Say this out loud, slowly: Ich wohne in einer kleinen Stadt am Fluss. If you said wohne with a v, made ei sound like “eye” and kept the a of Stadt short, you were already close. German spelling looks crowded, but it is a fairly reliable code for the sound, and once you know the code you can read most words aloud on first sight.
This piece teaches the code: long and short vowels, the umlauts, the vowel pairs, the consonants that differ, the stress, and the capital letters. It gives you a pronunciation card and a trainer for the two things English speakers find hardest to see: whether a vowel is long or short, and whether a word has ei or ie. It is the first of four German pieces on this path.
Your device has no German voice, so the play buttons are hidden.
- Who it is for
- English speakers starting German from zero. German is the most widely spoken first language in the European Union and an official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Belgium.
- After this piece you can
- Read most German words aloud; tell a long vowel from a short one by its spelling; say ä, ö and ü; never mix up ei and ie again; and know where the stress falls in most words.
- Comes after
- Nothing is required. The method is in How Memory Builds a Language (37/01) and How a Language Grows (37/02); easier neighbours are Phonetics & the IPA (26/01) and Learning a Language as an Adult (26/07).
- Leads to
- German 2: The Present Tense and Word Order (37/25), where the sounds meet the first verbs and the rule that puts the verb second.
- Honest line
- A page cannot hear you. You will have the code and a way to practise it; a tutor, a partner or a recording of yourself is what tells you whether it worked.
Vowels: long or short, and the spelling tells you which
German has the same five vowel letters as English, but each one comes in two versions: a long one, held and tense, and a short one, quick and a little looser. The difference changes meaning. Staat (state) has a long a; Stadt (city) has a short one. Miete (rent) is long; Mitte (middle) is short. Ofen (oven) is long; offen (open) is short.
The good news is that the spelling usually tells you which, through a few signals:
- A doubled vowel is long: Tee, Boot, Haar, Meer.
- A vowel followed by h is long. The h is silent; it only marks the length: Bahn, Sohn, Uhr, fahren.
- ie is a long ee: Bier, Brief, viel, Liebe.
- A vowel before a double consonant is short: Bett, Mann, Wasser, kommen. So are vowels before ck and tz: Zucker, Katze.
- Otherwise, count the consonants. One consonant and then a vowel usually means long (Na-me, le-sen); two or more usually mean short (Hund, Kind). In a one-syllable word, look at a longer form: Tag is long because Ta-ge is.
The signals cover most words, not all. Small words are often short even with one consonant (mit, das, was, hat), a few words are long before two (Obst, Mond, Erde), and before ch there is no signal: Buch is long, Koch is short.
| Letter | Long | Short | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | as in “father” | the same, quicker | Tag, Mann |
| e | like “ay” but held still, no glide | as in “bed” | Tee, Bett |
| e, unstressed | a weak “uh”, as in the last syllable of “sofa” | bitte, Name | |
| i | as in “machine” | as in “bit” | ihn, mit |
| o | a pure “oh”, lips rounded, no glide | as in British “pot” | Sohn, Sonne |
| u | as in “food” | as in “book” | gut, Hund |
Final -er is not “er” but a soft, open “uh”: Vater sounds like “FAH-tuh”. And a word that begins with a vowel starts with a tiny catch in the throat, as in the middle of “uh-oh”, so am Abend does not run together.
The umlauts: ä, ö, ü
The two dots change the vowel, and the meaning: schon is “already”, schön is “beautiful”. Without umlaut keys, write ae, oe, ue: Mueller for Müller.
- ä is close to the e in “bed”: Männer; long ä (Käse) is often said like a long e.
- ö: say the long e of Tee and round your lips as if to whistle, without moving your tongue: schön, hören.
- ü: say “ee” and round your lips tightly: müde, Tür, über. If it sounds like “oo”, your tongue has slid back.
Vowel pairs: ei, ie, eu, äu, au
ei sounds like “eye” (mein, drei, Wein) and ie like “ee” (Bier, vier, Wien), and English speakers swap them constantly. The trick: say the English name of the second letter. In ei the second letter is i, and its English name is “eye”. In ie it is e, named “ee”. So Wein (wine) is “vine” and Wien (Vienna) is “veen”.
The others are simpler. eu and äu both sound like “oy” in “boy”: heute, Häuser, Deutsch. au is “ow” in “how”: Haus, auch.
Consonants that differ from English
Most consonants work as in English. These are the ones to learn.
| Spelling | Sounds like | IPA | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| ch after e, i, ä, ö, ü, ei, eu, and after l, n, r | a soft hiss, like the h in “huge” said with force | /ç/ | ich, Milch |
| ch after a, o, u, au | a rasp at the back, as in Scottish “loch” | /x/ | Buch, auch |
| -ig at the end | like ich in most of Germany; ik in the south, Austria and Switzerland | /ɪç/, /ɪk/ | zwanzig |
| b, d, g at the end of a word or syllable | p, t, k | /p t k/ | gelb, Hund, Tag |
| sch | sh | /ʃ/ | Schule |
| sp, st at the start of a word or stem | shp, sht | /ʃp ʃt/ | Sport, Straße |
| z, tz | ts, as in “cats” | /ts/ | Zeit, Katze |
| w | v | /v/ | Wasser |
| v | f in German words; v in many borrowed ones | /f/, /v/ | Vater, Vase |
| s before a vowel | z in most of Germany; s in the south, Austria and Switzerland | /z/, /s/ | Sonne |
| ß, ss | a sharp s; ß after a long vowel or ei/au, ss after a short one | /s/ | Straße, Wasser |
| j | y as in “yes” | /j/ | ja |
| r | at the back of the throat in most of Germany; rolled in parts of the south, Austria and Switzerland; a soft “uh” after a vowel | /ʁ/, /r/, [ɐ] | rot, Uhr |
At the end of a word, b, d, g lose their voice (Hund ends in a t sound) and get it back before an ending (Hunde); the spelling keeps the family of words looking the same. ß, the Eszett, is a sharp s: since the 1996 reform it follows long vowels and pairs (Straße, heißen) and ss follows short ones (Wasser, dass). Switzerland and Liechtenstein write ss throughout: Strasse.
