How to Sound Like a Native German Speaker

Hello and welcome to the German Pronunciation Course, the course that will help you gain the perfect German accent with impeccable pronunciation just like you've always wanted. My name is Alex and I'm a teacher of German language. Over the past 15 years I've worked with thousands of students all over the world and I've helped them improve and develop their German language skills. I know that German pronunciation may seem incredibly difficult and I know how intimidating the linguistics methods are. That's why I designed this course for people like you who want the quickest, most simple method in order to master the precise, flawless German pronunciation. The learning techniques in my course are very easy to put into practice, and at the same time, they are highly effective. So you can learn all the pronunciation rules you need in a quick, simple, and fun way. Together, we will go through the German alphabet, you will discover how the sounds are heard, and how they are pronounced. Everything will be very easy, without complicated words, tricky rules, or learning by heart. As soon as you enroll, you will have full access to all video lessons, additional resources, and more. This course is designed for new students of the German language as an excellent starting base, but also for those of you who already know some German This is a great course for you. Thank you so much for your interest in this course. I hope you will enjoy it, especially since now I'm also offering you the full satisfaction guarantee. You have 30 days to test the entire course, no limit, and if you are not fully satisfied, you will get your money back, no questions asked. Basically, you have nothing to lose, so you can only win. Go on and take action now. Click on the enroll button and I'll see you straight away in the first lesson. Einen wunderschönen guten Tag meine Lieben, a wonderful day my dear. Welcome back. In this module we are going to deal with one of the fundamental pillars of any language, in our case the German language, the pronunciation, the alphabet, certain special letters, certain combination of letters. It is pretty much the first step you actually do if it were that you would have an in-room class. The very first thing I would go through with you would be the alphabet and the pronunciation, and here especially certain tips and tricks how you can actually improve your pronunciation. So, pretty much after the first week, you are already able, capable, And in the position of pronouncing words in a certain way that a native speaker might actually understand you. This is already a very, very big step in the beginning. I can remember very well how it was when I started to study Chinese, which is a totally different language. It took a couple of days until you are actually able to pronounce the words correctly. And if you are Chinese, or if Arabic is your native language, you will need a little bit of patience. Because the mouth, the muscles inside your mouth are not formed as yet to pronounce, in our case, German. But this actually applies to any language. Long story told short, the German alphabet has 26 letters. We are going to go through all of them. This is why I'm not going to mention them, but they are quite intuitive if you are familiar with the Latin alphabet. Most West European languages today are using the Latin alphabet. English, for instance, is in the Latin alphabet. We are using Arabic numbers, but the alphabet goes back to the Latin of the Roman Empire, so this shouldn't be a very, very big problem for you. German has a couple of special letters. We have three letters with diacritics. Diacritics are simply small signs which change the pronunciation of a vowel, usually. Sometimes also of a consonant. We have one special letter which looks like a B but is actually an S. And then there are a couple of combinations between letters which change the outcome. So the pronunciation then suddenly becomes totally different. But all in all, The link between how a letter or how a word is actually written and the actual pronunciation is very easy in German, significantly easier than in French or in English, where in French, for instance, you sometimes have four consecutive vowels in order to actually have just one sound, and you do not have this sort of phenomena. in the German language, so it shouldn't be a very big issue. We're going to go through all the aspects which I consider relevant. If it comes also to the pronunciation, we go very slowly. We have a lot of examples, and I think that at the end of this module, you will be pretty much in the position of pronouncing a word in a way that somebody on the street will easily understand you. Very well done. I hope you're good. And let's get right into the action. Bye-bye. Welcome back, my dear learners of German. This year is the last lesson dealing with the alphabet proper, and then we will be proceeding to the special letters. They're just four. They're not difficult. Y. The Y in German is pronounced as a letter Ypsilon. Das Ypsilon. The letters are neuter grammatically speaking. This is why it's das. das. Das. It appears mostly in foreign words. I don't even know whether there is one authentic German word which has a Y. It is also very popular in Scrabble because you can get many points, I think 10, so you see it does not really appear that often. It has three different pronunciations. The reason is it has foreign words, so depending on which language it is coming from, it changes The pronunciation, it can be pronounced like you. The J in German is J, or it can be pronounced like an I, I, as simple as that, I, or it can be pronounced like the umlaut, we deal with the umlaut a little bit later, like this U with two points on it, which would be Ü, Ü. All three of them can be Y. Let's start with J, die Yacht, der Joghurt und die Yamaha. Yacht