German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "fragen" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce fragen in German?

fragen is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈfʁaː.ɡn̩/. It means “to ask.” FRAH-gn. A throaty r straight after the f, a long open a, and a hard g running into a syllabic n.

FRAH-gn. A throaty r straight after the f, a long open a, and a hard g running into a syllabic n.

fragen /ˈfʁaː.ɡn̩/

Beat on FRA-, ending swallowed. Unlike fahren and sprechen, this verb is weak and keeps its vowel unchanged throughout — du fragst, er fragt, with no umlaut and no vowel shift. That stability makes it a useful reference point for how the regular pattern sounds.

Listen: fragen

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Sound it out

fr The r here is squeezed between f and a vowel, which makes it short and easy — a light scrape rather than a full gargle.

a Long and open, as in father, stretched by the open syllable.

g A hard, voiced g. It opens a syllable, so nothing devoices it.

en Collapses to a syllabic n, so the word finishes 'gn'.

Hear it in a sentence

Darf ich dich etwas fragen?

May I ask you something?

Listen: Darf ich dich etwas fragen?

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Darf ich dich etwas fragen? is built around the modal darf, which pushes the infinitive to the very end. What is unusual is that fragen takes two accusative objects here — dich for the person and etwas for the thing — a construction German allows with only a handful of verbs.

Where English speakers slip

The a comes out as an English long a for many readers, giving 'FRAY-gen'. German a is always 'ah', long or short but never the vowel of hay. The r is the second point: after f it is very brief, so learners who are still building the uvular sound will find this a forgiving place to practise it before tackling a word where it stands alone.