German IPA Chart & Cheat Sheet: All 44 Sounds

German spelling sits close to the sound, which makes it easy to read German aloud with English habits and never notice. Stadt looks like it starts with "st", Hund looks like it ends in "d", and bitter looks like it ends in "er". The IPA shows what a German speaker actually says: Stadt /ʃtat/, Hund /hʊnt/, bitter /bɪtɐ/.

This chart lists every sound of standard German with one example word, its transcription and the nearest English sound. The rows marked "none" are the ones you have to build from scratch.

Want your own German text in IPA? Paste it into the German to IPA converter.

How the 44 sounds are counted

The inventory follows Wikipedia's Help:IPA/Standard German, the pronunciation key Wikipedia uses for German words. We kept its rows for native German words and made three decisions.

1. The uvular /ʁ/ and the trilled /r/ count as one sound. They are two ways of saying the same German r, and which one you hear depends on the region.
2. The syllabic consonants [n̩], [l̩] and [m̩] and the short glide [ɐ̯] do not get rows. Each is a shortened form of a sound already in the tables, and the section on reduction covers them.
3. Sounds heard only in loanwords are left out: /ʒ/ in Genie, /dʒ/ in Dschungel, the French nasal vowels, the English /w/ of Web.

That leaves 21 consonants, 3 affricates, 15 full vowels, 2 reduced vowels and 3 diphthongs, which makes 44 rows. /ç/ and /x/ keep separate rows even though the usual analysis treats them as two variants of one phoneme, because to an English ear they are nothing alike. The difference between a phoneme and its variants is explained in phonemic vs phonetic transcription.

The IPA in the tables comes from a pronunciation lexicon IPAtics maintains, and each entry was checked by hand against Wikipedia's key. Two details of its notation are worth knowing first. It marks the glottal stop /ʔ/ that careful German puts before a word-initial vowel (ich /ʔɪç/), and it joins two-letter affricates with a tie bar (t͡s, t͡ʃ). The tables show sounds, not stress; stress has its own section below. If the symbols themselves are new to you, start with how to read IPA.

Consonants (24)

Single consonants (21)

Most of these sound the way an English speaker expects. The traps are in the spelling:

• w is /v/: Wagen /vaːɡən/.
• v is usually /f/: Vogel /foːɡəl/.
• s before a vowel is /z/: sieben /ziːbən/. Double ss and ß stay /s/.
• st and sp at the start of a word are /ʃt/ and /ʃp/: Stadt /ʃtat/, Spiel /ʃpiːl/.
• ng is the single sound /ŋ/, with no /ɡ/ after it: Finger /fɪŋɐ/.
• l is always the clear l of leaf, never the dark l that English puts at the end of milk.

You will also see /r/ written for the German r. That is the trilled variant, common in Bavaria and in much of Austria and Switzerland; the uvular /ʁ/ is heard almost everywhere else (Standard German phonology, section "Consonants").

Affricates (3)

An affricate is a stop that opens straight into a fricative. It takes two symbols to write, but it counts as one sound.

English has /pf/ only across a syllable break (cupful) and uses /ts/ mostly at the end of a word (cats). German puts both at the start. German z is always /ts/, never the /z/ of English zoo: Zeit /t͡saɪ̯t/ starts like the end of cats. For Pferde /pfeːɐ̯də/, close your lips for the /p/ and release it straight into /f/, with no vowel in between.

Vowels (20)

Full vowels (15)

German vowels come in long and short pairs, and the length changes the word. The mark ː means long. The short vowels are also a little more open than their long partners, so /ɪ/ is not just a quick /iː/.

The spelling tells you the length most of the time. A doubled vowel, a vowel followed by h, and ie are long: Tee, Bahn, Kuh, Liebe. A vowel before a double consonant is short: Bett, kommen.

German /eː/ and /oː/ are pure vowels. English day and go slide towards a y or a w at the end; the German vowels hold still. /ɛː/ is the least stable sound on the chart: it often merges into /eː/, and Wikipedia notes the distinction is kept especially in southern varieties (Standard German phonology, section "Phonemic status of /ɛː/").

Reduced vowels (2)

Neither vowel ever carries stress. /ə/ is the same schwa as in English sofa. /ɐ/ is lower and more open, and it is how German says an unstressed -er. Bitte (please) and bitter (bitter) differ in this one vowel.

Diphthongs (3)

The small arch under the second symbol (ɪ̯, ʊ̯, ʏ̯) marks the end of a glide rather than a vowel of its own. /aɪ/ is spelled ei or ai, /aʊ/ is au, and /ɔʏ/ is eu or äu: Häuser /hɔʏ̯zɐ/. ie is not a diphthong at all; it is the long /iː/ of Liebe.

Word stress

German stress is kinder than English stress. The traditional rule, and a reliable one for learners, is that the stress falls on the first syllable of the stem. Capital letters mark the stressed syllable below.

