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German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "voll" in German?
FOL. German v is pronounced f, so the word begins exactly like English fall, with a short rounded o.
There is nothing to place and nothing to weigh up. This root also appears as an unstressed second element in compounds such as wundervoll, where the first part takes the weight — so the same syllable can be the whole word or a quiet suffix depending on what it is attached to.
Listen: voll
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Hear it in a sentence
Das Glas ist voll.
The glass is full.
Listen: Das Glas ist voll.
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Das Glas ist voll has Glas with a long a and an unvoiced final s, so the sentence contrasts a long vowel in the noun with a short one in the adjective. The adjective stays bare after ist, as every predicate adjective does in German.
Where English speakers slip
The letter v sends English readers straight to a buzzing v, and the meaning makes it worse — the word means full, so people half-hear an English word and half-read a German one. It is an f. The l then needs to stay bright, because English full has exactly the dark l that would spoil the vowel here.