German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "in" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce in in German?

in is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɪn/. It means “in.” IN, with the same short lax vowel as the English word — one of the rare German words that reads exactly as an English speaker expects.

IN, with the same short lax vowel as the English word — one of the rare German words that reads exactly as an English speaker expects.

in /ɪn/

Prepositions of place shrink to almost nothing in the flow of a sentence, and this one shrinks further by fusing with articles: in dem becomes im, in das becomes ins. Those contractions are the normal spoken forms, so hearing a full in dem usually signals emphasis or a very formal register.

Listen: in

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Sound it out

i Short and lax, as in bin. Resist the urge to lengthen it just because the word is short.

n A plain n, and if the next word starts with a vowel the two do not glide together — German inserts a small glottal catch.

Hear it in a sentence

Ich wohne in Berlin.

I live in Berlin.

Listen: Ich wohne in Berlin.

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Ich wohne in Berlin uses in with the dative because nothing is moving — the sentence describes a location, not a direction. With a verb of motion the same preposition would take the accusative instead. Wohne has a long o and a schwa ending, and Berlin is stressed on its second syllable.

Where English speakers slip

Because the word looks and sounds familiar, the mistakes here are not about the vowel but about what surrounds it. Learners glide it into the next word — 'in-Berlin' as one smear — where German keeps a small hard onset, and they also avoid the contractions, saying in dem Kino instead of im Kino, which sounds stilted rather than wrong. And do not overcorrect into a long 'een'.