LingoDrop
German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "du" in German?
DOO, with a long, tense 'oo' and no y-glide in front of it.
A single syllable, and like most pronouns it hands its stress over to whatever follows: Du bist sehr nett peaks on nett, not on du. Stressing the pronoun itself is a deliberate act of contrast, marking 'you specifically' as against someone else.
Listen: du
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Hear it in a sentence
Du bist sehr nett.
You are very nice.
Listen: Du bist sehr nett.
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Du bist sehr nett uses the informal you, which brings its own verb form along: bist, the du form of sein and one of the most irregular shapes in the language. Nett ends in a double t after a short e, so the vowel stays clipped and the final t is crisp.
Where English speakers slip
Learners who have studied French sometimes import tu and produce a fronted 'dew' or 'dyoo'. German du has no fronting whatsoever — it is a back, rounded oo. And unlike English do, which collapses to 'duh' in fast speech, German du keeps its full long vowel even when it goes unstressed.