In this lesson, you will learn about the German alphabet with Pronounciation, how many sounds there are, how they are pronounced, and how different they are from English.
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What is the German alphabet?
Umlauts and their pronunciation
Pronunciation of vowels Yp-si-lon
s or ß
Spelling
What is the German alphabet?
It is very important to learn the alphabet right from the beginning. The German alphabet has many similarities with English, so it will be easy for you to master it. The German alphabet consists of 26 letters that are well known in English. Only the pronunciation is slightly different. This is what it looks like:
A(ah) B(beh ) C(tseh) D(deh) E(eh) (ef)F G(geh) H(hah) I(ee) J(yot)
K(kah) (el)L (em)M (en)N O(oh) P(peh) Q(koo) R(air ) (es)S T(teh)
U(oo) V(fow) W(veh) (iks)X Y(üp–si–lon) Z(tset)
Lowercase letters are added so you know how to pronounce capital letters correctly.
You can practice the alphabet with this audio track:
Umlauts and their pronunciation
There are also muffled vocals (in German: die Umlaute). My students call them “letters with colons up”, I think they described them most vividly. There are three of them: ä, ö and ü. The most important thing here is how to pronounce them. German does not contain many difficult sounds for English speakers to pronounce; ch, r and ü will probably prove the hardest to conquer, but even these are soon mastered with practice. The explanation follows:
a – Umlaut (ä) – is pronounced as a very open vowel e, position your mouth as if pronounce the letter a, but don’t pronounce a but e.
ä is pronounced like e when short: lächerlich, mächtig. When long it often has a distinctive pronunciation, like the vowel in English ‘hair’, for example fährt, spät, zählen. However, many German speakers simply pronounce it like long e and make no distinction between, for example, zäh and Zeh.
Here are some examples without umlaut and with umlaut, the meaning is different:
der Saal (zaal) – die Säle (zeele)
lang (lang) – länger (leŋer )
Listen to the audio recording and practice:
o – Umlaut (ö) – is pronounced in such a way that the tongue is positioned for the pronunciation of the vowel e, the lips for the pronunciation of the vowel o, but do not pronounce the o rather than the e.
The letters ö is pronounced differently from o , so it’s important to practice these distinction with a native speaker or your German teacher. When pronouncing both vowels, you should pinch your lips tightly together. The key difference between the sounds lies in the position of the tongue: for o , the tongue is positioned at the back of the mouth, while for ö, the tongue is at the front.
Examples:
der Sohn (zo:n ) – die Söhne (zø:nə)
schon (šo:n ) – schön (šø:n)
u – Umlaut (ü) – is pronounced in such a way that the lips are positioned for the pronunciation of the vowel u, and the tongue for the pronunciation of the vowel i, but you do not pronounce u but i.
Examples:
der Flug (flu:k) – die Flüge (fly:gə)
jung (yoong) – jünger (jʏngɐ)
The letters ü is pronounced differently from u , so it’s important to practice these distinction with a native speaker or your German teacher. When pronouncing both vowels, you should pinch your lips tightly together. The key difference between the sounds lies in the position of the tongue: for u , the tongue is positioned at the back of the mouth, while for ü, the tongue is at the front. To produce the sound ü, try saying the English vowel sound in “see” while tightly pursing your lips.
Let’s try it! It’s not so difficult. I adjusted the transcription a little bit. Sound track for u – Umlaut:
Pronunciation of vowel Yp-si-lon
Here I would also mention the pronunciation of the vowel y.
y – is pronounced as a long ulaut ü and occurs only in words of foreign origin.
Examles:
das Gymnasium (gʏmˈna:zi̯ʊm)
der/das Pyjama (pyˈdʒa:ma)
Listen to the wortds with the sound y:
Scharfes s or ß
‘ß’ is pronounced like English ‘s’.
It is only used after a long vowel or diphthong: Straße, Maß, Fuß, ließ, beißen.
This is the letter most affected by the spelling reform: the old spelling system always had ‘ß‘ rather than ‘ss‘ at the end of words or syllables, even if the preceding vowel was short, e.g. daß, Fluß, faßte.
Examples:
die Straße (štra:sə)
heißen (haisn̩)
‘s’ is pronounced like English ‘s’ except in the following environments, where it is pronounced like English ‘z’:
• at the beginning of a word before a vowel: Sand, sagen.
• in the middle of a word between vowels or at the start of a syllable: lesen, blasen, Ferse, Felsen.
• ‘ss’ is always pronounced like English ‘s’.
Click on:
Grammer Contents
Spelling
The best tip I could give you is to learn the alphabet by heart. This is very important because when communicating with native speakers, it may happen that we do not understand a word pronounced by native speaker, that is important to us at that moment, some personal information or similar. And it can also happen that they do not understand our name or some other information that we give, for example, at a job interview or in a similar situation.
That’s why we can always say:
Buchstabieren Sie das bitte! (Spell that out please!)
Buchstabieren Sie bitte Ihren Namen! (Spell your name please!
or
Entschuldigung, wie ist Ihr Name? (Excuse me, what’s your name?)
– Ich buchstabiere: eM- A- Jott –A. ( I spell: …..)
That’s all so far!☺
Nikolina
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