German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "das Restaurant" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce das Restaurant in German?

das Restaurant is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /das ʁɛstoˈʁãː/. It means “restaurant (pl. Restaurants).” dass res-toh-RAHNG. A French borrowing that keeps its back stress and its nasalised final vowel.

dass res-toh-RAHNG. A French borrowing that keeps its back stress and its nasalised final vowel.

das Restaurant /das ʁɛstoˈʁãː/

Say res-toh-RAHNG with the punch right at the end, following the French original. That is doubly unusual for German, which normally front-loads, and it means the word's rhythm gives away its foreign origin immediately — a useful signal, since foreign-origin words also keep foreign spelling-to-sound values.

Listen: das Restaurant

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Sound it out

Res The uvular r, a short open e, and an unvoiced s.

tau Here au is NOT the German 'ow' — the word keeps its French value, so it is simply 'oh'. This is one of the rare exceptions to an otherwise absolute rule.

rant The stressed syllable: another uvular r and a nasalised 'ahng'. Careful German speech keeps the French nasal vowel; casual speech often lands on a plain velar nasal instead.

Hear it in a sentence

Das Restaurant ist sehr gut.

The restaurant is very good.

Listen: Das Restaurant ist sehr gut.

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Das Restaurant ist sehr gut treats the noun as neuter, which German assigns to most French borrowings of this shape. The rest of the sentence is entirely native and front-stressed, so you can hear the contrast between the borrowed word's back stress and everything around it.

Where English speakers slip

German learners who have just mastered au as 'ow' apply it here and produce 'res-TOW-rant', which is wrong on both the vowel and the stress. This word is a genuine exception that keeps its French pronunciation. The final nasal is the other detail — it is a nasalised vowel rather than a full n plus t, and pronouncing the t marks it as read rather than spoken.