Pronouncing “sp” and “st”

in German Part 1: the rules

Pause or go back/forward Feel free to pause this recording at any time or go back to any point of the recording. Simply use the following “Screen-O-Matic” buttons:

Press button to pause

Press buttonto start

Sliding bar to go forward or backward in the recording

When the German “sp” or “st” come at the beginning of a word they are

pronounced “shp” or “sht”.

Sport

Stadt

When the “sp” or “st” occur in the middle or at the end of a word they are pronounced like the English “sp” or “st” as in “crisp” or “list”.

Wespe Liste

However, if words beginning with sp or st are used in compound nouns, they are still pronounced as they would be at the start of

the word:

Sport Profisport

Stadt

Hauptstadt

• adding a prefix to verbs starting with sp or st:

stehen verstehen

stinken

gestunken

• making a past participle from verbs starting with sp or st:

This is also the case when:

So remember the rules:

Danke fürs Zuhören!

All images are taken from http://pixabay.com