Learn how to pronounce the German letter combinations sch, sp and st
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| Judith: Hallo, [ich heiße] Judith. |
| Chuck: Hi, I am Chuck. |
| Judith: [Sie hören Germanpod101.com]! |
| Chuck: You are listening to germanpod101.com this is accent improvement series, lesson 11. |
| Judith: [Willkommen]! |
| Chuck: Welcome to another lesson by germanpod101. |
| Judith: This lesson is one part of the accent improvement series. |
| Chuck: You can find the rest of the lessons at |
| Judith: Germanpod101.com. |
| Chuck: Our goal in the accent improvement series is to help you improve your pronunciation so that you sound more and more like a native speaker. |
| Judith: However, to really improve it’s not enough that you listen to the lessons. |
| Chuck: You also need to practice the pronunciation of the words and phrases over and over on your own. |
| Judith: To practice the phrases, go to the germanpod101.com, access the learning center and use the line by line dialogue tool. |
| Chuck: If you find that you have a lot of trouble with one particular word however, go to the vocabulary section of the learning center and listen to the pronunciation of just that one word over and over. |
| Judith: In the learning center, you can also record your own pronunciation and compare it to mine. |
| Chuck: Today we will look at how to pronounce the letter combinations sch, st and sp in German. |
| Judith: Unfortunately, they are not completely straightforward. |
| Chuck: So how about you give us a sample phrase so we can hear them. |
| Judith: Sure. [Hastig schauten die Spieler auf und hörten die Staunachrichten]. |
| Chuck: The players looked up in a hurry and listened to the traffic news. Say that sentence again please but this time a bit slower. |
| Judith: I will try [Hastig schauten die Spieler auf und hörten die Staunachrichten]. |
| Chuck: This is also very important because this is a phrase you are very likely to use. Now the German letter combination sch is pronounced just like the English sh. So it’s easy and we – I really don’t need so much time dissecting that. |
| Judith: However there are two other German letter combinations that require our attention. One is st and the other sp. |
| Chuck: Yeah, be careful with this. I hear a lot of English speakers making this mistake. When st occurs at the beginning of a word, it’s pronounced like a combination of sch or in English sh and t. |
| Judith: Sh and t. For example, try the words [stehen] or stark. |
| Chuck: Don’t pronounce them [stehen] or stark, it just sounds really horrible. However when this letter combination occurs in the middle of a word or at the end of it, it’s pronounced like [ß] or in English s and t. |
| Judith: St [hastig] or [Du hast]. |
| Chuck: You probably won’t have a problem with that because well, that’s the way you usually pronounce st right but it’s a similar pronunciation with sp. Sp at the beginning of the word sounds like a combination of [sh] and p. |
| Judith: For example, in the word [spielen]. |
| Chuck: However in the middle of a word sp is pronounced like [ß] or the English s and p. |
| Judith: [Sp] For example [Despot]. There is no word with sp at the end. |
| Chuck: And special case are the words with prefixes. |
| Judith: If the base word is pronounced with [sp] or [st] sound, this is still the case with the other prefix even though the letter combination is technically in the middle of the word now. |
| Chuck: It would just be too crazy to suddenly pronounce it differently and then revert it back when the prefix splits off and so on. |
| Judith: For example [anstehen, Beispiel] and [beanpruchen]. Study today’s sample phrase which contains several examples of the [st, sp] and also cases where these letter combinations are pronounced [st] or [sp]. |
| Chuck: Can you remind us what that sample sentence was again? |
| Judith: [Hastig schauten die Spieler auf und hörten die Staunachrichten]. |
| Chuck: Now please go to the learning center at germanpod101.com and practice. |
| Judith: And be sure to tune in again for our next lesson. |
| Chuck: See you next time. |
| Judith: [Bis nächstes Mal]! |
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