German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "alle" in German?

AL-uh. A small glottal catch, a short open a, a bright l, and a schwa.

alle /ˈa.lə/

AL- is loud, -le is not. Grammatically this word is a plural, and that matters rhythmically as much as syntactically: it pairs with a plural verb, and its whole family — alle, allen, aller — keeps the same heavy-light shape with the ending unstressed.

Listen: alle

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Sound it out

a Short and open, preceded by a light glottal stop. The doubled l keeps it short.

ll One bright, forward l — the doubling marks the vowel, not the consonant.

e An unstressed schwa, quiet but genuinely pronounced.

Hear it in a sentence

Alle sind schon da.

Everybody is already here.

Listen: Alle sind schon da.

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Alle sind schon da takes the plural verb sind, which is exactly where alles took the singular ist. The two words look almost identical but agree differently — alle means everybody and is plural, alles means everything and is singular. Sind ends in a devoiced d, giving 'zint'.

Where English speakers slip

The l is where English shows through, since all and tall both have a dark l that hollows out the vowel. Keep the tongue tip forward. The bigger practical trap is the alle-alles pair: learners use them interchangeably, and the verb agreement then goes wrong, which is far more noticeable to a German ear than a slightly dark l.