LingoDrop
German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "so" in German?
ZOH. The s buzzes like a z and the o is long — otherwise identical to the English word so.
One long beat, and it usually takes emphasis because it is doing pointing work — meaning like this, in this way. Germans often stretch the vowel for effect, and in the intensifier use, so schön, the word gets even more weight than the adjective it is boosting.
Listen: so
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
Mach es nicht so.
Don't do it like that.
Listen: Mach es nicht so.
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Mach es nicht so is an imperative, and the du form of machen drops any ending to leave the bare stem mach, which ends in the throaty ach-laut. The negator nicht comes before so because it is negating that specific word rather than the whole command.
Where English speakers slip
The English and German words look identical, and the vowel is close enough — but the s is the difference, and English speakers hiss it. German voices s in front of a vowel at the start of a word, so this one begins with the buzz of zoo. It is a small change that makes a disproportionate difference to how German the word sounds.