Learning a second language is a great adventure; like traveling in a foreign land. Like traveling, it also requires effort and is sometimes a chore. This course is designed to help the serious student start learning German. If you are only interested in picking up some phrases and greetings, then concentrate on the chapter, Greetings, Sayings, and Set Expressions, near the end of the course. The following introduction is written to give you some idea of what is involved in learning German and perhaps a few pointers on how to go about it.

      To learn a foreign language you must learn the meanings of a large number of words and phrases. Although there are good German-English dictionaries on the Internet, you should buy a fairly substantial pocket-size paper-back dictionary. Every time you look up a German word, put a little pencil-mark next to it. If you look up a word and there are already four pencil marks there, then spend some time with it. Write it out. Learn it as part of a phrase. Think of (or look up) several words that rhyme with it. Lightly write the word and phrase on the inside of the cover of the dictionary. Try to remember the word and phrase an hour later. If you can't, then look inside the cover and work on it some more. If you can remember it the next morning, erase it from the cover. Don't be discouraged if you have to look it up again.

     Learning the meanings of words and phrases is necessary, but not enough. You must also learn how words function together to form thoughts. There are certain signals which show these word-functions. These signals, and the functions they show, constitute the grammar of a language. A grammatically correct sentence is one in which the function of each word is clear. There are eight grammatical functions which are signaled; namely: case, gender, number, tense, person, mood, voice, and comparison. The signals are either inflections (changing the word or adding something to it) or word order. To understand a foreign language, you must learn (either by memory or osmosis) how these eight functions are signaled. In my opinion, the memory approach is faster for adults and in the long run less frustrating. It is not a huge memory feat, but it does require a certain effort. Once the rules are learnt, practice will teach you how to use them with little or no thought. But in the beginning their application must be a conscious process.

     These eight functions are pretty much the same in all languages, but the signals are not. If you've learned English "at your mother's knee" (by osmosis so-to-speak) you may not know explicitly how your own language works. You may speak and write more or less correctly because mistakes "just don't sound right." If this is the case, you will have an extra burden learning a foreign language, but it really isn't that complex. The chapter, "Once Over Light", is written especially to provide the necessary background in grammar and grammatical terms used in the course. Grammatical terms will be defined again in the glossary section.

     What do we mean by signals and functions? In English we signal a word's plurality (function) usually by attaching an "s" to its end. Why did I stick an apostrophe-s on "word" in the previous sentence? It doesn't make"word" plural. It signals its ownership of the word "plurality." We signal the past tense of verbs usually by adding "-ed". Such change in words to signal their function is called "inflection." Old English (Anglo Saxon) was more highly inflected than modern English. Modern German still is. English lost many inflection signals and replaced them with a more rigid word order and greater use of prepositions such as "for," "to," "by," etc. Some languages are even less inflected than English. Chinese, for example, pronounce the word for "he," "she," "him," "her", and "it" similarly (althought the written character shows the sex in modern Chinese). The same word is used for "they," "them," "his" and "hers" when followed by another character.

     The basic rules of German grammar are relatively simple. A quick-learner can probably memorize them in a day or two. However, it will take practice and discipline to apply them in speech. A good habit is to mentally parse German sentences (be aware of how each word is signaled) when you read. At the same time read aloud to yourself.

     German, like English, has grammatical irregularities or exceptions. For example, in English we form the past tense by adding "-ed" as noted above. Verbs like "to think" and "to sink" are exceptions. Many of these "irregular" verbs are the same in German and English (itself originally a west German language called Anglo-Saxon). Fortunately, these exceptions tend to follow set patterns (grammatical rules) but a certain amount of pure memorization is required.

     All languages have idioms (set expressions whose meaning is not predictable from the constituent parts). English is rich in idioms... "to kick the bucket" ... "to catch cold" are examples. Idioms can be more subtle; for example "there is..." or "there are..." is an English idiom. "there is" usually doesn't mean "Over there exist something." German (and French and Spanish, etc.) has its own idiomatic way of expressing the same thing. You will have to learn such idiomatic expressions.

