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Learning to read German is very easy since it's a very phonetic language and there are very few exceptions to the rules. Here we'll look at the rules and exceptions of Hochdeutsch, or High German (so named as a reference to geography, not social structure). There are several dialects throughout Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but this is the standard taught in all three of those countries, so it's understood by all native speakers.
This text assumes the reader posesses a competent command of the English language. Phoneticizations are provided on this page as a general guide to the language, but phoneticizations will not be provided elsewhere as relying heavily on them is a crutch that acts as an extreme disservice to the learner. As I've already mentioned, Gernman is a very phonetic language, and pronunciations are easy for an English-speaker to learn.
| Basic German Alphabet | |||
| Letter -> German Name -> English Phoneticization[1] of Name -> General Usage | |||
| A | Ah | [a] | as in “ah.” German A makes the “ah” sound. Open your mouth big when making this sound. (The sound found in the English “hat” [hæt] does not exist in the German language; the closest approximation is “ä.”) See special characters. |
| B | Bey | [beɪ] | as in “bay.” Makes the B-sound, just like in English, but at the end of syllables the vocalization is shortened to an almost P-sound. For example, say “ahb” short and quickly, and it will almost sound like “ahp,” but don't force a P-sound or else you might change the meaning of the word—or sound like a silly foreigner. |
| C | Zeh | [tseɪ] | as in “say”, but with an audible T-sound on the front: “tsay.” The letter C is rarely used in a non-combination form. When it is, however, it usually behaves like a German Z. However if the word in question is an imported English word, the C usually behaves like a hard K, such as in “Cola.” See combinations. |
| D | Deh | [deɪ] | as in “day.” This behaves just like the solitary English D, except that at the end of syllables, the vocalization is shortended to an almost T-sound. The principle here is similar to that of the letter B in a final position: Say “tode,” but shorten the D-sound and it will almost sound like “tote,” but don't force it to the other sound (because then you're changing the meaning from death to dead). |
| E | Eh | [eɪ] | as in “hay.” In the first syllable, the E usually says “ay,” e.g. sehen is pronounced “zay-en.” Common exceptions to this are words that start with “ge-” and “be-” whereby, like in other positions, E usually says “eh” [ɛ] (as in “heh heh”), e.g. habe is pronounced “hah-beh” (not “hah-bay” or “hah-bee”). See combinations. |
| F | Ef | [ɛf] | as in “effort.” Functions the same as the English F. |
| G | Geh | [ɡeɪ] | as in “game.” The German G is always hard, like in “goop,” and never soft like the J-sound in “gelatin.” Like B and D, vocalization of G is often shortened at the end of words to an almost K-sound: Shorten its pronounciation, but don't force it to the other sound. See combinations. In some dialects you may hear the suffix -ig pronounced like -ich [iːç] or even -isch [iːʃ], but a foreigner should stick with [iːg]. This can be easy to get confused about since there are words that end in -ich [iːç] and -isch [iːʃ]. |
| H | Hah | [ha] | as in “ha ha ha!” If the H comes at the end of a syllable, such as in sehen (“zay-en”), it's usually silent, providing a visual syllable break between vowels. See combinations. |
| I | I | [iː] | as in “feet.” The German I can say the long “ee” [iː] as in “peen hammer” or the short “ih” [ɪ] as in “pin,” depending on the word. In older times “ee” was more predominant, but in modern German the short “ih” is heard more than previously. It's difficult to establish solid rules for when which pronunciation is used; in some cases it can go either way, but nonetheless this is one of those letters by which you need to pay attention to speakers and dictionary pronunciation guides. It can roughly be said, however, that occurances of “ih” are usually the prefixes in- and im- and the suffixes -in and -isch. There are several other occurences of “ih,” but when in doubt, assume “ee.” (By the way, regardless of how many native speakers you might hear saying “gihbt” [gɪbt] these days, the word is supposed to be pronounced “geebt” [giːbt]. This has become like English speakers saying “innernet” when the word is supposed to be “internet.”[2] A lot of people saying it that way doesn't make it sound any less moronic.) See combinations. |
