57
votes
Is Kilometer ever pronounced as 'kaa em' in German?
"km" is usually pronounced as Kilometer, ka em [kaː ʔɛm] is at least where I am very unusual in everyday spoken German.
ka em may be encountered more frequently in ka em ha [kaː ʔɛm haː] (km/h, the ...
52
votes
Accepted
Is Liszt really pronounced like the English word "list"?
The name is pronounced as the German word "List" which comes very close to the English word "list".
To understand it, you have to know that Franz Liszt was an Austrian-Hungarian ...
- 10.4k
42
votes
Accepted
Aussprache von »Libyen«
Das Wort Libyen entstammt – wie viele andere Bezeichnungen für Gebiete des östlichen Mittelmeerraums – dem Altgriechischen; dort wird die ensprechende Gegend Λιβύη (Libýe) geschrieben. Über das ...
- 38.6k
33
votes
Why are there two different pronunciations for the word Tee?
Those are simply two different words. They are homographs.
"der Tee" refers to the tea plant and the beverage.
"das Tee" is a very recent loanword from English and refers to the ...
- 1,726
29
votes
Accepted
How do you phonetically pronounce all of the German note names?
For those notes that are a letter of the alphabet, e.g. C, A, E, H, B (yes, that one, too) they are pronounced as the letter itself would be. Note, that English B is called H in German and English B ...
- 38.6k
29
votes
Accepted
Why is Entschuldigung pronounced as ent-shuldigung instead of en-chu-ldigung?
I understand that you are asking why it is Ent-schuldigung and not En-tschuldigung. While I am not sure that these two pronunciations could even be clearly distinguished in casual speech, it is ...
- 20.4k
25
votes
Accepted
Are “Rad” and “Rat” seriously pronounced in the same way?
In Standard German, a phenomenon called terminal devoicing (Auslautverhärtung in German) affects the pronunciation of word-final (or more generally: morpheme-final) consonants. It leads to the merging ...
- 38.6k
25
votes
Accepted
How to pronounce "Gröbner"?
The letters "ö" and "o" represent two different vowels, so "o" as in soft or ocean is not correct (both would be "o" in German, too), and the short "oo&...
- 25.7k
21
votes
Accepted
How to pronounce fünf in 45
Wiktionary is available in more than 150 different languages, and in each language it contains descriptions of the most frequent used words in this language. German Wiktionary has more than 750,000 ...
- 122k
20
votes
Accepted
Ist "Borschtsch" ein einsilbiges Wort?
Jedenfalls ist in der kyrillischen Schrift der Konsonantencluster schtsch ein einzelner Buchstabe: Щ. Das spricht schon mal dafür, das Wort als einsilbig zu betrachten. Das hat aber für die Aussprache ...
- 122k
19
votes
Accepted
How should I read "Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind" in German?
This name is pronounced [ˈdeːdəˌkɪnt].
His whole name is "Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind", but he became known as "Richard Dedekind" which is pronounced [ˈʁɪçaʁt ˈdeːdəˌkɪnt]
...
- 122k
17
votes
Accepted
Aussprache von »Gluten«
Im Deutschen ist formal [ɡluˈteːn] korrekt, da ist m.E. Deiner Recherche nichts hinzuzufügen, aber da die englische Aussprache eben [ˈɡluːtn̩] ist, scheint sich hier per verstecktem Anglizismus diese ...
- 24k
16
votes
How do you phonetically pronounce all of the German note names?
The German sequence of the basic notes (white keys on piano) is: C, D, E, F, G, A, H.
The system is simple. There is no »flat« or »sharp«, just the suffixes »-es« and »-is«. And you have to keep in ...
- 122k
16
votes
Accepted
Are there German words that get pronounced differently based on whether they are capitalized?
Yes, there are: Weg [veːk], weg [vɛk]. It is, however, not the capitalization itself that affects pronunciation; it just so happens that one of the words is a noun and therefore capitalized.
- 19.7k
16
votes
How to pronounce "Gröbner"?
HalvarF already said it in his answer: Letters with umlauts (ä, ö, ü) are distinct letters in German language. Historically they derived from the letters without dots, and there are still connections (...
