German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "die Katze" in German?

dee KAT-suh. The tz is a single 'ts' and the final e is a schwa.

die Katze /diː ˈka.tsə/

The beat sits on KAT- and the ending trails away. The plural Katzen swaps the schwa for a syllabic n and leaves everything else alone, so the two forms are rhythmically identical — a rare simplicity among German animal nouns.

Listen: die Katze

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Sound it out

K A k with light aspiration, much as in English.

a Short and open, kept short by the tz behind it.

tz 'ts', the same sound German writes as z at the start of a word. The tz spelling appears after short vowels.

e The neutral 'uh' that closes so many German nouns. Say it lightly, but do say it.

Hear it in a sentence

Die Katze schläft auf dem Sofa.

The cat is sleeping on the sofa.

Listen: Die Katze schläft auf dem Sofa.

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Die Katze schläft auf dem Sofa uses the dative dem because the cat is already on the sofa rather than climbing onto it. Schläft opens with the schl cluster and holds a long ä, so the verb is harder to say than the noun.

Where English speakers slip

Learners read tz as a plain t or a plain z, producing 'KAT-uh' or 'KAZ-uh'. Both halves of the affricate have to be there. The ending is the second check: a colourless schwa, not the 'ay' that English or Romance instincts supply for a final e.