| J | Jot | [jot] | like “yote.” The German J behaves like the English Y. For example, ja is pronounced “yah” [ja]. |
| K | Kah | [ka] | as in “Kahn.” Just like English, it makes the “Kicking-K” sound. |
| L | El | [ɛl] | as in “elephant.” Behaves the same as the English L. |
| M | Em | [ɛm] | as in “ember.” Behaves the same as the English M. |
| N | En | [ɛn] | as in “men.” Behaves the same as the English N. |
| O | Oh | [o] | as in “hotel.” Say it with your lips shaped like a big, round O to make it sound right. |
| P | Peh | [peɪ] | as in “payment.” Makes the same P sound as in English. See combinations. |
| Q | Ku | [kuː] | as in “cuckoo!” The Q works like the K, but appears exclusively in combinations. |
| R | Er | [ɛr] | This is a little like the “er” in “worker,” but sounds closer to “air”; it's somewhere in between; specifically, it's “ehr.” At the beginning of a syllable, the English R sound is made by mostly the tongue, while the German R sound is made by less tongue and more throat. (If you roll your Rs, you may be mistaken for a Russian.) Ask a native speaker to say “Die Frau trägt einen roten Rock” and listen very carefully to those Rs. At the end of a syllable, the R-sound is very subtle, almost omitted like in certain British accents, but not quite. Note that when used in combinations, the German R does not alter the sounds of its neighbors like the English R does. For example, in English, the T in tr-words mutates into “ch” and the D in dr-words mutates into “j,” such as train and dry, but in German this phenomenon does not occur: trinken is pronounced “treenk-en” [triːnk.ɛn], not “chreenk-en” [t̠ʃriːnk.ɛn], and drei is prodounced “dry” [dʁaɪ], not “jry” [draɪ]. |
| S | Es | [ɛs] | as in “mess.” The German S typically sounds like the English Z (as in zoom), unless placed at the end of a word or accompanied by a second S, in which case it sounds just like the regular English S. If the double-S is part of a separable prefix, the first S will sound like English S while the second like English Z. These are some words with Z-sound S: Sand is pronounced “zahnd.” Salat is pronounced “Sah-laht.” Besen is pronounced “bay-zehn.” These are some words with S-sound S: Fussball is pronounced “foos-ball,” not “foo'z-ball!” Glas is pronounced “glahs.” Bestes is pronounced “behst-ehs.” These are some words that contain both types of S sound: Gesundheitsamt is pronounced “geh-zoond-hites-ahmt.” Aussehen with its separable prefix is “ows-zah‑ehn.” See combinations. |
| T | Teh | [teɪ] | as in “tame.” Works just like the solitairy English Mister T. See combinations. |
| U | Uh | [uː] | as in “boo!” Stick your lips out and make the gap narrow (pucker up a little) in order to make it sound right. Except for combinations, U always says “ooh.” U never says “yoo” unless proceeded by a Y (which is extremely rare). There is no real German equivalent of the English “uh,” as in “Jabba the hut.” See combinations. |
| V | Vau | [faʊ] | as in “fowl.” The German V sounds like the English F. However, there are several loanwords where the V will likely sound like an English V, particularly if it appears in the middle of the word. For example, viel is pronounced “feel” and Motiv is pronounced “moh-teef,” but motivieren is pronounced “moh-tee-veer-en.” |
| W | Weh | [veɪ] | as in “oy vay!” The German W sounds like the English V, e.g. wann is pronounced “vahn.” There are a few exceptions: If the W is preceeded by a Z, it may sounds like an F e.g., Zwei is pronounced “tsfigh,” or it may actually sound like an English W, e.g. Zwölf is pronounced “tswœlf.” Imported W-words will usually retain their original pronunciation, like “wow” (spelled in German as Wau). |
