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Where can I find a comprehensive online resource for IPA transcriptions of the "official" pronunciation of German words?

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2 Answers

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www.pons.eu has IPA transcriptions and sound clips for words.

For example, for the word Familie that you mentioned, pons.eu says

Fa·mi·lie <-, -n> [faˈmi:li̯ə] NOUN f

I think the sound clips are computer generated though, as opposed to being recorded by a native speaker.

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Thanks! Pons has a lot of transcriptions, and seems more reliable than Wiktionary as I haven't found any errors. – Tim N Oct 30 '11 at 20:12
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Wiktionary has some, and so does the Duden. However, they are usually not present in dictionaries since German almost universally follows a fixed set of rules for pronunciation so there is generally no need to indicate it explicitly (except for loan words).

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My german dictionary (paper) has the IPA transcription... Now, it doesn't really matter what rules a give language has, IPA is always useful because it's pretty much unambiguous. :P – Alenanno May 25 '11 at 9:32
I've always been afraid of general rules. @Alenanno: Mine only has it for some words. – Tim N May 25 '11 at 11:15
I can't find any pronunciation help except for sound on Duden. Where is it? E.g Familie – Tim N Jun 3 '11 at 11:52
@Tim: As I said, not all words have pronunciation hints, only those where pronunciation isn’t obvious from the rules. Your example, “Familie”, merely has a stress hint: “Fami͟lie”. Other words do have IPA transcripts, e.g. “Ketchup”: [ˈkɛt͜ʃap] – Konrad Rudolph Jun 3 '11 at 12:14
Thanks, I just didn't find any of those. – Tim N Jun 3 '11 at 12:18

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