• Simple native words: MUT-ter, GAR-ten, AR-beit.
• The inseparable prefixes be-, ge-, er-, ver-, zer-, ent- and emp- are never stressed, so the stress moves to the stem: be-KOM-men, Ge-SCHICH-te, ver-GES-sen.
• The separable prefixes ab-, an-, auf-, aus- and ein- take the stress: AN-fang, AUS-gang, AUF-ste-hen.
• Compounds put the main stress on their first part: BAHN-hof, WÖR-ter-buch, KIN-der-gar-ten.
• Many loanwords stress the last syllable: Mu-SIK, Ho-TEL, Stu-DENT, Na-TUR. Verbs in -ieren stress the ie: stu-DIE-ren.

In a transcription the stress mark ˈ goes in front of the stressed syllable, and a lower mark ˌ shows a secondary stress, which the second part of a compound usually carries. The prefix rules come from Standard German phonology, section "Stress", which also notes that recent analyses describe the main stress as falling on one of the last three syllables rather than the first syllable of the stem.

Reduction: final devoicing, the vocalised r and schwa

Three processes change what the spelling suggests, and all three show up in the tables above.

Final devoicing

At the end of a word or syllable, German b, d, g lose their voice and are said as /p/, /t/, /k/. The spelling keeps the voiced letter because related forms have it, and there the sound comes back.

This is the norm in northern Germany and in standard pronunciation dictionaries. Wikipedia's article notes it does not happen in the varieties of southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland (section "Coda devoicing").

The vocalised r: /ɐ/ and [ɐ̯]

After a vowel, the German r often stops being a consonant. Unstressed -er becomes the vowel /ɐ/. After a long vowel, and in the prefixes er-, ver- and zer-, the r becomes a short glide [ɐ̯]. Before a vowel it is a consonant again. Wikipedia describes the /ɐ/ of -er as common to all German-speaking areas except Switzerland.

If you speak a rhotic English, the fix is to drop the tongue-tip r completely at the end of besser and Bier. Nothing curls; the vowel just opens.

Unstressed /ə/

Every unstressed final -e is schwa, and so is the e in -en, -el, be- and ge-: bitte /bɪtə/, Leben /leːbən/, bekommen /bəkɔmən/, Geschichte /ɡəʃɪçtə/. A final -e is never silent the way English final e is, so bitte has two syllables.

In everyday speech the schwa before n or l often drops and the consonant carries the syllable on its own, written [n̩] or [l̩]. Leben then sounds close to "LAY-bn".

The five sounds English speakers miss

Five sounds on the chart have no English counterpart. Our guide to pronouncing German with IPA has mouth-position drills for each; here is the short version, with the word pairs that train your ear.

1. /ç/, the ich-Laut

ich /ʔɪç/, Licht /lɪçt/, Milch /mɪlç/. Put your tongue where it is for the y of yes, then push air through without voice. The nearest English sound is /ʃ/, and that is the one to avoid: ich is not "ish". German uses /ç/ after front vowels and after consonants. More examples are on the /ç/ sound page.

2. /x/, the ach-Laut

After a, o, u and au, the same ch moves back to the soft palate: Buch /buːx/, Nacht /naxt/. It is the sound of Scottish loch, a rasp rather than a /k/. Because the choice depends on the vowel before it, a plural with an umlaut switches the sound:

This distribution is described in Wikipedia's Standard German phonology, section "Ich-Laut and ach-Laut". The /x/ sound page has more words.

3. ü: /yː/ and /ʏ/

Say ee, then round your lips tightly without moving your tongue. The nearest English vowel is the /uː/ of too, and it changes the word:

The short /ʏ/ is the same shape, held briefly and a little more open: fünf /fʏnf/, Mütter /mʏtɐ/. The /y/ sound page shows the same vowel in French words.

4. ö: /øː/ and /œ/

Say the pure /eː/ of Tee, then round your lips. Without the rounding, schön comes out close to "schen"; with the tongue pulled back, it turns into schon.

Höhle and Hölle show that length matters for ö as much as for any other vowel. The /ø/ sound page shows the same vowel in French words.

5. /ʁ/, the uvular r

rund /ʁʊnt/, Brot /bʁoːt/, grün /ɡʁyːn/. The back of the tongue rises towards the uvula and the air rubs through the gap, like a quiet gargle. The English r is made with the front of the tongue instead, so it sounds out of place in a German word. At the end of a syllable the German r usually turns into a vowel, as the reduction section shows. The /ʁ/ sound page has the same r in French words.

Convert your own text

One word per sound is enough to learn the chart. To check real sentences, paste them into the German to IPA converter and read the transcription against the tables above: look for /ʃt/ where you see st, /t/ where a word ends in d, and /ɐ/ where it ends in er.

IPAtics shows the IPA for any text you select, in any app.