     German word-order is not the same as English, although there are a lot of similarities. Mark Twain, in The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court said "Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth." Modern German (and well-written classical German) is not so bad as Twain implies. By the way, Twain's delightful essay, "The Awful German Language," found at various places on the Internet, is worth reading, but don't let his humor discourage you. The most unusual part of German word-order for English speakers is that the verb comes at the end of subordinate clauses; otherwise it is located in the second grammatical position in the normal sentence much like in English. German has many compound separable verbs usually formed by a preposition and a regular verb, something like " to break down" or " to show up" in English. The difference is that the prepositional part of the verb normally lands at the end of the clause.

     Nouns in English have lost their gender although gender is still found in the pronouns ("he," "she," "it," etc.) and words which have a sex gender attached, like "man," "woman," "wife." Inanimate objects are all neuter. The only exception I can think of is a ship, which is sometimes referred to as "she." All German nouns are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. This is not the same thing as sex in English. There are some rules which help you remember which gender a noun belongs to, but in many cases you will just have to learn the gender when you learn the noun. When you learn a new noun, learn it as part of a phrase which shows its gender. This will help you remember its meaning as well as its gender and make the word easier to use in speech. The gender of the noun is indicated by the article (definite or indefinite) or the adjective (if any) associated with the noun. Once you get into the language, remembering the gender of nouns will not be as much of a problem as it seems to an English speaking student at first. With a little effort, you will pick it up. Learn phrases.

     The most unusual part of the German language for an English speaker involves the cases. Cases signal how nouns are used in clauses. Unlike Latin, German has only four cases and, unlike Latin, the German noun itself doesn't change much to signal its case. The articles (definite and indefinite) and/or the adjectives change to show the case of the nouns they modify. Like English, the German pronouns do change. For example "I, me, mine,""he him, his" show case. Like English, a noun (or pronoun) can be the subject, the direct object, the indirect object of a clause, or it can show possession of (modify) another noun. Take the clause:

"The man gave the boy's sister a flower."

"The man" is the subject of the clause.
"the boy's" shows possession of the sister by the boy.
"sister" is the indirect object of the clause.
"a flower" is the direct object of the clause.

Prepositions (such as in, or, at, through, for) can have objects as well as verbs. In German, the case of the object of a preposition depends on what preposition is used and how it is used. When you change a noun or pronoun (or its article or adjective) to show its four cases you are said to "decline" it. Mark Twain quotes someone as saying, "he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective." Unfortunately, the different genders are not declined exactly alike.

"Once Over Light"

     This chapter comprises a brief summary of English grammar and grammar in general. You can go straight on to the next chapter if you feel well grounded in English grammar and grammatical terminology. The Internet has several WWW sites giving more complete grammatical reviews of English than I shall attempt here.

     Much weighty thought has been given to grammar and new ways of analyzing language. Nevertheless, the grammatical analysis and terminology devised by Dionysius Thrax (170-90BC) and passed down to us through Latin still serves as a model. He gave us the following definitions:

• A sentence is a combination of words expressing a complete thought.
• A noun is a part of discourse indicating a person or thing.
• A pronoun is a word indicative of definite persons and used in place of a noun.
• An article is a part of discourse (in ancient Greek, Latin, and German having case endings and) being place before nouns.
• A verb is a part of discourse with endings to show tense, person, and number, and indicating action or being acted upon.
• A preposition is a part of discourse placed before other words in a sentence (not always true in English or German).
• A conjunction is a word conjoining or connecting thought in some order and filling a gap in the expression.

Today, most grammarians group words into eight classes (parts of speech) based on their form changes, and their position, meaning, and use in the sentence. These eight classes are:

• Nouns: A part of speech that names a person, place, thing, idea, animal, quality, or action.
  
• Pronouns: A part of speech that takes the place of a noun and functions like a noun.
  
• Verbs: A part of speech that denotes action, occurrence, or state of being.
  
• Adjectives: A part of speech that modify nouns or denote a quality. Adjectives may have comparative and superlative forms.
  
• Adverbs: A part of speech that modify verbs or adjectives.
  
• Prepositions: A part of speech that links or relates a noun or nominal to some other word in the sentence.
  
• Conjunctions: A part of speech used to connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences.
  
• Interjections: A part of speech expressing a simple exclamation.
  

