German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "geschlossen" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce geschlossen in German?

geschlossen is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɡəˈʃlɔ.sn̩/. It means “closed.” guh-SHLOSS-n. The ge- prefix is an unstressed schwa and the beat lands on SCHLOSS.

guh-SHLOSS-n. The ge- prefix is an unstressed schwa and the beat lands on SCHLOSS.

geschlossen /ɡəˈʃlɔ.sn̩/

Second syllable, because ge- is a prefix and prefixes of this kind are never stressed. The word is a past participle doing duty as an adjective, and the give-away is that ge- at the front — spotting it tells you both where the stress goes and that the word derives from a verb.

Listen: geschlossen

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Sound it out

ge The past-participle prefix, reduced to a hard g plus a schwa. It never takes the stress.

schl sh running straight into a bright l, the same cluster as in schließen, from which this participle is formed.

o Short and rounded, kept short by the doubled s.

ssen An unvoiced hiss releasing into a syllabic n.

Hear it in a sentence

Das Museum ist heute geschlossen.

The museum is closed today.

Listen: Das Museum ist heute geschlossen.

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Das Museum ist heute geschlossen contains a borrowed noun with an unusual shape: Museum stresses its second syllable, mu-SE-um, has a voiced s in the middle, and takes a small glottal catch before its final -um. Nothing about it follows the German first-syllable rule.

Where English speakers slip

The prefix pulls English speakers' stress forward, producing 'GE-schlossen'. German ge- is unstressed in every participle it appears in, so the same fix applies to gegessen, gelernt, gekauft and hundreds more. The schl cluster is the second point, and it gets flattened to 'sl' by speakers who have not yet practised it.