German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "die Frage" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce die Frage in German?

die Frage is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /diː ˈfʁaː.ɡə/. It means “question (pl. Fragen).” dee FRAH-guh. A throaty r after the f, a long open a, a hard g, and a schwa.

dee FRAH-guh. A throaty r after the f, a long open a, a hard g, and a schwa.

die Frage /diː ˈfʁaː.ɡə/

Say FRA-ge as two beats, heavy then light. The plural Fragen swaps the schwa for a syllabic-n ending without disturbing anything, and the verb fragen has exactly the same shape — so the noun and the verb are rhythmically identical and differ only in capitalisation.

Listen: die Frage

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Sound it out

Fr An f followed by the uvular r, which stays brief in this cluster.

a Long and open, as in father, stretched by the open syllable.

g A voiced g — the devoicing rule only bites at the end of a syllable.

e An unstressed final e, pronounced as a plain 'uh'.

Hear it in a sentence

Darf ich eine Frage stellen?

May I ask a question?

Listen: Darf ich eine Frage stellen?

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Darf ich eine Frage stellen? uses the idiom eine Frage stellen, literally to place a question, which is what German says instead of using the verb fragen with an object. Stellen opens with 'sht', and the modal darf sends it to the end.

Where English speakers slip

The soft g of English gauge is the reflex to unlearn, and the a needs to be a proper long 'ah' rather than the vowel of English hay. There is also a phrasing trap: eine Frage fragen is not idiomatic German — the noun goes with stellen, and the verb fragen takes a person rather than a question.