Nouns, Articles, and Pronouns:
A noun is the name of a person, animal, place, thing, subject, quality, idea, action, or state. It may be the subject, the direct object, or the indirect object of a verb or preposition. It may also ""possess" (or modify) another noun.
An article is a word that precedes a noun to identify it as a noun rather than describe it. It may limit, individualize, give definitiveness of indefinitiveness to the noun.
      The definite article in English is the. It make the noun specific.
      The indefinite article is a, or an. It makes a single noun general.
A pronoun is a word that takes the place or function of a noun. There are seven types of pronouns:

• Personal Pronouns: For example, I, you, he, she, it, they, me, him, her, mine, his, your).

Personal pronouns may be first person (I/we), second person (thou/you), or third person(he, she, it/they).


• Relative Pronoun: For example "he is the one who spoke." Here who is a relative pronoun.
  
• Indefinite pronoun: For example "Each of them will become somebody." Here each and somebody are indefinite pronouns.
  
• Intensive pronoun: For example "He said so himself." In this case himself is an intensive pronoun.
  
• Reflexive pronoun: For example "He shot himself." Here himself is a reflexive pronoun.
  
• Demonstrative pronoun: For example "Those are better than these." Here both Those and these are demonstrative pronouns.
  
• Interrogative pronoun: For example "Who are they and what do they want?" Here Who and what are interrogative pronouns.

Number: Nouns in English can be singular or plural. Plural is usually shown by adding -s. Some nouns are the same in singular and plural (fish, deer, sheep). Pronouns can show their number (I/we, he/they). Interrogative pronouns (who/what) and the second-person you do not show number.
Gender: Nouns in English have lost their gender except for certain professions (Aviator/aviatrix, waiter/waitress) and animals (stallion/mare, dog/bitch). Most given names (which are also nouns) show gender (John, Paul/Ann, Mary). To the English speaker, therefore, gender is more closely associated with biological gender than it is to speakers of languages in which all nouns have a gender. Singular third-person pronouns (he, she, it) retain gender in English.
Case: A noun or pronoun can perform various functions. It can be the subject of a verb, an direct object, an indirect object, or it can possess another noun.

Take the simple sentence: "John sees Paul."

"John" is the subject of the sentence. "Paul" is the direct object of the verb "sees." How do we know? Word order! The subject precedes the verb. The object follows it. We say that John is the subject or in the nominative case and Paul is the direct object or in the accusative case.

Now take: "John sees him."

Here there is an additional signal. Inflection! "Him" is the objective or the accusative case of the nominative he. Changing a word or adding something to its root to signal its grammatical function (case, gender, number, tense, person, mood, voice, or comparison) is called inflection.

Now consider: "John shows him Mary."

Now Mary is the direct object of the verb shows. John is still the subject. Now "him" is the indirect object of the verb "shows" and is in what we called the dative case.

"John shows Mary to him."

In English the indirect object (here "him") is often signaled by making it the object of the preposition to.

One more example: "He shows him his wife."

"He" is the subject of the sentence and is in the subject or "nominative" case. Here "his wife" is clearly the direct object of the verb "shows" and "him" is still the indirect object. But what about "his"? "His" is the possessive (or "genitive") case of "he"

These are the four cases used in German:

the subject or nominative case,
the direct object or accusative case,
the indirect object or dative case,
and finally, the possessive or genitive case.

When we inflect all the cases of a noun or pronoun, we are said to decline it. All the declined forms of a noun or pronoun are called a declension.

Verbs:
Verbs denote action, occurrence, or existence (state or being). An infinitive is the name of a verb(i.e., a noun). In English the infinitive form is usually made up by the word to plus the present form of the verb (called the stem of the infinitive). Verbs may be inflected to signal person, mood, voice, and tense. When we inflect a verb to show its various forms in a prescribed order, we are said to conjugate it. This is analogous to "declining" a noun. Verbs may be either transitive or intransitive. Transitive verbs express an action that may be carried over from an agent (subject) to a direct object. Intransitive verbs indicate an action limited to the subject or complete in itself without a direct object. Some verbs can be both ("the pilot flies the airplane" but "the bird flies").
Person: Verbs may be inflected to signal their person (subject). The "number" of the person may be singular or plural. The first person singular refers to "I" which, by convention in English, is capitalized. The second person singular refers to "thou" which is rarely used in modern English except by Quakers when speaking to each other. "He," "she," and "it" are the third person singular pronouns. First person plural refers to the pronoun "we". The second person plural refers to "you" and third person plural refers to "they". In many languages an honorific is used in directly addressing other people formally. In English the second person plural ("you") was used in this way, and is now used under all conditions. The Germans use the third person plural (capitalized) in formal discourse and retain the use of the second person both singular and plural for informal discourse (ie., talking to school mates or children or God).
Mood: Verbs may be in one of four moods in English and German. These moods are indicative, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive. The indicative mood of a verb is that of the simple statement and is the most common. This is an example:

