© 2000–2001 Mike Wills Learning Services

German sound	Equivalent English sound	German example
a (short)	‘u’ in fun	danke
a (long)	‘a’ in father	Vater
e (short)	‘e’ in get	wenn
e (long)	‘a’ in bathe	geht
_e	‘a’ at the end of banana	danke
i (short)	‘i’ in bit	ich
i (long)	‘i’ in machine	Kilo
o (short)	‘o’ in not	Sonne
o (long)	‘aw’ in crawl	Hose
u (short)	‘u’ in put	Mutter
u (long)	‘u’ in rule	Schule
ä	‘a’ in care	spät
ö	‘ea’ in earth	schön
ü / y	‘u’ in music but without the ‘y_’ sound	über / Typ
ai / ei	‘i’ in mine	Kai / ein
au	‘ow’ in cow	Frau
eu / äu	‘oy’ in boy	Freund
ie	‘ee’ in feed	Sie
b	‘b’ in bed	bett
_b	‘p’ at the end of pulp	Kalb
d	‘d’ in dog	der
_d	‘t’ at the end of can’t	Hand
g	‘g’ in go	Geld
_ig	‘h’ in huge	fertig
h	‘h’ in hole	holen
vowel + h	Silent but lengthens vowel	sehen
j	‘y’ in yes	ja
s	‘s’ in sea	Haus
s + vowel	‘z’ in zoo	singen
v	‘f’ in fine	Vater
w	‘v’ in very	wenn
z	‘ts’ in tsar	zehn
ch	‘h’ in huge	ich
a / au / o / u + ch	‘ch’ in loch	lachen
chs	‘x’ in axe	wachsen
qu	‘kv’	Qualität
sch	‘sh’ in shoe	Schule
sp_	‘shp’	spielen
ss / ß	‘ss’ in less	müssen
st_	‘sht’	stein
th	‘t’ in take	Apotheke