LingoDrop
German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "die Küche" in German?
dee KUE-khuh. A short front-rounded ü, then the SOFT ich-laut, then a schwa.
Weight on KÜ-, nothing on -che. The plural Küchen swaps the schwa for a syllabic n and changes nothing else, so unlike most nouns in this chapter it has no umlaut alternation to worry about — the umlaut is already there in the singular.
Listen: die Küche
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Wir essen in der Küche.
We eat in the kitchen.
Listen: Wir essen in der Küche.
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Wir essen in der Küche uses the dative der because the sentence describes where the eating happens rather than movement into the room. Essen begins with a glottal catch, so there is a small break after wir that a fluent speaker makes without thinking.
Where English speakers slip
The word to keep it apart from is Kuchen, meaning cake: that one has a long back u and therefore the throaty ach-laut, while this one has a short front ü and therefore the soft hiss. Two vowels apart and two consonants apart, from one pair of letters. Getting the ü right automatically fixes the ch, since the vowel selects it.