"John is good."

The verb is (from the verb "to be") is in the indicative mood.
The imperative mood of a verb is used in giving commands. Here is an example:

"John! Be good!"

The verb Be (from the verb "to be") is in the imperative mood.
The conditional mood is used to express a condition:

"If John is good ..."

The subjunctive mood is used to express doubt. It indicates that the action of the verb is not a fact, but rather something entertained in thought as contingent or possible or viewed with doubt, desire, or will. Consider the following clauses:

" If John were good..."   "If I were king..."

The verb were (from the verb "to be") is in the subjunctive mood in the above clauses. In German, but not in English, the subjunctive mood can be used in indirect discourse implying that the speaker is only citing what someone else said. An example of indirect discourse in English would be: "Paul said that John is good. In German, the is in this sentence could be in the subjunctive mood.
Voice: Transitive verbs may be in either the active voice where the action of the verb is transferred to a direct object as in "he carries the bucket", or passive voice where the action of the verb affects the subject as in "he is carried."
Tense: Verb forms may express pass, present, or future time or duration of the action or state the verb denotes. There are different ways of classifying the number of tenses in English. If you consider progressive forms and the use of auxiliary verbs, there are twelve. Only two tenses (present and past) involve inflection of a single-word verb. These twelve tenses (with examples) are as follows:

Present  (give/gives)
Present Progressive  (am/is/are giving)
Past (or Imperfect)  (gave)
Past Progressive  (was/were giving)
Future  (will/shall give)
Future Progressive  (will be giving)
Present Perfect (or Perfect)  (have/has given)
Present Perfect Progressive  (have/has been giving)
Past Perfect (or Pluperfect)  (had given)
Past Perfect Progressive  (had been giving)
Future Perfect  (will have given)
Future Perfect Progressive  (will have been giving)

The Germans are able to do without the progressive forms and get along with only six tenses. These are:

Present
Past (or Imperfect)
Present Perfect (or Perfect)
Past Perfect (or Pluperfect)
Future
Future Perfect

All the progressive forms in English translate to the non-progressive forms of the same tense. Therefore, "I go" and "I am going" would translate the same into German.
Verbals: As noted above, an infinitive is a noun, not a verb. Such parts of speech derived from verbs are called verbals. Verbals include participles as well as infinitives. Present participles end in -ing and past participles end in -ed. Participles in English can take objects, be the object of verbs or prepositions, and be modified by adverbs. They can be adjectives or nouns (gerunds). The present participle is more restricted in German than in English. In English the present participle is used to form the progressive tenses, which do not exist in German. English also uses present participle nominally to describe the action of the verb. For example, we can say " I enjoy walking." Here German would use the infinitive instead; which, of course, we could in English also. In German, the present participle generally is used only as an adjective (i.e., "a walking man...").

Adjectives and Adverbs:
Adjectives and adverbs are modifiers. Modifiers quantify or limit the meaning of other words. Adjectives modify nouns and pronouns. Adverbs modify verbs. Adverbs also modify verbals (gerunds, infinitives, participles) and even whole clauses. Many words may serve both as adjectives and adverbs (i.e., fast, far, little, well). Many adjectives become adverbs by adding "-ly" (sudden - suddenly). Adjectives used as subject complements should not be confused with adverbs. See the following examples:

The flower smells sweet. Here sweet is an adjective used as a subject complement.
The lady smiles sweetly. Here sweetly is an adverb.

