German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "frei" in German?

FRY, rhyming with English fry. The ei is 'eye' and the r is a scrape at the back of the throat.

frei /fʁaɪ̯/

The diphthong carries the whole word. Compounds built on this root keep the stress here — Freitag has its weight on FREI-, not on the day part — which is the standard behaviour of German compound nouns, where the first element wins.

Listen: frei

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Sound it out

fr An f followed by the uvular r. Wedged into a cluster like this the r is short and easy, which makes the word a useful place to practise it.

ei Pronounced 'eye', which is what ei says in every German word without exception.

Hear it in a sentence

Ist dieser Platz frei?

Is this seat free?

Listen: Ist dieser Platz frei?

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Ist dieser Platz frei? is a yes-no question, so the verb comes first with no equivalent of English do. Dieser takes the masculine nominative ending, matching der, and Platz ends in the ts of z. The whole question is a phrase worth memorising intact for use on trains.

Where English speakers slip

'Free' is what English readers produce, misreading ei as 'ee'. The word rhymes with fry. The r is the other half: an English r bunched in the middle of the mouth sounds immediately foreign here, and moving it to the back is easier in this cluster than almost anywhere else, since the f gives you a running start.