LingoDrop
German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "die Freundin" in German?
dee FROYN-din. The feminine -in suffix, and here the d is a genuine voiced d because it is no longer at the end of the word.
The beat stays on the root's diphthong, since the -in suffix takes no stress. That is true across the whole family — Lehrerin, Ärztin, Studentin — so recognising -in tells you both that the noun is feminine and that the stress lies somewhere before it.
Listen: die Freundin
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Meine Freundin heißt Lena.
My friend's name is Lena.
Listen: Meine Freundin heißt Lena.
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Meine Freundin heißt Lena uses heißen, which is how German says to be called. Heißt has the 'eye' diphthong followed by ß and then t, three sounds crammed together at the end of a short verb, so it rewards slowing down before speeding up.
Where English speakers slip
Learners who have carefully mastered the devoicing in Freund carry it over here and say 'FROYN-tin'. That is exactly backwards: the suffix supplies a vowel, so the d is no longer final and voices normally. This pair is the clearest demonstration in the language that devoicing is about position, not about the letter itself.