LingoDrop
German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "der Baum" in German?
dair BOWM. The au is the 'ow' of house, so the word rhymes with the English word gown with an m on the end.
One beat carried by the diphthong. The plural Bäume fronts au to äu, pronounced 'oy', and adds a schwa — so 'BOWM' becomes 'BOY-muh'. That au-to-äu shift recurs in Haus and Häuser and in Maus and Mäuse, and it is worth learning as a single pattern rather than three separate facts.
Listen: der Baum
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Hear it in a sentence
Der Baum ist sehr alt.
The tree is very old.
Listen: Der Baum ist sehr alt.
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Der Baum ist sehr alt keeps the adjective bare after ist. Sehr has a long 'ay' with a vocalised r and alt has a bright l, so the sentence ends with two of the small features that most reliably reveal an English accent if they are not attended to.
Where English speakers slip
Reading au as 'aw' gives 'bawm'. It is 'ow'. The plural is where learners really come unstuck, because Bäume looks like a small modification of the singular on the page and sounds like a completely different word. Drill the pair together and the umlaut stops being a surprise.