LingoDrop
German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "nach" in German?
NAHKH. A long open a and then the throaty ach-laut.
As a preposition it passes through unstressed. It also serves as a separable prefix, and there it takes the primary stress — NACHdenken, NACHfragen — so the same syllable can be quiet or prominent depending on whether it is introducing a noun or heading a verb.
Listen: nach
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Hear it in a sentence
Nach dem Essen trinken wir Kaffee.
After the meal we drink coffee.
Listen: Nach dem Essen trinken wir Kaffee.
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Nach dem Essen trinken wir Kaffee opens with a prepositional phrase, which occupies first position and therefore forces the verb trinken into second place ahead of its subject. Essen begins with a glottal catch, and nach takes the dative, which is why the article is dem.
Where English speakers slip
Substituting a k gives 'nack' and loses the sound entirely. The bigger practical difficulty is the near-neighbour noch: both end in the throaty ch, and they differ only in the vowel — a long back a versus a short rounded o. One means after or to, the other means still, so the vowel has to be clean.