German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "das Handy" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce das Handy in German?

das Handy is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /das ˈhɛn.di/. It means “mobile phone (pl. Handys).” dass HEN-dee. German pronounces this English-looking word with the vowel of bed, and it means a mobile phone.

dass HEN-dee. German pronounces this English-looking word with the vowel of bed, and it means a mobile phone.

das Handy /das ˈhɛn.di/

HAN- takes the weight, with the ending light — German has naturalised the word completely despite its English look. The plural Handys takes an -s, which is the standard marker of a borrowing and one of the few places German uses that ending at all.

Listen: das Handy

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Sound it out

H A real h with audible breath, as in English house.

a Pronounced as a short open e, the vowel of bed — not the flat English vowel of hand. German has re-fitted the spelling to its own habits.

nd Run together with no vowel between them, and the d stays voiced because a vowel follows.

y A long 'ee' at the end, as German gives the letter y in borrowed words.

Hear it in a sentence

Mein Handy ist fast leer.

My phone is almost out of battery.

Listen: Mein Handy ist fast leer.

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Mein Handy ist fast leer contains a genuine false friend: fast means almost, not quickly. Leer means empty and is pronounced 'lair' with German's ee as a long 'ay'. So the sentence is about a phone nearly out of battery, not one running quickly.

Where English speakers slip

This is a pseudo-anglicism — no English speaker calls a mobile phone a handy, and the word does not exist in English with this meaning. On top of that, Germans pronounce it 'HEN-dee' rather than with the English vowel. So an English speaker gets both the word and the sound wrong by trusting the spelling.