German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "bringen" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce bringen in German?

bringen is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈbʁɪ.ŋən/. It means “to bring.” BRING-en. The ng is one sound, as in singer, with no hard g audible after it.

BRING-en. The ng is one sound, as in singer, with no hard g audible after it.

bringen /ˈbʁɪ.ŋən/

BRIN- holds the beat and nothing shifts across the paradigm, though the past forms swap the nasal for a throaty ch — brachte, gebracht — much as denken becomes dachte. Separable compounds like mitbringen shift the primary stress onto the prefix while leaving bringen clearly audible underneath.

Listen: bringen

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Sound it out

br A b followed by the uvular r, which stays brief and light in this cluster.

i Short and lax. English speakers tend to lengthen it, which changes the word.

ng A single velar nasal, the sound in singer rather than the two-part cluster in finger. No separate g is released.

en A light final syllable — schwa and n, neither of them stressed.

Hear it in a sentence

Ich bringe den Kuchen mit.

I'll bring the cake.

Listen: Ich bringe den Kuchen mit.

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Ich bringe den Kuchen mit is mitbringen with its prefix detached and sent to the end, which is what separable verbs do in a main clause. Kuchen carries a long u and the throaty ach-laut, and den marks it as masculine accusative — the thing being brought.

Where English speakers slip

Many English speakers release a hard g after the ng, giving 'bring-gen', on the model of finger and longer. German ng is always the single nasal of singer. A second thing to watch is the split verb: learners keep mitbringen together as one word in the sentence, when German requires the prefix to travel to the very end and land there as the final beat.