German Alphabet

The German alphabet is very similar to the English alphabet, but it has four additional letters that English does not have: ä, ö, ü and ß. The German alphabet is derived from the Latin alphabet and consists of 30 letters in total, including 3 Umlaut (ä, ö, ü) and 1 eszett (ß).

Since the German language tends to take the "pronunciation and spelling" of words from other languages as they are, even though they are not in the German alphabet, it may be observed that different letters are used in some words.

Learning the German alphabet and the pronunciation of letters is also an important issue for listening and speaking skills.

In German, to spell a word, they use names to represent each letter, and these names are fixed. For example, the letter B is pronounced as “beh” in German.

Here is a table of the German alphabet with their corresponding names:

Letter

A ah

B beh

C tseh

D deh

E eh

F eff

G geh

H hah

I ih

J yot

K kah

L ell

M emm

N enn

O oh

P peh

Q kuh

R err

S ess

T teh

U uh

V fow

W veh

X iks

Y ipsilon

Z tsett

The letter ß is called “Eszett” or “scharfes S” in German. It is used only in German and represents the sound of a double “s”.

The pronunciation of the letters of the German alphabet is as shown above when these letters are spoken alone. On the other hand, pronunciations may change within the word.

Umlaut: It is the umlaut sign placed on the vowel to show that the pronunciation of the letter becomes thinner.