| X | Iks | [ɪks] | as in “my hair sticks up in the morning.” At the end of sysllables, X behaves just like in English. X rarely appears at the beginning of a syllable, but here's an example: Xylophon, pronounced “ksoo-loh-fohn.” It wasn't a word that I frequently heard in Germany. And no Germans use the word Xerox; they say Fotokopie. |
| Y | Ypsilon | [ʏpsɪlon] | “Oop-si-lone.” When followed by a vowel, the German Y functions like in English, as in “yacht.” You won't find Y at the end any native words, only foreign words like Handy (“hahn-dee”), in which case it is pronounced “ee.” Otherwise, it behaves like a German Ü. An alternative spelling of ypsilon is üpsilon which better dipicts its pronunciation. |
| Z | Zett | [tsɛt] | The German Z behaves just like the consonant part of the Japanese tsu: An S sound preceeded by a T sound. It's really not hard at all. Just practice saying “tsunami” (the T is not silent) or “cats.” This will come in handy since zu (meaning “to”) is used frequently. |
| A Note on Vowels | |||
| Practice cycling through the five basic vowels. Starting with A, make your mouth wide open, and make the opening of your mouth a little smaller with each step, so that by the time you get to U, your mouth is almost closed. Here's an exercise that I learned: “A-E-I-O-U; und der Mund wird immer näher zu.” That means: “A-E-I-O-U; and the mouth becomes ever closer to (being shut).” | |||
| Special Characters | |||
| The two dots that appear above letters are called Umlaut (“oom-lowt”). You can call umlauted characters things like “A with Umlaut” and people will know what you're talking about, but if a German spells a word out to you, he'll usually simply say the sound of the umlauted character. For example, to spell out Gläser, most Germans would say “Gay-el-ä-es-ay-er.” Some Germans however might actually call the Umlaut stripes, as in “A with stripes.” An umlauted character may be substituted with its plain counterpart, followed by an extra E. For example, if you're unable to type “die Ärzte” for your German punk music webpage, you can type “die Aerzte” and the word will still be spelled/pronounced correctly. If you simply omit the Umlaut, the reading of the word will be different, possibly altering the meaning as well. For example, sägen means to saw, but sagen means to say. |
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| Letter -> German Name -> English Phoneticization of Name -> General Usage | |||
| Ä | Ä | [ɛː] | There is no direct equivalent to this character in English. Rather, its sound is halfway between the A in “hat” (like you wear on your head) and the A in “hate.” It almost sounds like you're throwing up. See combinations. |
| Ë | E mit Umlaut | [eɪ.mɪt. uːm.laʊt] | This character could actually be called “E with umlaut” as it behaves exactly like the regular German E. It's sometimes used when another vowel is present, to indicate a syllable break between the two vowels, typically in the case of foreign names, and never appears by itself. For example, Idee is pronounced “ee-day,” but Zeëzrom is pronounced “tsay-ets-rome.” |
| Ï | I mit Umlaut | [i.mɪt. uːm.laʊt] | This character could actually be called “I with umlaut” as it also behaves just like its un-umlauted counterpart, and is also used only for indicating a syllable break between an I and another vowel (because I is freqently used to form diphthongs), typically appearing only in foreign names. It's so rare, that I couldn't find an example that wasn't just a stylized spelling. |
| Ö | Ö | [œ] | If you ask any American how to make this sound, you'll get about three different answers, but this one makes the most sense: Make the short “oo” sound like in “hook” (not like the the long “oo” sound in “flute”), but with your lips shaped like a small O. If somebody tries to tell you that there's an R-sound in there, don't listen. There are some dialects that throw that in, but if a foreigner does it, it just sounds awful[3]. To make my point: böse means evil or angry, and börse means stock exchange. Big difference. |
| Ü | Ü | [ʏ] | This behaves much like the German U, except that the “oo” is little more forceful and you pucker your lips a lot more. There's a subtle but noticeable difference. |
| ß | Eszett -or- Scharfes‑S |
[ɛs.tsɛt] -or- [ʃarfɛs.ɛs] |
