German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "aber" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce aber in German?

aber is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈaː.bɐ/. It means “but.” AH-buh. A long open a with a small catch before it, and an -er ending softening into 'uh'.

AH-buh. A long open a with a small catch before it, and an -er ending softening into 'uh'.

aber /ˈaː.bɐ/

The weight is up front, on A-, and the word as a whole stays light inside a sentence. German also uses aber as a flavouring particle — Das ist aber schön! — where it means something like 'well, isn't that' and remains unstressed even while transforming the sentence's tone. Same rhythm, entirely different function.

Listen: aber

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Sound it out

a Long and open, as in father, preceded by a light glottal stop because the word begins on a vowel.

b Voiced in full, because a vowel follows and the syllable begins here.

er Unstressed and vocalised into a dark 'uh'.

Hear it in a sentence

Es ist teuer, aber schön.

It's expensive, but beautiful.

Listen: Es ist teuer, aber schön.

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Es ist teuer, aber schön puts a comma before aber, which German requires when it joins two clauses. Both adjectives stay bare because they follow ist. Teuer lands as 'TOY-uh' with the eu diphthong, and schön needs the long front-rounded ö, so the sentence packs two of German's trickiest vowels into four words.

Where English speakers slip

The ending is the giveaway: English speakers pronounce a genuine r, producing something like 'AH-ber' with a curled tongue, when standard German has only a vowel there. A smaller error is shortening the first a — the syllable is open, so the vowel is long. Say the a as though you are being examined by a doctor and you are close.