German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "der Flughafen" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce der Flughafen in German?

der Flughafen is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /deːɐ̯ ˈfluːkˌhaː.fn̩/. It means “airport (pl. Flughäfen).” dair FLOOK-hah-fn. A compound of Flug and Hafen, and the g at the seam hardens into a k.

dair FLOOK-hah-fn. A compound of Flug and Hafen, and the g at the seam hardens into a k.

der Flughafen /deːɐ̯ ˈfluːkˌhaː.fn̩/

Flug- gets the primary beat and Hafen a secondary one. That means the loudest syllable is at the very front of a four-syllable word, which is worth internalising because German airport announcements and signage use compounds like this constantly.

Listen: der Flughafen

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

Flug An f, a bright l, a long rounded 'oo', and a g devoiced to k because the compound boundary strands it at the end of its element.

Ha A genuinely breathed h — it opens the second element, so it is pronounced rather than silent — followed by a long open a.

fen An f releasing into a syllabic n.

Hear it in a sentence

Wir fahren zum Flughafen.

We're going to the airport.

Listen: Wir fahren zum Flughafen.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Wir fahren zum Flughafen uses zum, the compulsory contraction of zu and dem. Fahren implies travelling by vehicle, so the sentence says nothing about how you get there beyond ruling out walking — gehen would imply going on foot.

Where English speakers slip

The g at the seam gets voiced by learners who see it in the middle of a word and assume the devoicing rule does not apply. The compound boundary counts as a word edge, so it hardens to k. The h in Hafen, by contrast, is fully breathed, because it opens an element rather than following a vowel.