English Pronunciation for German Speakers

German speakers often speak excellent English and still sound German within a sentence. The chapter on German speakers in Swan and Smith's Learner English opens its section on pronunciation with the reason: "The German and English phonological systems are broadly similar, and German speakers do not have serious difficulty in perceiving or pronouncing most English sounds."

Most sounds, not all. The accent comes from a short list of German habits applied to English words: a v where English has w, an s for th, a t at the end of bed, one vowel for both bad and bed, a German r. Each is regular, so each can be fixed. This guide takes them one at a time, with what English does, what German does instead, and a fix. The typical errors are the standard ones in teaching references such as that chapter; the facts about German come from standard descriptions of its sound system (see Sources at the end). There is also a German-language guide to the same traps.

About the transcriptions. Every table gives a US and a UK form from a pronunciation lexicon IPAtics maintains, printed exactly as it appears there. The US forms mark stress even in one-syllable words (west is /ˈwɛst/) but not vowel length; the UK forms mark length with ː and often leave stress out. Both write English r as /ɹ/.

w and v: west, not vest

German spells /v/ with w: Wein, Wasser, Welt. The sound changed centuries ago while the spelling stayed, and German no longer has a /w/ at all. English has both, and the spelling is honest: w is /w/ and v is /v/. Said with a German w, west becomes vest and wine becomes vine. Teachers also often hear the reverse: speakers who have been corrected for it overcorrect and say very with a /w/.

English /w/ is a quick German u gliding into the next vowel. Round your lips as for du, then open them into the vowel: u-est, west. The teeth never touch the lip. Check in a mirror: for every w, you should see no teeth at all. The page on /w/ has more words to practise.

th: think, not sink

German has neither /θ/ nor /ð/. German speakers usually replace /θ/ with /s/. A study by Adriana Hanulíková and Andrea Weber found the same: in their production task, German learners of English mostly said /θ/ as [s], while Dutch learners preferred [t]. /ð/ tends to become /z/ or /d/, which gives the "zis" of the stereotype.

The fix is about the tongue tip. For /s/ it sits behind the teeth; for /θ/ it rests lightly between them, and the air flows over it. Add your voice and it is /ð/. Say sick, then push the tongue forward without changing anything else, and you have thick. Our guide to the two TH sounds explains which words take which.

Final devoicing: bed, not bet

In the German of northern Germany, a b, d or g at the end of a word is said as p, t or k: Rad and Rat sound the same, [ʁaːt]. This is Auslautverhärtung, and it is so automatic that most speakers do not notice they do it. English keeps the contrast at the end of a word in every major accent, so bed and bet are different words, and so are prize and price.

The last column holds the fix. English speakers themselves often devoice a final /d/ or /z/ partly, especially before a pause, so the voicing alone is not what the listener relies on. The vowel is: it is clearly longer before a voiced consonant. Stretch the vowel of bed, bag and prize, keep the one in bet, back and price short, and the listener hears the right word even if your final consonant is not fully voiced. Voicing carries grammar too: the plural bags ends in /z/, not /s/, and it needs the same long vowel.

Speakers from Austria, Switzerland and the south of Germany start from a different place. Their German has no final devoicing; instead, in most southern varieties b, d and g are voiceless in every position, so a fully voiced English /b/, /d/ or /ɡ/ is new anywhere in the word. The vowel-length fix works the same way for them, and the /z/ section below matters more.

cat and bed: one German vowel, two English ones

In German, short ä and short e are both [ɛ], the vowel of Männer and Bett. German has no /æ/. English uses both /æ/ and /ɛ/, so man and men, or sat and set, can merge.

For /æ/, start from the vowel of Bett and drop your jaw as far as it goes while keeping the tongue forward. It should feel halfway to German a, but with the tongue further front. Our list of English minimal pairs every learner confuses has more pairs.

The r

The usual German r is made at the back of the mouth, [ʁ], and after a vowel it often turns into a vowel itself, as at the end of Mutter. The English /ɹ/ touches nothing: the tongue tip curls back slightly or the tongue bunches up, the lips round a little, and the voice passes through.

The good news is in the last three rows. British English does not pronounce an r unless a vowel follows it, and German turns the r at the end of Mutter into a vowel, so that habit already fits UK English. For American English you need the /ɹ/ in those positions too. Either way, the work is at the start of a word and between vowels, where the throat r is easy to hear. To find /ɹ/, say a long uh and slowly curl the tongue tip back without touching anything. The page on the English r sound /ɹ/ has more words, and our comparison of American and British IPA shows the r patterns side by side.

j and ch: joke, not choke

German has /dʒ/ only in loanwords such as Dschungel and Job. At the start of a word it tends to lose its voice and become ch, and at the end of a word final devoicing does the same. Joke can sound like choke, and ridge like rich.

/dʒ/ is the voiced partner of the German tsch. Put two fingers on your throat, say tsch, and add the buzz without changing the tongue. At the end of a word, the vowel-length rule from the devoicing section helps again: ridge has a longer vowel than rich.

s and z: which way depends on your German

In standard German pronunciation, an s before a vowel is voiced: Sonne and sehen begin with [z]. Carried into English, that habit can turn sue into zoo. In most of the south of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, that s is voiceless, and the problem runs the other way: English /z/ comes out as /s/.

English spelling helps here: a written s at the start of a word is almost never /z/. Inside and at the end of words it is often /z/, as in is, was and dogs.

Rhythm: glottal stops and linking

The Learner English chapter lists one more feature of the German accent: frequent glottal stops before words that begin with a vowel, which give a staccato effect. German puts a small catch in the throat before Apfel or ein. English mostly links instead: the last consonant of one word runs into the vowel of the next, so an apple sounds like "a-napple" and pick it up like "pi-ki-tup". Read a sentence slowly, mark each place where a word ends in a consonant and the next begins with a vowel, and join them.

For teachers: what to drill first

1. w and th. Both are easy to hear, and both change words: west and vest, thing and sing.
2. Final consonants and vowel length. Teach the vowel-length cue, not only the voicing.
3. /æ/. man and men until the jaw moves.
4. Linking. It removes the staccato effect faster than work on single sounds.
5. The r. Very audible, but it rarely changes which word the listener hears.

Then adjust for where your students are from: north Germans need sue kept apart from zoo, while south Germans, Austrians and Swiss need a /z/ with real voice in it. Our page for ESL teachers and tutors covers IPA worksheets and minimal-pair drills.

Trying it yourself

The words you meet every day are the practice. IPAtics is a desktop app that shows the IPA for any text you select, in any app, and plays the word, so you can check a w or a vowel while you read. To convert text in the browser, paste it into the English to IPA converter, and the free IPA Anki decks include a deck of English minimal pairs. The guide for Turkish speakers covers another group that mixes up w and v.

Sources

• "German speakers." In Michael Swan and Bernard Smith (eds.), Learner English: A Teacher's Guide to Interference and Other Problems, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 37–51. doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667121.005. The quotation on the two sound systems and the glottal stops.
• Hanulíková, Adriana and Andrea Weber. "Sink positive: Linguistic experience with th substitutions influences nonnative word recognition." Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 74(3), 2012, pp. 613–629. doi.org/10.3758/s13414-011-0259-7.
• Wikipedia, "Standard German phonology": the uvular and vocalised r, /dʒ/ only in loanwords, glottal stops before vowels, and voiceless b, d, g and z in the south.
• Wikipedia, "German orthography": w as /v/, ä as [ɛ], and s before a vowel as [z].
• Wikipedia, "Final-obstruent devoicing": Rad and Rat, its absence in Austrian and Swiss Standard German, and its absence in English.