and yogurt can also be written. In German, with J, so there's this sort of bookish kind of letter, the tense one. You can use both, but sometimes you write it with Y, so the pronunciation is actually J. Yamaha, der Joghurt und die Yacht. Very often. Especially when it is at the end, and this happens in names very often when they come from English, it is E, like Jenny or Benny or Sammy or Jimmy, you name it, and thus Baby. Also thus Baby, the cute one here, has an I, an E, at the end. Sunny boy, Yvonne. Yvonne is a French name, it has an Y, and it is pronounced like a E. It is a foreign name, so we simply take over the about the pronunciation. Here you even have it twice, that the Y is actually pronounced. Ypsilon, this is the actual name of the letter Ypsilon. There it is pronounced like a U. Remember U with two points on it. It's called umlaut in German. We'll deal with it in a second. Changes the pronunciation, it is , which we already know from the X lesson. And here the antagonism between J and Ü, the Yeti, the legendary snowman from the Alps, and the . Don't ask what it means. Das Z. Z is the actual name of the letter. It is usually pronounced as. So it is not the B. It is not a Z sort of pronunciation unless, of course, you already know the story. Foreign words. Die Ziege. The goat. Die Ziege. The goat. Der Zoo. The zoo. Der Zoo. Coming from Zoologischer Garten. Zoologischer Garten, that's a very famous train station in Berlin, which is called this way. Das Zebra, not Zebra, das Zebra. And foreign words here, of course, we take over the Z sort of thing. Der oder das Zoo, der oder das Zoo. Das Zoster, which is this sort of rash you might be developing, seems to be viral. Das Zoster. Or Zucchero, meaning sugar in Italian, but it's also the name, the artistic name of a very, very nice singer from Italy. Some Germans actually say Zucker, but this sounds so, so strange. It is Zucker, of course. Very well done. You have done it. This was the alphabet. Not that difficult, but it is important that you have a pronunciation basis. We have 26 letters, 5 vowels, 21 consonants, and we also have 4 special letters. Actually, there are just 1 special letter and 3 vowels with 2 points on them. We are going to deal with them right now. And I will be taking my leave of you once the whole alphabet is pronounced slowly so you can simply listen and enjoy. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z. Bye-bye. Hi, welcome back. Willkommen zurück. We have dealt with the alphabet now. four special letters three of them are simply vowels as you already know them a o and u which get two points on top of them they are called umlauts in German they are basically diacritic signs, a diacritic is simply some sort of accent or some sort of thing you can see that is usually above or below a letter and it changes the pronunciation. We have three vowels a, o and u and if you put two dots on them they literally become different letters. They completely change their pronunciation. You have this in many languages. The French for instance have the c which has some sort of hook underneath, or you have the accent, they are all sort of diacritics. And in German, we simply call it umlaut, which means actually sound change, if you could translate it in this way. If you have a keyboard, and this is very, very likely, which does not have these umlaute, and you would like to type them, you can also type A, E, O, E, or U, E. This has become quite familiar, especially with the advent of the internet, because many internet pages, which would actually, in their name, their HH, you know, this kind of WWW, they don't use umlaut there, obviously. So they write it with A, E, O, E, or U, E. And of course, even better, And you can actually install. the language package of your operating system and then you will find it somewhere on the right part of your keyboard and you can actually use this umlaut without any problems. They often appear in the plural form so in the singular you have the letter u for instance and then in the plural it becomes u so this u with two dots you have it in verbs with a vowel change And in a couple of other circumstances. Now, the first one is the letter E. So you have an A, which is A, but if it becomes umlauted, let's put it this way, then it's E. Usually it's this closed E and not the open E. It appears in plurals and in the comparative form, positive, comparative, superlative, the adjectives, and in strong verbs, which go through a vowel change. E is basically one of the two ways to pronounce the letter E. It's E or E depending on where you are. And why do we actually have it if it is so close to E? Well, I really think that it has a little bit to do with the fact that teachers need income. But theoretically, you could actually replace them with E. On the other hand, If you don't just focus on the pronunciation, you will see now it actually simply shows what is the origin of the word. So for instance, die Braut, which is the woman who is getting married, and the plural is die Bräute. So here Bräute, obviously you could also write with e, so b-r-e-u-t-e and not with this a umlaut, but because you have it this way with a umlaut, This is how you actually call this kind of special letter a-umlaut, o-umlaut, u-umlaut. You see that the origin of it is actually coming from Braut. Und die Sau, which is the female pig, und die Säue. Die Sau und die Säue. You would pronounce it 100% identical if you would be writing it with e, so s-e-u-e. Since you have it this way, you see instantly that the origin is actually the female pig, die Sau. Actually, die Sau is also a rather friendly swear word in German. So calling someone a good friend die Sau or du Sau is not really insulting. It's actually more kind of a friendship-ish kind of sparring you could call. But of course, your teacher, Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next