- 122k
15
votes
How do you pronounce the "g" in "Heiligtum"?
It depends on the region. There are two main variations.
The "normal"* pronunciation would be like in 'gerne' (or like you would pronounce the 'ck' in the English word 'lick').
However, in some ...
- 765
15
votes
Sprechpause bei "Gendergap" - Beispiele für solche Pausen außerhalb des "Genderns"
Ich denke, diese „Pause“ wird tatsächlich eher ein Glottisschlag sein, und der ist im Deutschen häufig. In der Aussprache wäre der Unterschied zwischen Schülerinnen und Schüler:Innen also ähnlich dem ...
- 20.4k
14
votes
Accepted
Pronunciation of the surname Ruhle
If the original form of the name was Ruhle without an umlaut, its German pronunciation would be very similar to the word ruler in non-rhotic accents of English (which include Australian English), i.e. ...
- 19.7k
14
votes
Pronunciation of “Leonhard Euler”
The article in the English Wikipedia gives two similar pronunciations /ˈɔɪlər/ (Swiss) and /ˈɔʏlɐ/ (German). I agree with them. The article even has a footnote that explains with references that ...
- 9,111
14
votes
Accepted
Gab es einen deutschen "posh accent"?
Ich nehme die Aussprache des Professor Crey ebenso wahr wie der Fragesteller. Kurze Recherche aus eigenem Interesse ergibt, dass das Phänomen auch schon in der Literatur diskutiert wurde.
Zimmermann ...
- 7,698
14
votes
Accepted
Why doesn't the "ch" pronunciation rule occur for words such as "durch" and "manchmal"?
In your examples, the “ch” follows a consonant, the vowel before the consonant does not matter. After a consonant the pronunciation is like after a front vowel (like e).
And even though it was clear ...
- 20.4k
13
votes
Accepted
Aussprache der Wörter rückwärts
Wir sind eine zutiefst literale Gesellschaft. Praktisch alles, was wir über Sprache zu wissen glauben, basiert auf ihrer Verschriftung.
Darum ist der naive Ansatz, den die meisten Deutschsprechenden ...
- 9,111
13
votes
Accepted
Why was "daß" replaced by "dass" and how is it pronounced?
I have heard exactly one person systematically, non-ironically and non-mockingly pronounce dass as /da:s/, i.e. with a long /a:/. However, that person also systematically pronounced the /a/ sounds in ...
- 38.6k
13
votes
Accepted
How do you pronounce the "g" in "Heiligtum"?
[ç], see Duden as reference. The stage pronounciation rules also leave no other choice. In normal talk I decidedly assume regional variations. Especially for religious terms there seems to be an ...
- 27.9k
13
votes
Accepted
Why are some words spelled with “tz” if “z” already has the “ts” sound?
Tz indicates that the preceding vowel is short; z doesn’t (though this may still be the case for other reasons). Most other consonants are doubled in such a situation; z is different for historical ...
- 21.8k
13
votes
Accepted
Trying to figure out the difference between pronouncing short o and short u
One problem (but not the only one) with this video is that it uses its own notation for sounds which makes it confusing for people who know IPA.
The short u in German is pronounced like the oo in ...
- 15.5k
13
votes
Trying to figure out the difference between pronouncing short o and short u
This video is nonsense. The speaker himself said at the beginning (0:11 to 0:15):
Dafür verwende ich meine eigene phonetische Umschrift.
For that I use my own phonetic transcription.
This ...
- 122k
13
votes
Accepted
Wie spricht man den Namen Pahl aus?
The h after the a is a length marker. The h itself is silent. It marks only, that the vowel before it is a long vowel. So, you pronounce "Pahl" exactly the same way as "Paal": [...
- 122k
12
votes
Accepted
Which German dialects roll the 'R'?
I'm from Northern Germany. I hardly pronounce the /r/ at all, instead I either lengthen the previous vowel (as in Arbeit: /a:beit/) or pronounce it almost as /x/ (the 'ch' sound), especially at the ...
- 1,118
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