LingoDrop
German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "dort" in German?
DORT. A short, properly rounded o coloured by the r behind it, then a crisp t.
Emphasis has nowhere else to go. German has a pair of words for there — dort for a specific place you can point at, da for a vaguer one — and dort tends to take more emphasis precisely because it is the pointed one. The vowel stays short whichever way you use it.
Listen: dort
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Der Bus hält dort drüben.
The bus stops over there.
Listen: Der Bus hält dort drüben.
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Der Bus hält dort drüben adds drüben, meaning over on the other side, which has a long front-rounded ü and a syllabic-n ending. Hält is the umlauted third-person form of halten, so the sentence contains both an umlauted a and a long ü within four words.
Where English speakers slip
The American r turns the vowel into something like the English word dart or door, stretching and colouring it in the wrong direction. Keep the o short and rounded, and let the r happen behind it at the back of the throat. The final t must be released rather than swallowed, which is the other habit English brings.