Well, if you’re just starting to learn German, it’s best to start at the beginning.
SOUNDING IT OUT
As far as pronunciation goes, German and English are actually pretty similar– they are both Germanic languages after all. But there are a few differences. For starters, German is a LOT more phonetic than English; what you see is what you say! Unless words are borrowed from other languages (and sometimes not even then), you will never see a ‘silent’ letter in German (take that French learners)!
The first difference you might notice in picking up anything written in German is the addition of a few letters. Really quick, I want to tell you the names of the “little dots on top” of the vowels and the “squiggily B with a tail”.
The dots are an accent mark called the umlaut. And unfortunately they aren’t just there to make your “u” look like a smiley face (or make the “o” look like it’s screaming in terror”). They are there to denote a different vocalization/pronunciation of the vowel. But, using the face visual is actually kind of helpful because, as you’ll see in the chart, they require you to move your lips differently than the regular, un-umlauted vowel.
The letter that looks like a “squiggily B with a tail” is a letter from the Greek alphabet that the Germans use to make a double “s” noise. In German, it is called the Eszett.
The biggest differences between English and German pronunciation are those listed in my chart below. I have provided you with a short example word that showcases the pronunciation. When I was learning, I found it most helpful to remember a specific, common, word with the different letters in it for reference. This will help your pronunciation by giving you something to try and simulate/recreate on your own. I had issues with the “ä” noise in particular. Whenever I found a new word with an ä in it, I would quietly say my example word, “Mädchen”, to myself before reading the new word aloud.
If you are learning German outside of a classroom and you aren’t sure that you are pronouncing a word correctly, the websites www.dict.cc or www.translate.google.de have audio clips for a good number of words. Take a few good listens to the word, and then try to repeat it yourself.
Before you start reading the rest of this post, I want to tell you not to panic! The 11 pronunciation rules above apply in most situations and should get you through most of the strange new words you will encounter in the German dictionary. However, just like in every language, there are exceptions, some of which I will briefly describe below.
- Combinations of multiple letters sometimes produce a different sound. For example, “-tion” is pronounced “tee-O-n”. (A good key word for this is “Nation”).
- Specific combinations of consonant compounds and vowels will play into how the consonant compounds are pronounced.
- This website has a more specific guide for some of those instances. It breaks down the relationships between the consonants and surrounding vowels that determine the changes.
- Sometimes the part of Germany you are in (or where your German teacher came from/studied in) will affect your pronunciation in the form of a dialect. My first German teacher, who taught me 4 years of German, studied in Freiburg. Because she was versed in the southern, Freiburg-ian, German, that is the dialect/accent that I most closely mirror… and when I studied German in the northern city of Hamburg, people often asked me where I/my German was from. I was usually understood, but sometimes asked to repeat myself for clarity.
- A good example of this is in the adjective ending “-ig”. In southern German, “-ig” is pronounced “-ish”. In northern German, “-ig” is pronounced “-ig”.
- The word “ich” (meaning “I”) also changes drastically. In southern German it is pronounced “ish” while the northern Germans will say “ick”.
- German also borrows a lot of words from other languages, which sometimes determines what the reader has to do with pronunciation rules. For example:
- The word for Jeans in German is “die Jeans”, borrowed from English. So instead of following the “j” = “yuh” rule and saying “dee Yeens”, the correct pronunciation is “dee jeens”, just like English.
- The German word for the color/fruit orange is borrowed from French. The word (noun) is “die Orange”. Instead of following the German rules and saying “dee oR-ang-uh”, with “-e” = “-ah”, it is pronounced more like “dee oR-an-zjuh” (sorry, my French transliteration is probably horrible).
- The best way to work around these oddities is to learn them, make some strange memory association between the word and the language it is borrowed from, and repeat the word out loud a lot. I always pictures the jeans in question to be
Levi’s– which I associate with American (English-speaking) cowboys. For the word “orange”, I think about how orange is an obnoxious color, and that I find the French language (specifically its spelling –>pronunciation) to be obnoxious. Like I said, find whatever association works for you, no matter how weird, and run with it!
Practice and exposure to audio/visual resources will be your greatest aids! Especially when you’re trying to differentiate the pronunciation between words like “Kirche” and “Kirsche” (“Church” and “Cherry”). And context will be your greatest rescuer in conversation, should you make an error. Lucky for you, most Germans are just tickled when you try to speak German instead of demanding to be catered to in English. In almost every instance, German people I encountered in Germany were understanding and willing to try and explain my faults so I could fix them.
