongs are listen below.German also has one consonant that does not exist in English, the “ß,” which is alternately referred to as the scharfes S (sharp S) or the Ess-tset. It is shorthand for a double-s , and is pronounced just like an “ss” in English. The letter appears only in lower case and shows up in two of the most important German words for travelers: Straße, “street,” which is pronounced “SHTRAH-sseh” and abbreviated “Str.”; and Schloß, “castle,” pronounced “SHLOSS.” The “ß” is being phased out by te German government in accordance with other German-speaking countries and replaced with “ss” in an effort to standardize spelling.

Phonetic Unit	Pronunciation	Phonetic Unit	Pronunciation
a	AH, as in “father”	j	Y, as in “young”
e	EH, as in “bet”	k	always K, as in “kelp”
i	IH, as in “wind”	r	gutteral RH, like French
o	OH, as in “oh”	s	Z, as in “zone”
u	OO, as in “fondue”	v	F, as in “fantasy”
au	OW, as in “cow”	w	V, as in “vacuum”
ie	EE, as in “thief”	z	TS, as in “cats”
ei	EY, as in “wine”	ch	CHH, as in “loch”
eu	OI, as in “boil”	qu	KV, as in “kvetch”
ä	similar to the E in “bet”	sch	SH, as in “shot”
ö	similar to the E in “perm”	st/sp	SHT/SHP, as in “spiel”
ü	close to the EU in “blue”	th	T, as in “time”