German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "erste" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce erste in German?

erste is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈeːɐ̯s.tə/. It means “first.” AIRS-tuh. A long 'ay' with the r softening into a vowel, then a plain st and a final schwa.

AIRS-tuh. A long 'ay' with the r softening into a vowel, then a plain st and a final schwa.

erste /ˈeːɐ̯s.tə/

ERS- takes the beat, with the ending unstressed. Ordinals in German behave like ordinary adjectives, so this word takes a full set of endings — erster, ersten, erstem — and the beat never moves off the long vowel at the front no matter which one is attached.

Listen: erste

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Sound it out

er A long 'ay' with the r vocalised behind it, so the syllable ends on a dark 'uh' rather than a consonant.

st A plain s plus t. The 'sht' rule applies only at the start of a word or stem, and here the s closes one syllable while the t opens the next.

e An unstressed schwa, the adjective ending.

Hear it in a sentence

Es ist mein erster Tag.

It's my first day.

Listen: Es ist mein erster Tag.

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Es ist mein erster Tag adds -er because Tag is masculine and nominative, and because mein itself carries no ending, the adjective has to signal the gender. Tag ends in a devoiced g, so it comes out 'tahk' rather than 'tahg'.

Where English speakers slip

Learners who have just mastered the sht rule over-apply it here and say 'AIR-shte'. The rule is strictly positional: st becomes 'sht' only when it begins a word or a stem, and in erste it straddles a syllable boundary instead. The other error is the vowel — this is a long 'ay', not the short e of English error.