LingoDrop
German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "sicher" in German?
ZIKH-uh. A voiced s, a short i, the soft ich-laut, and an -er ending that softens to 'uh'.
Say SICH-er with the punch up front, which is where the vowel and the hiss both live — everything after it is a soft trailing vowel. The word doubles as an adverb meaning certainly, and in that use it often goes unstressed within the sentence while keeping the same internal shape.
Listen: sicher
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Bist du dir sicher?
Are you sure?
Listen: Bist du dir sicher?
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Bist du dir sicher? contains an idiom worth memorising whole: the phrase takes a dative reflexive, dir, so German literally asks whether you are sure to yourself. Nothing in the English version predicts that pronoun, which is why the question is best learned as a fixed unit.
Where English speakers slip
The English word sicker is a close visual match and a bad model — it hisses the s and stops the ch with a k. German buzzes the s and lets the ch hiss at the roof of the mouth. Then keep the ending as a plain vowel: an American r there is the third and most audible of the three errors.