If you can notice that the word has a long Ä, then you should pronounce the silent “h” even if it is not written there. It’s difficult to differentiate between the short and long Ä, but a general rule of thumb could be that the word has a long Ä if there is a letter “h” after the umlaut. Start with the Short Ä and lengthen it + add a silent Hĭeutsch und Englisch sind sich sehr ähnlich.
A WITH UMLAUT IN WORD HOW TO
So to be able to learn how to pronounce German umlauts, we have to try and approximate the sounds using existing words. That is because there are no equivalent sounds in English that sound the same as the umlauts in German. German umlauts are highly useful in the language, but for non-native speakers, they are difficult sounds to master. Instead of holding a sound too long, you will say it quicker for short umlauts, while for long umlauts, you will have to hold the sound for a bit. The difference between short and long umlauts is that the sounds you make while saying them will just differ in length. The variations are for “short” umlauts and “long umlauts” This is to distinguish between different words and it makes a difference in pronunciation. To make matters more complicated, each of these umlauts has two variations. They are crucial in being grammatically correct and pronouncing the words right. Umlauts are characterized by the two dots on top of the letter and they are very useful for learning German. There are three German umlauts in addition to the 26 letters of the alphabet. So those sounds became “aj”, “oj”, and “uj”.įurther down in time, the sounds evolved and are now the three German umlauts, which are written as “ae”, “oe”, and “ue”. So to make things easier for themselves, people initially started pronouncing the “i” as “j”. The umlauts are more common when the word contains two vowels one after the other, with the second vowel being “i”.įor example, saying the sound “ai”, “oi”, or “ui” is more difficult because the first letter is pronounced by a sound in the front of the mouth, while the “i” is pronounced in the back. For example, if we say two vowels with one in the front part of the mouth and the other in the far back of the mouth, it will require us to put more effort than if we pronounced them closer together.īy trying to pronounce these vowels together, the Germanic language got umlauts. This means that one of the sounds was changed to make another similar sound that is easier to say. Umlauts are assimilations or vowel harmonies.
When it is very difficult for two sounds to connect to one another, we try to make them easier and simplify them. Learning a new language is difficult, especially if it has sounds which your mouth might not have been used to pronouncing. These additional letters are called umlauts and this article will explain what they are and how to pronounce them. More specifically, the three additional letters of its alphabet make it quite unique. One interesting characteristic that the German language has is its letters.