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 ...
- 918
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 ...
- 11k
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 ...
- 38.9k
31
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 ...
- 21.1k
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&...
- 28.2k
22
votes
Accepted
German pronunciation of English words
The basic pronunciation rule for English (and French and Italian) loan words in German is “take the original pronunciation (not the spelling!) and adapt it to standard German phonology (*)”. Let's ...
- 10.7k
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 ...
- 126k
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 ...
- 126k
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]
...
- 126k
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 (...
- 126k
16
votes
Accepted
Why the second C in "recyceln" is pronounced [k] instead of [ts]?
It is obvious that the German pronunciation of the two letters "c" in "recyceln" was adopted from the English pronunciation of "recycle". Therefore your question is ...
- 11k
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 ...
- 21.1k
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 ...
- 7,758
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 ...
- 21.1k
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 ...
- 38.9k
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 ...
- 29.6k
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 ...
- 22k
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 ...
- 16.4k
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 ...
- 126k
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": [...
- 126k
13
votes
German pronunciation of English words
Those are inconsistencies introduced by both the speaker not being used to the English pronounciation and overcorrecting it, and you not being used to the variety of German dialects and their somewhat ...
- 64.6k
12
votes
12
votes
Accepted
Unterschiedliche Aussprache des ST
You fell over one of the few cases where German pronounciation isn't stable in regard to spelling. Fortunately, there's an easy rule:
Einst-weilig has the st at the end of the syllable. In these ...
- 64.6k
12
votes
Wie spricht man im Deutschen "Excel" aus?
Man sollte jedes Wort so aussprechen, dass es die anderen verstehen. Mit anderen Worten: Man sollte sich der Mehrheit anschließen. Dass das Wort aus dem Englischen kommt, macht dabei nichts, man darf ...
- 126k
12
votes
Pronouncing 'zehn'
You can find the pronunciation of every German word in Wiktionary, for example:
»zehn« in Wiktionary.
There is a section with the title Aussprache (pronunciation), and there you can find the IPA-Code ...
- 126k
12
votes
Accepted
S-Bahn Question
The context is the voice in the S-Bahn right when the doors open.
The usual request from the S Bahn voice when the doors of the train open is
Einsteigen Bitte!
which means
Get in ...
- 8,532
12
votes
Is Kilometer ever pronounced as 'kaa em' in German?
It would absolutely never be pronounced kaa em if talking about kilometers. As cbeleites unhappy with SX noted, km/h is actually often pronounced kaa em haa, but that is the exception. Usually, units ...
- 337
12
votes
Pronunciation of "oe" in place names
The explanation is that Coesfeld is situated in a region influenced by Middle Dutch. The e is a lengthening vocal in this case ("Dehnungs-e").
This is similar to Dutch. In German, this ...
- 17.4k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible