The Umlauts: ä, ö, ü
The two dots on ä, ö and ü change the vowel sound completely. Learn a simple mouth trick for each one and practise with everyday A1 words.
What the two dots do
The dots on ä, ö and ü are not accents or decoration. Each umlaut is a different vowel with its own sound, and swapping it for the plain vowel can change the word. Germans treat them as separate letters.
Umlauts also do grammatical work: many plurals are formed by adding dots, as in der Bruder (the brother) becoming die Brüder (the brothers). If you say "Bruder" when you mean "Brüder", you have said the wrong word, not just an accented version of the right one. That is why these three sounds are worth real practice time.
der Bruder
the brother
die Brüder
the brothers
the umlaut marks the plural
ä — like the e in "bed"
The easiest umlaut for English speakers. Short ä sounds like the e in English "bed": die Männer sounds like "MEN-na". Long ä is the same sound held longer, close to the ai in English "fair" (IPA long ɛː): spät sounds like "shpait".
Because ä is so close to the German short e, you mostly just need to remember not to say a plain a. When you see ä, think "e as in bed", never "a as in cat".
spät
late
long ä
das Mädchen
the girl
die Männer
the men
short ä
ö — say "ay", then round your lips
English has no exact ö, but you can build it in two steps. Say the ay of English "day" (or the e of "bed" for the short version), hold your tongue exactly where it is, and then round your lips into an o-shape as if about to whistle. The sound that comes out is ö (IPA ø for long, œ for short).
The tongue stays front, only the lips change. If your ö drifts towards "o" or "er", your tongue slipped backwards. Practise with schön (beautiful) and hören (to hear) — slowly at first, lips visibly rounded.
schön
beautiful, nice
hören
to hear
können
can, to be able to
short ö
ü — say "ee", then round your lips
Same trick, different starting point. Say the ee of English "see", freeze your tongue, and round your lips tightly. That is ü (IPA y). It should feel strange at first — your tongue says ee while your lips say oo.
A common English-speaker mistake is to say "oo" instead: "Tur" instead of die Tür. If you keep the ee-tongue position, you cannot go wrong. Test words: fünf (five), müde (tired), grün (green). Say each one five times, checking in a mirror that your lips are rounded.
fünf
five
müde
tired
die Tür
the door
grün
green
Check yourself
Quick checks on this lesson. Get at least three quarters right to mark it as completed.
How do you make the German ü sound?
Practise what you learned
Sound and word recordings on this page come from Wikimedia Commons contributors and are used under Creative Commons licences. See the audio credits for authors and sources.