German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "heute" in German?

HOY-tuh. The eu is 'oy' and the final e is a soft schwa.

heute /ˈhɔʏ̯.tə/

Loud on HEU-, quiet on -te. Time adverbs like this one move freely around a German sentence, and wherever they land they keep the same internal rhythm — but putting heute first forces the verb into second position, which changes the shape of everything after it.

Listen: heute

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Sound it out

h A real h with audible breath, as in English house.

eu A diphthong like the vowel in coin, gliding from rounded to front.

t A clean t beginning the second syllable.

e An unstressed schwa — the neutral 'uh' of English sofa.

Hear it in a sentence

Es regnet heute.

It's raining today.

Listen: Es regnet heute.

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Es regnet heute uses es as a dummy subject for the weather, exactly as English uses it. Regnet begins with the uvular r, holds a short e, and runs g straight into n before its -et ending, which is inserted because the stem ends awkwardly. The adverb then closes the sentence on a schwa.

Where English speakers slip

English readers see eu and think of feud, producing 'HYOO-tuh'. German eu is 'oy' without exception. The ending is the second habit: giving the final e a full 'ay' or 'ee' value marks a learner immediately, since German reduces every unstressed final e to a neutral 'uh'.