German Pronunciation Video 2: The German Vowels and the IPA

This is the second of a 3-part series on German pronunciation. The goal is to quickly familiarize you with the sounds of German and the IPA symbols for those sounds. You'll then be able to learn them faster, either through your own studies or through my pronunciation trainers. Enjoy!

[deafvacationoncuba-getting]

Dear Gabriel, my name is Kay and I am a nativ german teacher. I am teaching actually refugees from Siria. So I was looking for good videos about german pronounciation. And for me its very funny to find out, that your videos, altough you are not a nativ speaker are better, more practical then most of the german videos. And your way of didactic presentation is absolutely great. Chapeau and my compliments for you! Just in one point I want to correct you: Since many years in german linguistic sciences there was talked about "long" and "short" vowels like for example the "o" in" O"fen (oven) and k"o"mmen (to come), but the categorys SHORT and LONG are categorys of time, but in fact there is nearly no diffence in the duration of pronounciation. The main difference between both "o" you find in the way of how you built the "o" in your mouth. If yo say "Ofen" you built the o between the middle end the front of your mouth and you put your lips your lips together like you wanna kiss somebody. Because of that, newer language scientists call that kind of "o" closed vowel (geschlossener Vokal) in opposite to an opend vowel (offener Vokal), like you use the "o" in "kommen" (to come). To built that "o" you have to open your mouth and you built the "o" in the back of the mouth. So the main difference between both "o" is in sound quality and the way you built the o in your mouth and not in the duration. By my experiences to put the focus on that difference makes more sence for the students. But this is just a small correction. General I feel very enthousiastic about your videos and I will send your youtube link of them to all of my refugee friends. Enjoy your weekend and lots of chears, Kay from Ostseebad Rerik in Germany

[fabiennesandkuhler]

I'm German and although this was not the reason you made this video, I find it very helpful for learning the IPA and English pronunciation. Also, your German pronunciation is spot on!

[WeisserPaladin]

Okay, first of all, wow! You nailed the pronounciation better than most Germans do. Respect!

Also, wow! As a native German, we never learned about the "rounded vowels" the way you explained them. Actually, we first learn to pronounce them correctly (which is near impossible as almost all local dialects change the way they sound), then we learn how to write them (as in "ä" or "ae"), and then we try to figure out why it's "ae", by quickly voicing out "a" and "e" in a weird diphthong, until we think "close enough". Now you're telling me "ö" has nothing to do with "o"? Mind blown. I have to admit I didn't really accept that part, as in "it didn't click with me", but the way you described the phonetic basics around it it all seems to make sense.

Thank you for this great video!

[mohammadbayrakdar]

you are a legend my friend, even German language teachers doesn't know about this stuff.
I wanted to make my German accent better and you helped me a lot...
Arabic have only 3-6 vowels that make the German vowels a bit hard for us.
Thanks a lot!!

[harrison]

Some rounded vowels:
4:28 - yː
4:44 - œ
5:23 - ʏ
5:43 - øː

[iluvdng]

Very nice. My mother tongue is not English, so I ignored a lot of the tips for English speakers. and just listened to how I'm supposed to pronounce the vowels etc. Great video!

[muffinman]

As a german when you said the difference between "e" and "i" or "o" and "u" is really tiny I was like "huh?". To me the difference is big and obvious but that goes to show how it matters if you are familiar with those sounds to recognize them.

On the other hand many of us german speakers don't realize there is difference between the rhotic r and the english "w" sound. Or that you can end a word on a d without turning it into a t which for english speakers sounds obvious.

It's amazing how we humans can make distinctions between two sounds made by moviing the tongue a tiny bit intuitively just by being exposed to those sounds enough.

[javirezio]

I wish there were an explanation like this one but for all the languages! Bravo!!
Since I started studying it for English pronunciation (given that there isn't a better way to learn the pronunciation of a non phonetic language) I love the IPA system... This comparison was so helpful!

[dudumachado]

In Portuguese we have the sound"[ɐ"] and I can say that is practically the same as "ʌ" even though they have different symbols in the IPA. looking forward to learning German

[papisaoco]

This is the best explanation I’ve seen so far with the the details of the placements of the tongue and the images that really help to wrap your brain around the minor differences in the sounds. Awesome video

[vladislavzedano]

Thank you very much for your knowledge.

All the possible vowel sounds in Germanic languages (English included) come as a big challenge for me being native in Russian and Spanish, but your video made with dedication has helped make it easier!

[AwakeandAware]

Outstanding job
You covered everything 🎉
Phonetics
How to create vowels with mouth diagrams
Similarly and differences with English
Meaning and Picture of the words
It is a well formatted and articulated Video
Thanks for your thoughts, time and efforts; it definitely goes a long way 🙏🏼❤️

[thetoxicsamovar]

thanks for the palatogramms you used (also in other videos), I will definitely make use of them

[radomyrz]

I wish you knew how helpful this series of video were for me as for the complete beginner today. I hope ill come back again and again sooner in order to settle confidence of proper pronounce, in order to have the video as a constant guide, without doubts useful

[hbowman]

/ʌ/ isn't a thing in US English like this. Geoff Lindsey has a good video on the subject. USAns instead have stressed schwa. For instance, both vowels in "above" are schwa, while in southern British English, only the unstressed vowel is a schwa.

Thanks so much for this video. Really helpful. I don't like or study German but even still pronunciation is something really interesting for me.

[ramzy-]

Great video for German pronunciation. thank you so much.

[reyne]

I saw in another video that german has 16-20 vowels...now as a German, I thought we had 8 + a few compound vocals and rather drastic regional differences. It never crossed my mind that the written u for example technically represents more than one vowel!

[c.e.]

Wow this was a real masterclass 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[SaiTangHuang]

omg.. incredible. I thought German was strictly phonetic. But after seeing this... I'm a bit baffled! like how can you tell that there are two different sounds of ö? I'm a beginner German learner btw, so I obviously had no clue. I think I can tell Bühne and Stück are different ü, but ölfarbe and öffnung, I just can't tell them apart at all, I mean the way you pronounce it sounds the same to my ear. And I would have pronounced them the same. Maybe I'm just not trained well enough to notice the difference. What also baffles me is "Unke" and "book". They sound so different to me but somehow they're both "ʊ"! For example: unter, unglaublich, etc. (ʊ) to me just sounds like "um" in Portuguese and even "un" in Spanish (denoted with "u" in IPA), so again, I'm wrong thinking they have the same pronunciation! But at any rate in my mind these should all be completely different from "book". Confused...