In German, adjectives are inflected to agree with the case, number, and gender of the nouns they modify. Adjectives, when used as subject complements, and adverbs are not inflected.

Prepositions and Conjunctions:
A preposition is a part of speech that links and relates a noun or nominal to some other word in a sentence. The noun it links or relates is called the object of the preposition. A preposition with its object and any modifiers is called a prepositional phrase. A phrase is a sequence of grammatically related words lacking either a subject or verb.
A conjunction is a part of speech used to connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences. There are two kinds of conjunctions.

A coordinating conjunction (such as and, or, but) joins together words or word groups (such as phrases, clauses, or sentences) of equal grammatical rank.
A subordinating conjunction (such as although, if, when) connect a dependent clause with a main clause. In German, subordinate clauses introduced by subordinating conjunctions have a word order quite different from English.

Interjections
Interjections are words expressing a simple exclamation. Examples of simple interjections in English are:

Orthography and Pronunciation

German uses the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet. In addition, German has a character (ß) called eszett (or sometimes scharfes-S). It is used in place of a voiced double s (ss) following a long vowel or diphthong. Originally it was a ligature of s and z. German also uses three umlaut vowels ( ä, ö, and ü) in both lower and upper case. The umlaut signifies a vowel plus e, and in German news groups on the Internet, words are often written this way. In very old text, these letters were printed with a very small e above them instead of the two dots (diaeresis mark).

Font Type and Script: From Gutenburg up to 1941, German was printed in a very different font (type face) than it is today. This script was (and is) called Fraktur (meaning "fractured") and is used in the title banner of this course. It is still used occasionally for signs and fancy titles just like Old English black-letter script is today.
Prior to 1941, German handwriting was very different also. This script came to be called Sütterlin after the man who formalized it for the German public school system. Here is the alphabet in Sütterlin script:

Capitalization: In modern German, all nouns, as well as proper names, are capitalized (as they were in English several hundred years ago). This makes the nouns easy to spot when parsing (determining the grammatical structure of) a sentence. Verbals and adjectives which function as nouns are also capitalized. There are a couple of nouns that can function as uninflected adjectives (ein paar meaning "a pair of.." and ein bißchen meaning " a little bit of..") which are not capitalized when so used.

The Alphabet: The modern German alphabet is as follows (sound files are in WAV format):

a

ah

g

geh

m

emm

s

ess

y

üppsilon

b

beh

h

hah

n

enn

t

teh

z

tsett

c

tseh

i

ih

o

oh

u

uh

ß

eszett

d

deh

j

jot

p

peh

v

vau

ä

äh

e

eh

k

ka

q

kuh

w

weh

ö

öh

f

eff

l

ell

r

err

x

eks

ü

üh

Pronunciation:
Vowels: English speakers, particularly Americans, tend to be careless with vowel pronunciation and get away with it. You can't do this with German. The German vowels must be as clearly and cleanly enunciated as consonants for understanding. German vowels are pronounced long or short.

Long vowels: A vowel followed by a silent h or doubled is pronounced long (fahren, wohnen, Stuhl, Boot, Seele). A vowel is usually long if its syllable is not closed by a consonant (ja, so, ha-ben, o-ben) or followed by a single consonant (schon, gut, kam). The combination ie is usually pronounced as a long i (viel, sieben). Unstressed vowels except e at the end of a word are usually pronounce long (Vati, Mutti, Sofa).
Short vowels: A stressed vowel followed by two consonants is usually pronounced short (Bett, kann, selb, hacken), but long vowels in a root form remain long even if inflected to be followed by two consonants (haben - gehabt or groß - größte). TThe vowel preceding ck is always short (Back, Lücke, locken, trocken).

a: The German long a is pronounced like the a in "father". The German short a is pronounced like the u in "hut" or in "bunt" only more open and tense.

These words are pronounced with a long a: Jahr, Abend, haben, nach.

These words are pronounced with a short a: Land, Stadt, alle, machen.

e: The German long e is pronounced like the a in "made" but longer and without gliding. The German short e is pronounced like the e in "men" or in "get". Sometimes the e is doubled to show it is long. Many German words end with a final e or er. This final e (and e in a final er) is barely voiced. It is pronounced like the final a of the English word "idea".

