- It's Called an Umlaut
Ever
notice those two dots that sometimes appear over vowels in German
words? The umlaut is used to alter the sound of a vowel and to change
a word's meaning - sometimes slightly, as in plural form or sometimes
more significantly, as in the comparison of an adjective.
- Nouns are Capitalized
When
you see half a dozen capital letters in the middle of a German
sentence, they're not typos. One of the differences between written
English and written German is that German nouns are always
capitalized.
- German Pronunciation
German
words are pronounced exactly as they are spelled (unlike in
English!). You don't ever have to wonder if the "e" at the
end of a word is silent, which it sometimes is and sometimes isn't in
English. In German it's always pronounced. You'll also be glad to
know that the German alphabet consists of the same 26 letters as the
English alphabet.
- Stress in German Words
A
general rule for determining the stressed syllable in German is this:
With words of more than one syllable, the emphasis is usually placed
on the first syllable, as in the
words, Blei stift , Sch ö n heit and Fra ge .
- Vowels, Vowels and more Vowels!
Three
German vowels, "a" "o" and "u" can do a
little cross-dressing. They're sometimes written with two dots above
them - the versatile German umlaut.
Schon means
"already"; sch ö n means "pretty"
or "nice."
Ich
trage means "I carry" or "I wear"; du
tr ä gst means "you carry" or "you
wear."
When
a vowel takes an umlaut it becomes a modified vowel .
In German, vowels and modified vowels can have long vowel sounds,
which, as their name suggests, have a drawn out vowel sound (e.g.
the o sound in snow ) or shorter
vowel sounds, which have a shorter sound (e.g. the o sound
in lot ).
Generally,
a vowel is long when it is followed by an h as
in Mahl ( mahl ). It is also long
when it is doubled, as inMeer ( meyR )
and Aal ( ahl ), or when it is
followed by a single consonant, as in Wagen ( vah-guhn ).
The voweli is made into a long vowel when it is followed
by an e . In general, vowels are short when followed
by two or more consonants.
New
Consonant - ß
In
written German you'll also come across a new letter: the consonant ß
(pronounced, es-tset ). It's a combination of the
letters s and z , and is considered
a single consonant. When people can't find the ß key on their word
processor, they often write the ß as a double ess ( ss ).
In either case, it should be pronounced like ans .
