German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "die Arbeit" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce die Arbeit in German?

die Arbeit is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /diː ˈaʁ.baɪ̯t/. It means “work / job.” dee AR-bite. A glottal catch at the start, the r darkening the a, and ei as 'eye'.

dee AR-bite. A glottal catch at the start, the r darkening the a, and ei as 'eye'.

die Arbeit /diː ˈaʁ.baɪ̯t/

AR- takes the weight, even though the diphthong behind it looks more prominent on the page. That front-loading is the German native pattern, and it also governs the verb arbeiten and the noun Arbeiter — the whole family keeps the weight at the start.

Listen: die Arbeit

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

Sound it out

Ar A short a with the uvular r behind it, preceded by a light glottal stop. The r colours the vowel rather than standing alone.

bei A voiced b and the 'eye' diphthong.

t A crisp t. German never swallows or glottalises a final t the way American English does.

Hear it in a sentence

Ich gehe früh zur Arbeit.

I go to work early.

Listen: Ich gehe früh zur Arbeit.

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

Ich gehe früh zur Arbeit uses zur, the contraction of zu and der, since Arbeit is feminine. Früh has a long front-rounded ü with a silent h marking its length, so the sentence puts one of German's hardest vowels immediately before its contracted preposition.

Where English speakers slip

The diphthong pulls the stress backwards for most learners, producing 'ar-BITE'. German puts it at the front. Reading ei as 'ay' is the second error, giving 'AR-bate'. Both need fixing, and the small glottal catch at the very start is a third detail that separates a fluent-sounding version from a run-on one.