German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "grün" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce grün in German?

grün is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɡʁyːn/. It means “green.” gruen — hard g, a throaty r, then a long ü made by saying 'ee' with the lips pushed forward and rounded.

gruen — hard g, a throaty r, then a long ü made by saying 'ee' with the lips pushed forward and rounded.

grün /ɡʁyːn/

Single syllable, so what matters is vowel length rather than placement — and this ü is long, marked by the single consonant after it. Set it against fünf, where two consonants follow and the same letter is short. Adjective endings leave everything alone: grüne and grünes keep the long vowel under the beat.

Listen: grün

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Sound it out

g Hard g as in go, made at the back of the mouth with the voice on.

r The uvular r, scraped at the back of the mouth. Squeezed between g and a vowel it is brief and easy — this is a good word to build the sound on.

ü Long and front-rounded. Say a long 'ee' as in see, freeze your tongue exactly there, then round your lips into a whistle shape. Both gestures have to happen at once, and the result belongs to neither English vowel.

n A clean n closing the syllable.

Hear it in a sentence

Das Gras ist grün.

The grass is green.

Listen: Das Gras ist grün.

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Das Gras ist grün lines up two words starting with gr, which lets you hear the r twice in one breath. Gras has a long a and ends in a plain s; grün stays bare with no ending because adjectives after ist never inflect. Both nouns and adjectives here are as simple as German gets, so the sentence is really a vowel-length exercise.

Where English speakers slip

Rounding is the whole battle. English speakers either drop the rounding and produce the English word green, or keep the rounding but pull the tongue back and produce 'groon'. Neither is close enough — German ü needs a forward tongue and rounded lips simultaneously, and the mismatch is instantly audible. Practise by holding a long 'ee' and slowly pursing your lips without letting the tongue slide backwards.