German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "gut" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce gut in German?

gut is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɡuːt/. It means “good.” GOOT. Long 'oo', hard g at the front, and a fully released t at the end.

GOOT. Long 'oo', hard g at the front, and a fully released t at the end.

gut /ɡuːt/

A one-syllable adjective, and in a sentence it is the natural landing place for the main stress since it carries the new information. Adding endings does not disturb it: guter, gutes and gute all keep the beat on the long root vowel and leave the ending unstressed.

Listen: gut

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

g Hard g as in good, never the soft g of gem. German g is hard in every position at the start of a syllable.

u Long 'oo'. A single consonant after a vowel usually signals length, and it does here — compare gut with Guss, where the doubled s shortens it.

t Crisp and clearly released. German does not swallow a final t the way American English does in what or button.

Hear it in a sentence

Der Kaffee ist gut.

The coffee is good.

Listen: Der Kaffee ist gut.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Der Kaffee ist gut leaves the adjective bare with no ending, because predicate adjectives after sein never inflect in German — ist gut, but ein guter Kaffee. Der is barely stressed here; the sentence rises and then peaks squarely on gut.

Where English speakers slip

English good sits right next door and its vowel is short and lax, so that is the vowel learners import. German gut takes the long, tense vowel of boot instead, and this matters because German treats vowel length as meaningful rather than decorative. The second habit is leaving the final t unreleased, as in the American pronunciation of but, which makes the word sound chopped off.