German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "die Schule" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce die Schule in German?

die Schule is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /diː ˈʃuː.lə/. It means “school (pl. Schulen).” dee SHOO-luh. sch is sh, the u is long and rounded, and the final e is a schwa.

dee SHOO-luh. sch is sh, the u is long and rounded, and the final e is a schwa.

die Schule /diː ˈʃuː.lə/

Front-stressed, ending light. The plural Schulen adds a syllabic n in place of the schwa without touching the rhythm, and the many compounds built on this root — Schulbuch, Grundschule, Hochschule — put the primary stress wherever the first element sits, following the usual German pattern.

Listen: die Schule

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Sound it out

Sch The sh of shoe. German writes this sound with three letters and never with sh.

u A long, firmly rounded 'oo', stretched by the open syllable.

l Bright and light, with the tongue tip on the ridge behind the top teeth.

e An unstressed schwa, the colourless 'uh' German gives every final e.

Hear it in a sentence

Die Kinder gehen zur Schule.

The children go to school.

Listen: Die Kinder gehen zur Schule.

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Die Kinder gehen zur Schule uses zur, which is the compulsory contraction of zu and der. That contraction is the normal spoken form, and hearing zu der instead would mark the speaker as either very formal or a learner assembling the phrase from parts.

Where English speakers slip

The English word school begins with 'sk', and readers who half-recognise the German cognate produce 'skoo-luh'. German sch is sh. The other check is the final e, which must be a colourless schwa rather than the 'ay' that Spanish or Italian habits would supply — it is 'SHOO-luh', not 'SHOO-lay'.