German alphabet and key pronunciation rules
Can spell words and recognize German pronunciation patterns
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Wie schreibt man das? — W-I-E.
How do you spell that? — W-I-E.
Die Straße ist lang.
The street is long.
Der Zug kommt um zehn Uhr.
The train comes at ten o'clock.
Chú ý các phần được đánh dấu. Chúng có điểm gì chung?
German uses the same 26 letters as English, plus three vowels with an Umlaut (ä, ö, ü) and the letter ß, called Eszett or scharfes S. The good news for an English speaker: German spelling is far more regular than English. Once you know how a letter combination sounds, you can read almost any word aloud, from Brötchen to Donaudampfschifffahrt.
| Letter | Sounds like | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| w | English v | Wasser (water), wo (where), Volkswagen = "folks-vahgen" |
| v | English f in most native words | Vater (father), vier (four); but v in loanwords: Vase, Klavier |
| z | ts, as in "cats" | Zug (train), zehn (ten), Pizza |
| s before a vowel | English z in the north; closer to s in the south, Austria and Switzerland | Sonne (sun), sieben (seven), Salz |
| ß | a sharp s, as in "kiss" | Straße (street), heißen (to be called) |
| j | English y | ja (yes), Januar, Jahr |
| ei / ie | "eye" / "ee" | drei, Bein / vier, Bier |
| eu / äu | "oy" | neu (new), Häuser (houses) |
The pair ei and ie trips up almost everybody. A handy trick: say the second letter in English. Wein ends on i, so it rhymes with "wine"; Wien (Vienna) ends on e, so it sounds like "veen".
The dots are not decoration. schon (already) and schön (beautiful), Mutter (mother) and Mütter (mothers) are different words. For ö, round your lips as for "o" and say "e"; for ü, round them as for "oo" and say "ee". Typed without the dots, you write ae, oe, ue: Muenchen for München.
Vowel length changes meaning, so it is worth hearing. A doubled vowel or a vowel followed by h is long: Haar (hair), Uhr (clock), Bahn. A vowel before a double consonant is usually short: Sonne, Mutter, Bett. Compare Staat (state, long a) with Stadt (city, short a), or Miete (rent) with Mitte (middle).
After a, o, u and au, ch is the throaty sound of Scottish "loch": Buch, Nacht, auch. After e, i, ä, ö, ü and after consonants it is a soft hiss, close to the "h" in "huge": ich, Milch, Mädchen. Saying "ick" for ich gives an English speaker away at once; "ish" is better than "ick", but aim for the hiss.
Every letter has a name you need when you spell your name at a hotel desk or on the phone: a "ah", e "eh", i "ee", j "yot", v "fow", w "veh", y "üpsilon", z "tset". Wie schreibt man das? - How do you spell that? Germans often spell with names, as in the old telephone alphabet: A wie Anton, B wie Berta.
Áp dụng ngữ pháp này vào các bài tập khóa học A1
Bài tập thực hànhWie schreibt man das? — W-I-E.
How do you spell that? — W-I-E.
Buchstabieren (spelling) uses the German letter names.
Die Straße ist lang.
The street is long.
ß (Eszett) represents a double S sound after a long vowel.
Der Zug kommt um zehn Uhr.
The train comes at ten o'clock.
Z is pronounced like TS in German: Zug = [tsuːk].
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Áp dụng ngữ pháp này vào các bài tập khóa học A1