Lesson No.1 - How To Learn German Alphabets

Deutsche Alphabete

Learning hint:

          Acquiring a good German accent is about more than knowing the alphabet, it’s very important to say words and phrases out loud on a regular basis. Listen as often as you can to the characters in German Steps and make a concentrated effort to imitate them closely.

In English, to clarify a word's pronunciation and spelling, it says "B for Ball". But in German they use names to spell and those names are fixed.

Letter	Pronunciation	Word
A	ah	Anton
B	beh	Berta
C	tseh	Cäsar
D	deh	Dora
E	eh	Emil
F	eff	Friedrich
G	geh	Gustav
H	ha	Heinrich
I	ee	Ida
J	yot	Julius
K	kah	Kaufmann
L	ell	Ludwig
M	emm	Martha
N	enn	Nordpol
O	oh	Otto
P	peh	Paula
Q	kuh	Quelle
R	err	Richard
S	ess	Samuel
T	teh	Theodor
U	uh	Ulrich
V	fow	Viktor
W	veh	Wilhelm
X	iks	Xanthippe
Y	upsilon	Ypsilon
Z	tset	Zacharias

• Umalut:

ä	A-Umlaut	Ärger
ö	O-Umlaut	Ökonom
ü	U-Umlaut	Übermut
ß	Eszett

      

    In German, proper names are used to clarify letters when a word is being spelled out – the equivalent of using ‘Alpha, Bravo, Charlie …. Yankee, Zulu’ in English. The opposite is the phonetic pronunciation of the letters of the German alphabet plus the corresponding name. As I wrote above.

Practice it daily and phrases out loud on a regular basis.