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German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "das Huhn" in German?
dass HOON. The first h is breathed, the second is silent — the word contains both kinds in four letters.
One held vowel, and the word is a neat demonstration of German's two uses of the letter h: pronounced when it opens a word, silent when it follows a vowel. The plural Hühner fronts the vowel to a long ü and adds a softened -er ending.
Listen: das Huhn
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Das Huhn legt jeden Tag ein Ei.
The hen lays an egg every day.
Listen: Das Huhn legt jeden Tag ein Ei.
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Das Huhn legt jeden Tag ein Ei uses the bare accusative jeden Tag for a repeated time. Ei opens with a glottal catch and the 'eye' diphthong, and Tag ends in a devoiced g — so the sentence closes on two words that each demonstrate a separate rule.
Where English speakers slip
Learners either breathe both h sounds or, having learned that h can be silent, drop the first one too. The rule is positional: the opening h is fully pronounced and the one after the vowel is not. The plural Hühner then adds the long front-rounded ü, which is a third thing to get right.