German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "die Tür" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce die Tür in German?

die Tür is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /diː tyːɐ̯/. It means “door (pl. Türen).” dee TUER. A long front-rounded ü with the r melting into a vowel behind it.

dee TUER. A long front-rounded ü with the r melting into a vowel behind it.

die Tür /diː tyːɐ̯/

There is one vowel here and it is long. The plural Türen adds a syllabic-n ending, which puts the r in front of a vowel and turns it back into a real scraped consonant — so the singular ends softly on a vowel and the plural has an audible r in the middle. Same letter, two behaviours.

Listen: die Tür

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Sound it out

T A sharp t with breath behind it.

ü Long and front-rounded. Hold a long 'ee', freeze the tongue exactly there, and round the lips. If the tongue slides back you have said 'oo'.

r Vocalised at the end of the syllable into a dark 'uh', so the word ends on a two-part vowel.

Hear it in a sentence

Mach bitte die Tür zu.

Close the door, please.

Listen: Mach bitte die Tür zu.

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Mach bitte die Tür zu splits zumachen, sending the prefix zu to the very end of the command. Mach is the bare du-imperative with the throaty ach-laut, so the sentence starts with a back-of-throat scrape and ends on a small stranded prefix.

Where English speakers slip

The ür sequence is one of the hardest in German for English speakers, because the obvious substitutes — the vowel of tour or the vowel of turn — are both wrong in different ways. Build the ü on its own from a long 'ee' with rounding, then add the vocalised r behind it rather than merging the two from the start.