Known in math class as the Greek letter “Beta,” the S-Set (or Sharp S) is mostly interchangable with double Ss which can't be broken up. For example, Kongressstrasse and Kongreßstraße are the same thing. Whether “ß” or “ss” is the correct spelling however depends on whichever orthography reform the politicians are currently pushing. Kongressstraße is currently the correct form—unless your typographic device doesn't support the ß character, then Kongressstrasse is perfectly acceptable. Some systems will even treat “ß” and “ss” as character-equivalents. Words like aussehen cannot be substituted with außehen because aus is a separable prefix, thus yielding sehen...aus (the Ss belong to distinctly separate word parts). |
| Combinations and Diphthongs | |||
| Combination -> English Phoneticization -> General Usage | |||
| au | [aʊ] | “Ow,” like when you get hurt. Using au, the German word for house is pronounced the same as the English: Haus. | |
| äu | [ɔɪ] | “Oy,” like when you're trying to get somebody's attention. The plural form of the German word Haus is Häuser, pronounced “hoy-zer.” | |
| ch | [ç] | This doesn't have an English equivalent, and it doesn't function like the English ch in church. Make an H-sound, but make it very throaty, kind of like you're hawking a loogie. Once you've got that down, realize that the German CH-sound normally appears at the end of sysllables. If you want to be really lazy, substituting ch with SH-sound might work in some cases, but this is more like a dialect that just sounds extremely awful coming from a non-German. Saying something like “Isch möschte nischt an die schleschte nascht denken” will make you sound like a lush. At the beginning of syllables, ch usually acts like k, as in Chor pronounced “kohr.” There are a few odd cases, like Chirurgie, pronounced “shi-roor-gee, which is actually the French word for surgery.” |
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| cht(s) | [çt(s)] | This is merely ch with a t or ts added to the end, such as in echt, nicht, nichts, sicht, etc. I make note of it because with words like nichts, you may come across slang substitutions using the X, such as nix, which does indeed alter the pronounciation (from “neeçts” to “neeks”). | |
| ck | [k] | German CK is the same as English CK: A hard K sound. | |
| dsch | [dʒ]/[ʒ] | This approximates the English J, and appears very rarely. Sometimes it may be pronounced like the French G which can be heard in the English pleasure. Dschungel (German for jungle) can be pronounced “joong-el” or “zhoong-el.” | |
| ei | [aɪ] | “Eye,” like “Polka your eyes out!” | |
| eu | [ɔɪ] | “Oy,” just like äu, e.g. Beutel is pronounced “boy-tel.” Exceptions are usually words of French origin, in which case it's “oo,” like Friseur, pronounced “frih-zoor” (which can also be spelled Frisur). | |
| h | (silent) | A silent H is used to emphasize or extend the sound of the preceeding vowel: Sahne, sehen, ihr, Sohn, führen, etc. | |
| ie | [iː] | “Ee,” like “Eat your veggies.” The common article die is pronounced “dee.” | |
| gn | [ɡ.n] | G at the beginnig of a GN-word is not silent: “G'n.” The gn is two syllables but the G-sound is spoken very quickely. The word Gnade is pronounced “g'nah-deh.” | |
| kn | [k.n] | K at the beginnig of a KN-word is not silent: “K'n”. The kn is two syllables but the K-sound is spoken very quickely. The word Knie is pronounced “k'nee.” | |
| ng | [ŋ] | Appearing only at the end of syllables, ng is pronounced like in English, except that the G never produces a hard G-sound. For example, the German word Finger is pronounced “feeng-er,” not like the English “feeng-ger”. | |
| pf | [pf] | The p and the f are both pronounced—in the same syllable—like in the words Pfennig and Pfeffer: “pfen-eeg” and “pfef-fer.” It takes some practice to get used to doing. This sound occurs in just a few words. | |
| ph | [f] | Just like F, but Germans tend to prefere spellings that use f, like Foto, as ph is more of a foreign diphthong. | |
| qu | [kv] | This combines the K-sound and the English V-sound into a single syllable: “Kv.” For example, take “quack” and change it to “kvahk.” | |
| sch | [ʃ] |
This is the German equivalent of the English sh. If you see no C between the S and the H, then it doesn't sound like English sh. For example, waschen is “vash-en,” while bösheit is “böz-hite” not “bösh-ite.” | |