Pronounce it
Sixteen words that cover the surprises. Tap a word, read the respelling and the IPA, then say it aloud before you play it.
Without JavaScript, use the tables above: they have the sound cues and the IPA for every row.
Where the stress falls
Stress is not marked in writing, but it is predictable.
- Native words stress the first syllable of the stem: VA-ter, AR-beit, SPRA-che, SCHÖ-ne.
- The prefixes be-, ge-, er-, ver-, zer-, ent- and emp- are never stressed: ver-STE-hen, be-ZAH-len, Ge-SCHENK.
- Separable prefixes are stressed: AUF-ste-hen, EIN-kau-fen, AN-ru-fen. You will meet these verbs in the next piece.
- Compounds stress their first part: BAHN-hof, KÜHL-schrank.
- Many borrowed words stress the end: Mu-SIK, Ho-TEL, U-ni-ver-si-TÄT, and verbs in -ieren stress the ie: stu-DIE-ren.
Capital letters for every noun
German capitalises every noun, not only names: der Tisch, die Zeit, and verbs used as nouns, das Essen (the food). For a learner this is a gift: the capitals show you at once which words are the things. The formal Sie is capitalised too, which separates it from sie, “she” or “they”; adjectives of nationality are not: deutsch.
Train your eye: long or short, ei or ie
In the first drill a word appears with one vowel highlighted: long or short? In the second, a word has a gap: ei or ie? Each answer comes with the reason.
Without JavaScript: Bett is short (double consonant); Bahn is long (vowel + h); Hund is short (two consonants). Wein is wine and Wien is Vienna: say the name of the second letter.
One language, several standards
No variety is the correct one. German has several national standards, and each is fully standard where it is used. This path teaches the German of Germany as a baseline, because most learners’ materials do, and names the others where they differ.
- Austria has its own standard, with its own words (Jänner for January, Paradeiser for tomatoes), greetings (Grüß Gott, Servus) and sounds: initial s stays voiceless and -ig is said -ik.
- Switzerland uses Swiss Standard German for writing and the news, and Swiss German dialects for almost all conversation. It writes ss for ß, says Velo for bicycle and often Merci for thanks. A learner answering in Standard German is entirely normal.
- Within Germany accents vary: Bavaria shares much with Austria, the north says Moin.
Copy the one you will hear most; the others become easy to understand sooner than you expect.
Read it aloud
A short passage that uses nearly everything above. Read it aloud first, slowly. Then play it and compare.
Ich heiße Lena und wohne in einer kleinen Stadt am Fluss. Am Morgen trinke ich Tee und lese die Zeitung. Dann fahre ich mit dem Fahrrad zur Arbeit. Das Wetter ist heute schön. Und du? Wo wohnst du?
My name is Lena and I live in a small town by the river. In the morning I drink tea and read the paper. Then I cycle to work. The weather is nice today. And you? Where do you live?
Mistakes English speakers make
- Swapping ei and ie. Say the English name of the second letter: Wein “vine”, Wien “veen”.
- An English w and v. Wasser starts with v; Vater starts with f.
- Flattening the umlauts. über is not “oober”: keep the tongue forward.
- Saying ch as k. ich is not “ick”. Whisper the h of “huge” and push more air.
Fix one a week: record yourself saying five words and listen back. A recording does what the page cannot.
What sticks
- Every vowel comes long or short; doubled vowels, vowel + h and ie are long, a double consonant makes the vowel before it short.
- For ä, ö and ü, the tongue makes the vowel and the lips round it; ae, oe and ue are the fallback spelling.
- ei says “eye” and ie says “ee”: the English name of the second letter.
- ch is soft after front vowels and consonants, rough after a, o, u; b, d and g turn into p, t and k at the end.
- Stress the first syllable of the stem, never be-, ge-, ver- and their friends; separable prefixes take the stress.
- Germany, Austria and Switzerland each have a standard; none is more correct.
German spelling is a dependable code once you know its signals for vowel length and its handful of special letters. Learn them once, round your lips for the umlauts, say the name of the second letter in ei and ie, and you can read almost anything aloud and be understood.
Try this: read the passage above aloud once a day for three days, and record the third reading. Compare it with the first. Choose the single mistake from the list that you heard yourself make.
Sources. Duden, Das Aussprachewörterbuch (7th edition) for the standard pronunciations; the Council for German Orthography (Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung), official rules of 2006 with the 2017 update, for ß, capitals and the capital ẞ; Ulrich Ammon and others, Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen (2nd edition, 2016), for Austrian and Swiss usage; the European Commission’s Special Eurobarometer 386 (2012) for first languages in the EU.
- 🌐 DWDS, the digital dictionary of the German language, free, with pronunciations
- 🌐 Deutsche Welle: Learn German, free courses with audio from A1
- 📘 Martin Durrell, Hammer’s German Grammar and Usage (Routledge), the standard reference grammar in English