BREAKING IT DOWN
Another large portion of German pronunciation comes with learning how Germans “build” words. You’ve probably heard of German words that are longer than the English alphabet. My favorite long word that might come up in a ‘normal’ conversation is “Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung” which has 26 letters and means “speed limit”. I like to think of long German words as an ornate Lego castle, built out of blocks of common words. The Germans like to create very specific, complicated words out of many less specific, less complicated words stacked on top of each other– which is GOOD for new language learners because the big words are usually made out of words you’ll already know how to say. The trick is learning to recognize these familiar words within the compound word. Additionally, although you may not know the perfect translation of a new monster word, if you can translate the smaller pieces it is built out of, you can get a general understanding of the topic at hand.
Let’s take my favorite long word, “Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung”
We can sound it out using the chart I gave you above.
gah-sch-vind-ish-kItes-bah-gren-tsung… (or if you’re a northern German speaker, gah-sch-vind-ig-kItes-bah-gren-tsung)
We can also do a lot of damage in understanding how it means “speed limit”.
Let’s break it into some smaller parts: Geschwind~ig~keit~s~be~grenz~ung.
- geschwind = fast
- “-ig” = a word chunk that can turn a noun into an adjective, or a verb stem into an adjective, or transform a noun in front of another noun into an adjective that describes the second noun, (which comes into effect after the next part) (explanation)
- “-keit” = turns an adjective into a noun. It is used like the suffix “-ness” in English. (explanation)
- “-s” = Genitive ending denoting ownership
- “be-” = a prefix that “inflicts” something on a subject (explanation)
- grenz = boundary
- “-ung” = a suffix that changes a verb into a noun. (explanation)
So, if we mush all of that together, we get something along the lines of “fastness of the inflicted boundary” or “limit inflicted on the speediness”.
Even if you only recognize and understand the nouns, “Geschwind” and “Grenze”, which mean “fast” and “boundary”, you will probably be able to understand the definition of the word in context.
Please don’t get held up in all of the grammar-craziness of the prefixes and suffixes and genitive possession that I gave explanation links for. I mostly gave the explanation links to prove that I’m not just making this up. Again, learning a few words with the key prefixes or suffixes and what those word mean will greatly help your understanding of the prefixes and suffixes. Those key words don’t have to be 26 letters long, but they will help in tearing apart the new vocab words that are 26 letters long.
Please don’t get held up by not knowing where all of the breaks should go. The more words you add to your vocabulary (prefixes and suffixes included), the easier it will be to find the “natural” breaks in the big words. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten scared by a big word, gave up on finding the natural breaks, looked up the definition of the word in a dictionary, and then, all of a sudden, all of the natural breaks seemed to pop out of the page in glaring neon letters. That’s called learning. We will know how to break that word apart the next time we see it.
The longest German word approved by the Duden (the official German dictionary) is still up in the air, because in order for it to be “official” the word has to be in common use, but this news article tells the tale of what used to be German’s longest word at an awe-inspiring 63 letters: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz.
The same article also explains how German words (specifically nouns) can get really out of hand:
A ballpoint pen that belongs to a captain could be called a Kapitänskugelschreiber.
If the pen happens to belong to a captain of the Danube Steamship Company, it’s a Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskugelschreiber.
Let us now refer to the ink used in that pen. This is the Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskugelschreibertinte.
And, please bear with us, there could theoretically be a shop specializing in such ink. In that case we have a: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskugelschreibertintenfachgeschäft.
That store would presumably have a manager, the: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskugelschreibertintenfachgeschäftsführer.
That’s 81 letters. And we could go on. But for a word to be officially recognized, it must be in genuine use and must have been referred to in published texts.
Apparently German legalese can put English legalese to shame. Check out this 67 letter word:
Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung
Again, this word can be cut down into bite-sized pieces, as this website shows:
Grundstück: plot of land
Verkehr: traffic
Genehmigung: approval
Zuständigkeit: responsibility
Übertragung: transmission
Verordnung: regulation
It just goes to show that gargantuan German words CAN be tamed, pronounced, and understood, if you’re willing to crack the whip and bolster your vocabulary and your ability to identify said vocabulary buried within a bed of other vocabulary/prefixes/suffixes.
What is your favorite long German word that you’ve mastered?
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