These words are pronounced with a long e: Reh, Leher, legen, leer.

These words are pronounced with a short e: Kette, Elch, echt, fertig.

i: The German long i is pronounced like the ee in "seed" but without gliding. The short i is pronounced like the i in "mitten". Sometimes the letter i is followed by the letter e to indicate that it is long.

These words are pronounced with a long i: Titel, ihnen, wider/wieder.

These words are pronounced with a short i: Bild, Gipfel, richtig, ich.
Note: The combination ie is almost always pronounced as a long i, but in the word Familie the ie is pronounced as two separate vowels.

o: The long o is pronounced like the o in "so" but with the lips more rounded and without gliding. The short o is pronounced like the o in "knot", or in "hot if you're British.

These words are pronounced with a long o: Boden, Wohl, Ober, rot.

These words are pronounced with a short o: Woche, Tochter, toll, bockig.

u: The long u is pronounced like the oo in "pool" or "stool" but with the lips more rounded and without gliding. The short u is pronounced like the oo in "foot".

These words are pronounced with a long u: Buch, Ufer, ruhig, hupen.

These words are pronounced with a short u: Wunsch, Luft, unter, lustig.

ä: The German long and short ä are usually pronounced like the German long and short e although some native speakers may pronounce them somewhat differently.

These words are pronounced with a long ä: Mädchen, täglich, zählen.

These words are pronounced with a short u: Kämme, Sänger, Bänder, hätte.

ö: There are no English equivalents for the German long or short ö. They are pronounced like an German e with the lips rounded. Listen to the following words.

These words are pronounced with the long ö: Gör, Kröte, krönen, böse.

These words are pronounced with the short ö: Hölle, Löffel, öffnen, können.

ü: There are no English equivalents for the German long or short ü. They are pronounced like an German i with the lips rounded. Or better, the ew of the word "yew" said in disgust with the lips rounded but tensed and no gliding. Hope that helps. Listen to the following words.

These words are pronounced with the long ü: Lüge, Tür, über, fühlen.

These words are pronounced with the short ü: Münze, drücken, dünn, tüchtig.

Diphthongs: German diphthongs are usually shorter and tenser (less glide) than English diphthongs.

ei, ai, ay, ey are all pronounced like the English word "eye" or the y in "my" or "by" or the i in "mine" or "dine".
au is pronounced like the ou in "house" or the ow in "brow" or "crown".
eu, äu are pronounced like the oy in "boy" or "annoy" or "Troy".

Careful: English speakers have a tendency to confuse the diphthong ei (pronounced "eye") with ie (pronounced "ee").

Consonants: Most German consonants are pronounced much as they are in English.. The exceptions are c, j, l, q, r, s, v, w, and z.

b: This letter is pronounced as it is in English, except a final b is pronounced more like a p. The word halb ("half") is pronounced as if it were spelled halp.
c: Except in the ligatures ch and sch, the letter c is not a genuine German letter and is used only in borrowed foreign words . Pronunciation tends to follow the original source language. Many of the borrowed words come from French. Therefore, the ch in words like Chance, Chinese, Cherub, etc. is pronounced like the ch in champagne. The initial ch in words like Chor (choir), Christ (Christian), Cafe (café), and Chromatik (chromatic) is pronounce like a k.

ch in the middle or at the end of a word is pronounced in two distinct ways.
1. a rasping sound made in the back of the mouth something like clearing the throat before you spit. The Scots use this sound to pronounce "loch" (as in Loch Ness). ch is pronounced this way when it follows a, o, or u.
Here are some examples: Buch, Sache, machen, ach!
2. a less rasping sound made more forward in the mouth when ch follows e, i, ü ö, the diphthongs ai, eu and oi or the consonants l, n, or r. This is the initial sound of the English word "human" or "humid" only slightly more aspirated. Listen to the following:
Bücher, euch, sicher, durch
chs is a separated ks sound, as in the English word "vixen". Listen to the following.
Ochse, Wachs, wachsen, sechs.
ck is pronounced k. The preceding vowel is always short.

d: This letter is pronounced as it is in English, except a final d is pronounced more like a t. The word Rad ("wheel") is pronounced as if it were spelled Rat.
g: This letter is pronounced like it usually is in English ("good", "green", etc.).

