LingoDrop
German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "das Mal" in German?
dass MAHL. A long open a and a bright, forward l.
A single long beat when it stands alone, but this word lives mostly inside compounds — einmal, zweimal, diesmal, manchmal — and in every one the first element takes the stress while mal follows as an unstressed tail. So the same syllable is loud alone and quiet in company.
Listen: das Mal
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Hear it in a sentence
Das nächste Mal zahle ich.
Next time I'll pay.
Listen: Das nächste Mal zahle ich.
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Das nächste Mal zahle ich fronts the time phrase, which forces zahle ahead of its subject. Nächste has a long ä followed by the soft ich-laut and then a plain st, so it packs three separate rules into two syllables before the noun even arrives.
Where English speakers slip
The l is the whole difficulty. English mall and maul both hollow the l out, dragging the vowel backwards, while German keeps both bright and forward. There is also a lowercase mal that works as an unstressed softening particle in commands — Komm mal her — and that one is short and almost inaudible.