German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "warten" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce warten in German?

warten is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ˈvaʁ.tn̩/. It means “to wait.” VAR-tn. The w is a v, the r colours the a behind it, and the ending drops its vowel.

VAR-tn. The w is a v, the r colours the a behind it, and the ending drops its vowel.

warten /ˈvaʁ.tn̩/

First syllable, unmoved throughout. The helping vowel that appears in wartest and wartet adds a syllable without adding a beat, so the words get longer while the rhythm stays anchored at the front — a pattern shared by arbeiten and every other stem ending in t or d.

Listen: warten

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

w The v of vine, not the w of wine.

ar A short a with the uvular r behind it. Before a consonant the r barely functions as a consonant at all — it darkens the vowel and blends into it.

t A crisp t. Because the stem ends in t, the conjugated forms insert a helping e: du wartest, er wartet.

en Compressed onto the n, which becomes a syllable in its own right.

Hear it in a sentence

Ich warte auf dich.

I'm waiting for you.

Listen: Ich warte auf dich.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Ich warte auf dich shows a fixed verb-plus-preposition pairing that has to be memorised whole: warten auf, with the accusative. That accusative is the surprise, since auf normally takes the dative for locations — but with this verb it always takes the accusative, regardless of whether anything is moving.

Where English speakers slip

The w-as-v habit is the audible error, and the fixed preposition is the invisible one: English speakers say warten für on the model of 'wait for'. It is warten auf plus accusative. On the vowel, resist adding an American r after the a — the r here is a back-of-throat colouring that merges into the vowel rather than a separate sound.