However, when “B” comes at the end of a word, it sounds more like “p.” When this letter comes at the beginning of a word or in the middle, it sounds the same as it would in English. We will discuss this more in-depth later on.Īn approximate pronunciation of “B” is “bay,” the same one you have in the word “baby.” The “A” in German is pronounced as “ah.” The closest English example that creates the same sound is the “a” in the word “father” or at the beginning of “astronaut.”īut, its pronunciation when placed in a world depends on several factors seeing as it is a vowel. For example, the letter “S” is pronounced one way in Germany and in a slightly different way in Austria.Įrgo, you might come across different pronunciations online than the ones detailed here, yet the differences will be regional. It should be noted that plenty of the pronunciations that follow are approximate.Īnother thing you should be aware of beforehand is that the pronunciations of letters differ from region to region. Once we’ve learned the name of the letter, we will learn how it sounds when used in the middle of a word, which can be different than the letter’s original name.Īgain, if we look at English, the pronunciation of the word “up” is quite different than the pronunciation of the letters making up the word, which are “you” and “pee.” For example, the English name for “T” is “tee,” and the English name for “U” is “you.” We will start by learning the German name for each letter. It’s interesting to note that these letters are also ordered the same way they are in English.Īs we learn the 26 letters, we will also learn their German names as well as how they sound when used in a word. Let’s start with the basic 26 before we move onto the Umlauts and the Eszett. Moreover, some countries consider the Eszett, ß, another letter, which would bring the grand total up to 30 letters. However, there are three extra Umlauts, which bring the total up to 29. There are 26 primary letters in the German language, the same 26 you’d find in English. With that in mind, let’s explore the German alphabet with all its wonders.īefore getting mired in the nuanced details of spelling, pronunciation, and other quirky facts relating to the German language, we should start with the basics. However, seeing as these languages have taken different paths over the past few centuries, there were bound to be a few deviations here and there. More importantly, these two West Germanic languages use almost the same Latin alphabet. Send us feedback about these examples.English descends from Proto-Germanic, the same ancestor that birthed the modern German language.Įrgo, it should come as no surprise that both the English and German languages have plenty in common.Īside from the fact that both languages share plenty of words together, their grammar can be quite similar. These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'alphabet.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
2023 The alphabet of life is sometimes called CHNOPS: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur.
2023 Published in 1968, the height of the Vietnam War, The Alphabet Tree is about a tree full of alphabet letters that join to form words. 2024 Instagram/Hailey Bieber For a super easy no-pro-required way to get a similar look, Amazon is stacked with alphabet nail art stickers like these. 2023 Local specimens include lightning whelks and angel wings from the bay and lions-paw scallops and alphabet cones from the Gulf.
Bryce Covert, The New Republic, 25 Oct. 2023 At daycare, her granddaughters are gaining new vocabulary and learning the colors, the alphabet, and numbers. 2024 For November 29 Word 1 (top left) hint - the final letter in the Greek alphabet. 2024 Afterall, this floating ice shelf is comprised of snow that dropped before the rise and fall of Rome, before Jesus or the Buddha were born, before the invention of the alphabet. Recent Examples on the Web How to read Roman numerals Roman numerals use letters of the alphabet and used in combination the higher the number.