German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "sprechen" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce sprechen in German?

sprechen is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈʃpʁɛ.çn̩/. It means “to speak / talk.” SHPREKH-n. At the start of a word, sp is always 'shp', and this ch is the soft one because it follows a front vowel.

SHPREKH-n. At the start of a word, sp is always 'shp', and this ch is the soft one because it follows a front vowel.

sprechen /ˈʃpʁɛ.çn̩/

Weight goes on SPRE-, but this verb belongs to the class that changes its stem vowel in the du and er forms: sprichst and spricht have a short i where the infinitive has e. The stress never budges from that first syllable, so the shift is purely one of vowel quality, not rhythm.

Listen: sprechen

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Sound it out

sp Pronounced 'shp' at the beginning of a word or stem. The s becomes sh — a rule that has no exceptions in standard German and catches every learner at least once.

r The uvular r, brief and lightly scraped here because it is squeezed between two consonants.

e A short, open e — the vowel of English bed, cut off cleanly.

ch The soft ich-laut, selected by the front vowel e in front of it. Tongue at the hard palate, lips spread, air hissing through.

en The ending loses its vowel entirely, and the consonant before it releases straight into a hum.

Hear it in a sentence

Sprichst du Deutsch?

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Listen: Sprichst du Deutsch?

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Sprichst du Deutsch? shows the changed vowel and then piles three consonant sounds onto the end of the verb — ch, s, t — with no vowel to help. Deutsch itself finishes on the ch of church, so the question contains two completely different sounds both spelled with ch, one soft and one an affricate.

Where English speakers slip

Two errors typically arrive together. The sp gets pronounced as written, giving 'sprek-en', and the ch gets replaced by a k. Fix the sh first, since it is mechanical and rule-based; then work on the soft ch, which follows e here and so needs the front-of-mouth hiss rather than the throaty scrape learners often default to after meeting machen.