German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "gestern" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce gestern in German?

gestern is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈɡɛs.tɐn/. It means “yesterday.” GES-tuhn. A hard g, a plain st in the middle — not 'sht' — and an -ern ending that softens to 'un'.

GES-tuhn. A hard g, a plain st in the middle — not 'sht' — and an -ern ending that softens to 'un'.

gestern /ˈɡɛs.tɐn/

GES- is the loud half and -tern trails off behind it. Like other time adverbs it can open a sentence, and when it does the verb has to come next — which is why the rhythm of a gestern sentence differs from an English one, where the adverb can sit at the front without disturbing anything.

Listen: gestern

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Sound it out

g A hard g — German has no soft-g rule before e or i.

e The e of when, clipped by the consonant behind it.

st A plain s plus t. The 'sht' rule applies only at the start of a word or stem, and here the two letters straddle a syllable boundary.

ern The r vocalises into a dark 'uh' before the closing n, so the ending sounds like 'un'.

Hear it in a sentence

Gestern war ich im Kino.

Yesterday I was at the cinema.

Listen: Gestern war ich im Kino.

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Gestern war ich im Kino shows that inversion clearly: because gestern occupies first position, the verb war comes second and the subject ich is pushed to third. Im is the compulsory contraction of in and dem, and Kino takes a long i under its stress.

Where English speakers slip

The commonest error is over-applying the sht rule and saying 'GESH-tern'. It only operates at the start of a word or stem, and here the s closes one syllable while the t opens the next. The ending is the second habit, where American speakers pronounce a full r; German gives it a plain vowel followed by the n.