The suffix ig (used to convert a noun into an adjective) can be pronounced in various ways. The Westphalians pronounce it as if it were spelled ich (see ch #2 above). The Rhinelanders pronounce it as if it were spelled isch. Others pronounce it like the ig in "pig." Take your choice.


j: This letter is pronounced like the English initial y in "yes".
l: The German l is pronounced somewhat different than the English. Try curling the tip of your tongue up to touch just behind the top front teeth and keep the back part of the tongue lower as you pronounce it.
ng: The German n is pronounced as in English, but English speakers have a tendency to insert an extra g following an ng sound if another syllable follows. The Germans pronounce the word länger as läng-er, not läng-ger.
pf: This letter combination is pronounced very nearly like a simple f, but not quite. It is more like the pf in "stepfather". The p becomes a little explosive puff before the f. Listen to the following words:
Pfarre, Pfeffer, Pferd, Pfütze.
q: As in English, q is always followed by u in German words. The combination qu is pronounced kw (except in the borrowed word "queue"). Listen to the following words:
Quatsch! Quelle, quälen, quer.
r: Most North Germans tend to swallow their final r's to the point of nonexistence (like Bostonians or New Zealanders who pronounce "car" as cah). South Germans and Austrians almost tongue trill their r's like a Scotch "burr".
s: A single s at the beginning of or in the middle of a word is pronounced like the English z. At the end of a word a s is pronounced as it is in English. A double s (ss) is pronounced like the English s although it may be broken into separate syllables (was-ser). A double s following a long vowel is represented by an eszett (ß).
Note: There has recently been a (highly controversial) semi-official reform of German spelling in which the use of eszetts (and other conventions) has been changed. The usages given in this course refer to German as it has existed for nearly the last hundred years.

sch represents the sound sh as in "shoe", "shred", "ship", or "shadow".
sp and st at the beginning of a words or following verb prefixes are pronounced schp or scht. In the body or at the end of a word they are pronounced as they would be in English. Listen to the following:
Span, spinnen, versprechen, Spur but Wespe, Haspel, Raspel.
Storch, Stoß, Stuhl, Sturm but Gäste, Kasten, Dienstag, Kunst

v: This letter is pronounced like f

except in a few borrowed words (Vase, Veranda, Verb) in which it is pronounced like English.


w: This letter is pronounced like v in English,
z: This letter is pronounced like ts in "sits" or "tsunami". Listen to the following:
Herz, Zimmer, plötzlich, zerbrechen

Syllables and Stress: German syllables begin with a consonants if one is present and divide before single consonants or between double consonants. Each syllable is pronounced clearly and distinctly, often separated by a glottal stop. There is no slurring together of syllables or liaison between words (if you're trying to sound sober). Usually the first syllable of a word is stressed. The major exceptions to this rule are inseparable verb prefixes such as ent-, er-, ver-,, zer-, and ge- which prefixes past participles. Separable verb prefixes are stressed when attached to the verb. Compound nouns have a secondary stress on their component parts. Words of foreign origin such as The'ater and Exekuti'on bring their foreign stress with them.

Accents: Apart from separate languages like Low(land) German/Frisian and Swiss German, there are many dialect of High(land) German or Hochdeutsch; the language this course tries to address. Some of the more extreme of these dialects are Saxon, Swabian, and the dialects spoken in rural Bavaria and Cologne. Other big cities have language idiosyncrasies. In Hamburg the sp's and st's are pronounced more like they are in English. The Berliners have a tendency to pronounce the past participle prefix ge- as if it were spelled ye- (as in Old English [Anglo-Saxon] where it lingered on in such forms as y-ronne and y-falle in Chaucer's Middle English). Being human, a German enjoys speaking his own dialect and disparages or laughs at the dialects of others.
As indicated already, there are some differences between the high German spoken in the North and that spoken in the South. There is also a bit of animosity between North and South Germans, somewhat akin to that found between Northerners and Southerners in the United States. There is also some friction between the Westerners and the Easterners (those living in the former DDR). As a tourist, or foreigner living in Germany, you shouldn't worry whether you're speaking with a northern or southern accent, but it is always best to try to speak like those around you.