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German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "mögen" in German?
MUH-gn with a long ö — say 'ay' as in day and round your lips hard without moving the tongue. Hard g, then a syllabic n.
The rhythm never budges from MÖ-, but the vowel underneath changes twice over. Ich mag abandons the umlaut for a short a, and because the g then lands at the end of a syllable it devoices to k, so the form comes out 'mahk'. Two rules acting on one small word.
Listen: mögen
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Ich mag deutsche Schokolade.
I like German chocolate.
Listen: Ich mag deutsche Schokolade.
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Ich mag deutsche Schokolade shows that devoiced form in the wild. Deutsche opens on the oy diphthong and takes the plain -e adjective ending, while Schokolade is stressed on its third syllable, scho-ko-LA-de, since borrowings routinely ignore the German first-syllable rule.
Where English speakers slip
The instinct is to say 'MO-gen' with a plain o, which loses the fronting that defines the vowel. Build it from 'ay' and add rounding. The conjugated ich mag is a separate hazard: learners keep the g soft and voiced because the infinitive has it that way, but at the end of a syllable German hardens it, so the word ends on a clean k.