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German · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "warum" in German?
va-ROOM. The stress falls on the SECOND syllable, which is unusual for a German word.
Second syllable, which breaks the German front-stress habit and puts this word in a small club with warum, wieso and a handful of other adverbs built from a preposition plus a pronoun. The historical logic is that it comes from wa plus um, and the preposition took the weight.
Listen: warum
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Warum lachst du?
Why are you laughing?
Listen: Warum lachst du?
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Warum lachst du? has lachst combining the throaty ach-laut with the du ending -st, so three consonant sounds run together at the end of the verb. Because the question word occupies first position, the verb follows immediately and the subject comes third — the standard German inversion.
Where English speakers slip
Front-loading the stress gives 'WA-rum', which is what English instincts produce and what many learners keep saying for years. The beat goes on the second syllable. The w is the other correction, and the u should be a genuinely rounded short 'oo' rather than the flat central vowel of English rum.