LingoDrop
German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "der Tisch" in German?
dair TISH. A short lax i and sch as a plain sh.
Clipped and closed, with no rhythm to negotiate. The plural Tische adds an unstressed schwa and nothing else — no umlaut — which makes this one of the more straightforward nouns to inflect. Compounds like Tischtennis and Schreibtisch place the stress on whichever element comes first.
Listen: der Tisch
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Hear it in a sentence
Stell die Teller auf den Tisch.
Put the plates on the table.
Listen: Stell die Teller auf den Tisch.
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Stell die Teller auf den Tisch uses the accusative den because the plates are moving onto the table. With a stationary verb the same preposition would take the dative dem. Stell opens with 'sht' and is the bare du-imperative of stellen.
Where English speakers slip
The sounds themselves are easy for an English speaker, so the real trap is grammatical: auf takes the accusative for movement and the dative for position, and learners default to one or the other regardless. Note also that the initial t should be crisply aspirated — a soft, unreleased t makes the short word sound mumbled.