German pronunciation

[Lina Inverse]

I've now compiled a detailled chart for the German pronunciation which also includes the equating English sounds with example words and the official Ipa pronunciation
Archive containing sound files demonstrating the German sounds
Test your hearing! Can you tell the German sounds apart, especially the umlauts? Click on the mouth to hear the audio sample and select either A or B.

German  Ipa     English     Example
letter  sound   sound       (corresponding sound capitalized)

Vowels
a       [a]     ah          fAther
ä       [æ]     a           Appetite
au      [aU]    ow          knOW
e       [e]     eh          Education
ei      [aı]    see ex.     EYE, wIne
eu/äu   [oY]    oi/oy       vOIce, bOY
i/ie    [i]     ee/ih       nIpple
o       [o]     oh          Order (but less open)
ö       [œ]     see ex.     similar to 'u' in hurry
u       [u]     oo          mOOn
ü       [y]     see ex.     like 'u' in French "côte azure"

Consonants
b       [b]     b           Beer (can sound like p at the end of a syllable)
ch 1    [ç]     -           voiceless: as in German "ich"
ch 2    [x]     -           voiced:    as in Scotch loch or German machen
                            never like choco, only like k in foreign words
d       [d]     d           Deep (can sound like t at the end of a syllable)
f       [f]     f           Free
g       [g]     g/gh        Grateful, GHerkin, never like Gin!

                            (can sound like voiced ch at the end of a word)
h       [h]     h           Happy
j       [j]     y           Yeah
k       [k]     k           Keep
l       [l]     l           Love
m       [m]     m           Mighty
n       [n]     n           Nice
p       [p]     p           Pretty
qu      [q]     qu          QUick
r       [r]     (r)         softer than English r
s 1/ß   [s]     s           voiceless: Sunny
s 2     [z]     z           voiced:    Zealous
sch 1   [ʃ]     sh          voiceless: SHiny
sch 2   [ʒ]     j w/o d     voiced:    as in Jungle, but without initial d
sp      [ʃp]    shp (beginning of a word only, also in compound words)
st      [ʃt]    sht (beginning of a word only, also in compound words)
t/th    [t]     t           Titilating
v 1     [f]     f           voiceless: Fine (as in German "viel")
v 2     [v]     w           voiced:    Want (as in German "Vase")
w       [v]     w           Winner
z       [ts]    ts          wiTS

[Kuroki-Kaze]

hey thats acctualy not to bad. i dont think i could make one up. i can speak it but damned if i know why things are the way they are... like at skool my teacher asked me "why is hund a der word".. i just thought and said.. it just sounds right lol. yeah but that chart will help a lot... some i dont agree with but hey >.<

[Lina Inverse]

hey thats acctualy not to bad. i dont think i could make one up. i can speak it but damned if i know why things are the way they are... like at skool my teacher asked me "why is hund a der word".. i just thought and said.. it just sounds right lol. yeah but that chart will help a lot... some i dont agree with but hey >.<

So, you have a German mother and Greek father (or the other way round?) and live in the US? How come?

Well, "Hund" is the male form, so it needs the male article (der). It's also often used as unspecific classification without expressively meaning it's male.
The female form would be "die Hündin".

[lexico]

Hi, Lina !
Nice page; I wish we could have something like this in other languages, too !
But some of the characters come out garbled.
Do you know how to type IPA symbols in a post ?
Anyone ?

[Lina Inverse]

Hi, Lina !
Nice page; I wish we could have something like this in other languages, too !
But some of the characters come out garbled.
Do you know how to type IPA symbols in a post ?
Anyone ?

You'll have to set the Codepage to "Western" (Iso-8859-1), then it displays fine.
I used the charmap to look for the Ipa chars.

[sgt. Pepper]

Is there even any rule for der, das and die? :/

[Lina Inverse]

Is there even any rule for der, das and die? :/

"der" is male, "die" is female and "das" is neutrum.

[bossel]

Is there even any rule for der, das and die? :/

Not really. You can distinguish some forms by their endings, but in most cases there are so many exceptions that IMO you couldn't make rules thereof.

some suffix rules:
-keit = f
-heit = f
-lein = n
-chen = n (like -lein, this is a diminutive suffix, hence M&#228;dchen - girl - is also grammatically neuter)

Substantivised adjectives & verbs are generally neuter.

[Sensuikan San]

... and I find that this is one of the things that makes German, along with some of the Celtic languages like Irish, so confusing !

There is no correlation between biological gender and grammatical gender !

This is real tough if you are a native English ( .... or Japanese, I believe...) speaker - where there is little or no reference to grammatical gender !

Regards,

ƒWƒ‡ƒ“