LingoDrop
German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "fahren" in German?
FAH-ren. A long open a with a silent h, then a genuinely consonantal throaty r opening the second syllable.
Stress on FAH-, and the third-person form fronts the vowel to ä without moving the beat: er fährt. That umlaut in the du and er forms is a signal of the strong-verb class, and it changes the vowel's colour while the rhythm of the word stays identical.
Listen: fahren
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Hear it in a sentence
Wir fahren nach Berlin.
We're going to Berlin.
Listen: Wir fahren nach Berlin.
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Wir fahren nach Berlin uses fahren rather than gehen because travel is by vehicle — German draws that line strictly, and gehen would imply walking the whole way. Nach is the preposition for cities and countries that take no article, and Berlin puts its stress on the second syllable.
Where English speakers slip
Learners either pronounce the h, giving 'fah-hren', or shorten the a. Both flatten the word. The r deserves separate attention here because it behaves differently from the r in mir: at the start of a syllable it is a real scraped consonant, while at the end of one it dissolves into a vowel. Same letter, two jobs, and this word demonstrates the consonantal one.