| tion | [tsiː.on] | “tsee-ohn.” This is taken from the French language. Lektion is pronounced “lek-tsee-ohn.” | |
| tsch | [tʃ] | This approximates the English ch, but is actually just sch with a t in front of it: “Tsh.” Therefore, the word Deutsch is not “doych” but rather “doytsh.” | |
| Foreign Words | |||
| Up until the 21st Century, there were few English words which had been more or less officially adopted into the German language, and the pronunciations thereof were generally adapted to the German language. Now however, there is a ridiculous amount of English words which have been imported and retain their English pronunciations, which can be counterintuitive to a non-native German speaker, and gratingly nearly all English verbs and adjectives can now be conjegated in German. Therefore, when you encounter what looks suspiciously too much like an English word while reading modern German, chances are it is an English word with English pronunciation. (Listening to audiobooks in the 2020s, I'd dare say it's gotten so bad that knowing English is now prerequisite to learning German[4].) | |||
| Miscellanious | |||
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Much like in English, the break-point in German syllables can often be technically transient. For example, you can break up the English word battery at the tt as ba-ttery, batt-ery, or bat-tery and still be understood regardless of how it ought to be divided. Likewise, the German word Straße can be broken up as Stra-ße, Straß-e, or Stras-se and be understood. In German you cannot muddle your consonants they same way you can in English and expect to be understood. For example, the English word battery is usually pronounced “baddery[5],” some people like to go camping up in the “mou'ans,” and people think you're asking for thirteen dollars if you tell them their total is “thirty dollars” instead of “thirdy dollars.” German pronunciation on the other hand is a bit more concise, and slurring Ts to Ds in the middle of a word like an American can make you incomprehensible. That's not to say, however, that German doesn't have its own share of colloquial pronunciations, as there are several regional dialects. For example, “Was willst du?” might be spoken as “Wat willste?” (means “What do you want?”). Note that while I think it's good to be aware of slang (and profanity) in a foreign language for the sake of understanding the people around you[6], it's generally not wise for foreigners to use it. A Swiss colleague of mine found it particularly offensive when another American colleague tried to imitate a Swiss dialect. In any case, German words tend to follow distinct patterns, such that it's generally easy to pick out syllable breaks and recognize conjugations. Some uncommon writing forms have ß and a few other letters looking confusingly irregular in really old writings. For the most part you won't have to worry about this in modern writing, but you may encounter them on World War II memorials and uncommonly stylized street signs. |
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- ⌃ See International Phonetic Alphabet.
- ⌃ There is no outernet.
- ⌃ When I was at the Missionary Training Center, one of my instructors was an American who always pronounced Ö with an R, e.g. he pronounced mögen like “mergen.” The class thought it made him sound like a hillbilly.
- ⌃ I want to puke every time I hear Google conjugated into a verb as gegugelt.
- ⌃ What's the opposite of “badderies?” Gooderies?
- ⌃ One night in Köln, Elder Merkley and I stopped by the Burger King under the U-Bahn to chat with a friend right after he got off work. Some random dude we'd never met before heard us speaking English and got mad about it. He started yelling at us and, mistaking us for somebody else, said that we had “verarscht” him in the past. Merkley wasn't the kind of kid who had looked up swear words in a German dictionary in Seventh Grade German Class, so he had no idea what the man was saying. I'd never heard the word before, but it contained Arsch which I knew meant ass, so I understood that the man was more or less saying we had made an ass of him.