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German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "man" in German?
MAN with a short open a. It sounds exactly like the noun Mann, but it means one or you in the impersonal sense.
As a pronoun it goes unstressed inside its sentence, leaning on the verb. That lightness is a useful clue when listening: a stressed 'man' is almost certainly the noun Mann, while an unstressed one gliding into the verb is this impersonal pronoun.
Listen: man
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Hier darf man nicht parken.
You're not allowed to park here.
Listen: Hier darf man nicht parken.
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Hier darf man nicht parken uses the pronoun with a third-person singular verb, which is how German expresses a general rule without naming anyone. Fronting hier forces darf into second position, and parken goes to the end as the infinitive after a modal.
Where English speakers slip
The two words are genuine homophones — man and Mann sound identical — so the whole burden falls on context and spelling. Learners hear the sentence and picture a specific man, when German is saying 'one is not allowed to park here'. The pronunciation itself is easy; it is the ambiguity that has to be trained by exposure.