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German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "nehmen" in German?
NAY-men. A long 'ay', a silent h, and a soft unstressed ending.
The stress never leaves NEH-, but this verb rearranges itself dramatically in the du and er forms: nimmst and nimmt have a short i, a doubled m, and no h at all. The stress stays welded to the first syllable while nearly everything else about it changes, which is why the conjugation looks so unlike its own infinitive.
Listen: nehmen
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Hear it in a sentence
Ich nehme den Zug.
I'll take the train.
Listen: Ich nehme den Zug.
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Ich nehme den Zug uses den, the masculine accusative article, because the train is the object being taken. Zug opens on the ts of z and ends with a devoiced g, so it sounds like 'tsook' — a word that quietly demonstrates two separate German consonant rules in three letters.
Where English speakers slip
Pronouncing the h gives 'neh-men' with an audible breath, which German does not have between vowels. The vowel also needs full length; shortening it edges the word toward the conjugated nimmt, which is a genuinely different form. Learners who have memorised nimmt sometimes work backwards and shorten the infinitive too, so keep the two shapes distinct.