German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "die Schwester" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce die Schwester in German?

die Schwester is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /diː ˈʃvɛs.tɐ/. It means “sister (pl. Schwestern).” dee SHVES-tuh. sch is sh, w is v, and the internal st stays a plain st rather than becoming 'sht'.

dee SHVES-tuh. sch is sh, w is v, and the internal st stays a plain st rather than becoming 'sht'.

die Schwester /diː ˈʃvɛs.tɐ/

SCHWES- takes the beat, with the ending light. The plural Schwestern simply adds an n to the softened ending, so the rhythm is untouched — unlike Bruder and Mutter, this noun takes no umlaut in the plural, which makes it one of the easier family words to inflect.

Listen: die Schwester

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Sound it out

Schw sh running straight into a v sound, a cluster English does not have.

e A short, open e — the vowel of English bed, cut off cleanly.

st A plain s plus t. The two letters straddle a syllable boundary here rather than opening the word, so the 'sht' rule does not apply.

er Reduced to a dark 'uh' — the tongue stays flat and never curls.

Hear it in a sentence

Ich habe eine ältere Schwester.

I have an older sister.

Listen: Ich habe eine ältere Schwester.

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Ich habe eine ältere Schwester uses the comparative ältere, which fronts the a of alt to ä and then adds the feminine ending. It opens with a glottal catch, so there is a small break between eine and ältere that German speakers make without thinking.

Where English speakers slip

Two errors are common and they pull in opposite directions. The opening cluster gets simplified from 'shv' to 'sv' or 'shw', and the middle st gets over-corrected into 'sht', giving 'SHVESH-ter'. The rule is positional: sht at the start of a word or stem, plain st everywhere else.