German · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "was" in German?

Q: How do you pronounce was in German?

was is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /vas/. It means “what.” VASS, with a short open a and a hissing s. The w is a v.

VASS, with a short open a and a hissing s. The w is a v.

was /vas/

As the opening word of a question it takes the first strong beat and a falling contour — German information questions fall rather than rise. In colloquial speech was also stands in for etwas, meaning something, and in that job it goes completely unstressed, which is how you can hear which of the two you are dealing with.

Listen: was

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Sound it out

w A v sound, made by buzzing air between the top teeth and the lower lip.

a Short and open, as in father but cut off quickly. Nothing like the reduced central vowel English gives the same spelling.

s Unvoiced at the end of a word: a hiss, not the buzz that ends English was.

Hear it in a sentence

Was machst du heute?

What are you doing today?

Listen: Was machst du heute?

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Was machst du heute? forces the verb into second position right behind the question word, with the subject after it. Machst carries the throaty ach-laut, since its ch follows a back vowel, and then piles st on top — 'makhst'. Heute contains the eu diphthong and closes on a schwa.

Where English speakers slip

English has a word spelled identically, and its vowel is a reduced 'uh' with a buzzing final s — importing that gives 'wuz', which is wrong in all three sounds. German wants v, a clear open a, and an unvoiced hiss. Because this word starts so many questions, getting it wrong is the fastest way to sound like you are reading German rather than speaking it.