This pronunciation guide aims to help you pronounce new words whenever you encounter them. Some of the concepts mentioned here refer to advanced grammar skills. Please don’t feel pressured to understand everything in one session if this is your first day learning German. You can revisit this part throughout your learning journey. Viel Spaß (have fun)!

In total, the German alphabet has 30 letters: 26 Latin letters and 4 extra ones (ä,ö,ü,ß).

a. Separable prefixes are stressed: auf, ein, aus, bei, mit, un, an, etc.

b. Inseparable prefixes are unstressed: be-, er-, ent-, zer-, etc.

c. Stress-flexible prefixes (where the stress falls changes the word meaning): über-, um-, unter-, etc.

Words borrowed from other languages generally keep their original stress.

Words with roots in Latin or French have the stress on the last or second last syllable:

-ant, -anz, -enz, -ion, -ismus, -ist, -ment, -tät, -ieren

The stress of the first word in the compound is the stress of the whole compound word.

There are five regular vowels and three vowels with umlaut in German: a, e, i, o, u and ä, ö, ü. a, o, u and ä, ö, ü are pronounced differently.

German vowels vary in pronunciation by longer and shorter sounds.

It's a long vowel when:

-it's on its own;

-it's followed by only one consonant, e.g. "a" in "Vater" is long, and "a" in "Mann" is short;

-it's duplicated, such as "aa" in "Maat", "ee" in "See" and "oo" in "Boot"; the vowel "i" never duplicates. The long sound of "i" appears usually as "ie", like in"sieben".The vowels "u/ä/ö/ü" never duplicate.

-it's followed by "h", like "Huhn" ("h" is muted);

1) Diphthongs (vowel + vowel): au, ei/ai, eu/äu

2) Double consonants

When a consonant is doubled, its sound doesn’t change.

For the consonant “k”, there is no “kk”, but there is “ck”.

3) Grouped consonants

a) "dt" and "th"

b) ph

c) tz, ts

d) chs, x

1) ch

a) When it follows the vowels “a/o/u/au”:

b) When it follows a consonant or any other vowel or diphthong besides “a/o/u/au”:

2) b, d, g

a) when they take the second last position of a syllable OR followed by a consonant, they are pronounced as “p, t, k”:

b) otherwise, they are pronounced as usual:

3) s, ß

a) “S” is voiced when it appears before a vowel:

b) when it follows a vowel or consonant:

c) ß:

4) st, sp

a) As the initial in a word, the “s” is always pronounced as “sh”:

b) Otherwise, it keeps its normal unvoiced sound:

5) pf, kn

In these consonant combinations, every consonant must be pronounced. (The trick is to pronounce the first consonant gently.)

8) w, v

a) “w” is pronounced with the upper front teech gently pressing the lower lip, like the English “v”:

b) “v” is pronounced usually like the English “f”:

c) Unless it’s the final sound of a loanword, “v” is voiced like the normal English “v”:

9) ig

a) At the end of words:

b) Before a vowel:

10) sch, tsch

11) y

a) it shares the same sound with “ü” when follows a consonant:

b) almost all y-initial words in German are loanwords:

12) r

a) when “r” is a consonant and followed by vowels:

b) when “r” follows a short vowel, it blends with the vowel:

c) “r” in inseparable suffixes “-er/-ern/-ert” and in inseparable prefixes “er-/ver-/zer-”:

d) “r” in the final position of words (mostly after a long vowel):