German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "drei" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce drei in German?

drei is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /dʁaɪ̯/. It means “three.” DRY, near enough — except that the r is a soft scrape at the back of the throat rather than the American tongue-curl.

DRY, near enough — except that the r is a soft scrape at the back of the throat rather than the American tongue-curl.

drei /dʁaɪ̯/

A single stressed syllable. In the counted sequence eins, zwei, drei every word gets equal weight and nothing reduces, unlike the English rhythm of 'one two THREE' where the last number swallows the others.

Listen: drei

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Sound it out

d A quick d with the tongue on the ridge behind the teeth.

r The uvular r. Aim for the sound of gargling lightly, or the French r in Paris. After a d it reduces to a brief burst of friction, which makes this an unusually forgiving word to practise it on.

ei 'Eye', as always — ei has a single fixed value across the language.

Hear it in a sentence

Es ist drei Uhr.

It's three o'clock.

Listen: Es ist drei Uhr.

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Es ist drei Uhr uses Uhr for clock time and leaves the number without an ending. Uhr begins on a long 'oo' and ends with the same vocalised r as mir, coming out roughly 'OO-uh'. The es is a dummy subject, exactly like the it in 'it is three o'clock'.

Where English speakers slip

American speakers produce the retroflex r of dry, which is the single most obviously foreign sound an English speaker brings into German. Move the constriction from the middle of the mouth right to the back, near where the ch of Bach happens, and let it vibrate lightly. British speakers are not off the hook — their approximant r is also too far forward, though it draws less attention.