video. I'll see you in the next video. Ciao. Even if it were true. Here we have the comparative. Alt means old. That's the positive, how do you call it, kind of the positive word, the standard word of the adjective. Then you have the comparative. Elder, older, and am eldest in oldest. And you have this in many cases that you have an umlaut when you are kind of lifting up the adjective. This is what Steigerung in German means. So this process, alt, älter, ältesten, old, older, the oldest in German is called Steigerung. So you lift up the adjective. Many words, many verbs actually in the second and third person singular change the vowel. And this vowel change can also be from One of these three vowels to the umlaut vowel in this case fallen to fall ich falle but du fällst er sie es fällt and then in the plural it's without umlaut again wir fallen ihr fallt und sie fallen many verbs unfortunately in the second and third person singular change the vowel nobody knows why ich schlafe du schläfst er sie es schläft And then in the plural, wir schlafen, ihr schlaft, sie schlafen. Very well then, this was the introduction to the Umlaute. E, also covered, and in the next one, we are dealing with Ö and Ü. Have fun, be good, see you later. Welcome back. We are now dealing with these two. So, we can actually say that they are extra letters, Ö and Ü. Umlaute. Umlaut, just for you to remember, means that you simply put two dots above A, O, and U. This is called umlaut. A replaces another letter, which would be the E, but Ö and Ü don't. Ö is for umlaut, and it appears quite often in Turkish and in Hungarian. When you see some Turkish written... The Turks are using the Latin alphabet now for almost 100 years. You will see it is a very popular letter in Turkey, also in Hungarian. And, um, it. The pronunciation of is also quite familiar in French, for instance. The French word for sister is or there is this forename in Scandinavian countries. Please, this is your record. Just they do not have this letter, but the pronunciation in itself they do have. And it appears quite often in plural forms. It appears often in the comparative and superlative form of an adjective and in certain verbs which change the vowel. Ö is also very popular in Austria because it is the abbreviation for their very country. Austria in German is called Österreich. There is no Austrian language. It is standard German. They are speaking their official in Österreich. In many abbreviations, you encounter Ö. For instance, ÖVP. It is a conservative party over there. In plurals, very often, the Ö appears. Der Ofen means the stove. Öfen is the plural for stove. Das Öl. Öl. Or adjectives which then get heightened up, as we say in German, from the positive to the comparative to the superlative. Oft, öfter, often, more. Oft, groß, größer, large, larger. Groß, größer. This kind of special letter here will be the subject, the topic of the next lesson. It is an S by pronunciation. Or die Öffnung, opening. Die Öffnung. What applies to the Ö also applies to the Ü, Ö, Ü. They are very, very close to each other, and you will need some time to get used to it. This is why it is also very important to read a lot when you are learning a language. It will also help you with the pronunciation. We have it in Turkish, in Kazakh, and it appears pretty much where ü also appears in certain adjectives when they are heightened in certain verbs and in the plural form. Die Überraschung, the surprise, die Überraschung, or the preposition über. Über means above something, so at the beginning when this car company came, or transportation company actually, Uber, I thought that it was an allusion to the German Uber. I'm not quite sure whether this is the case indeed, this seems to be an American company, but Uber has a positive connotation because you are actually above something. Or Überholen, which is the favorite My favorite hobby of the Germans, the yellow car, Überholen, the silver colored one. It means to overtake, since Germany is the only country in the world, believe it or not, which does not have a general speed limit on their motorways. Roughly 20% of their motorways, which is a little bit more than 2,000 kilometers, have no speed limit whatsoever. So you can actually überholen at 300 kilometers an hour, and if you do not have an accident, you are totally legal. Nobody can punish you. Überholen, the national hobby of the Germans. Here you have this heightening of the adjective in the positive, you do not have the umlaut, but then in the comparative and the superlative it suddenly appears. Yes, dumm, dummer, am dümmsten. Very nice movie by the way. Dinos, dinosa, tanats, tanats. In German you cannot Say to someone you are nuts, du bist nüsse. It does not mean anything, just for you to know. It's simply nuts only refers to what you can eat. And the last one, and I think this is an extraordinary elegant and beautiful way to end a lesson of German der Kuss, die Küsse, bye-bye. Welcome to actually the only special letter of the German alphabet because the three umlaute are precisely that umlaute so they look quite intuitively but we have this strangely looking letter which is not a b and it is not a three it's not a b and not a three actually rhymes and you can remember that it is by pronunciation a s it is a snake s and it is not a b-ish Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Now, you might ask yourself, why did Winnie the Pooh appear here? Well, he has no link whatsoever with this letter, but I thought that once in a while it's good to introduce Winnie the Pooh. It simply is nice to have a bearish appearance on a slide, or maybe because it is bee-ish. This is a link to honey, his favorite meal. What a lovely Pooh bear. This letter has only one form, so it does not exist in a capital. In a large form, meaning it never appears at the beginning of a word. It is always somewhere in the middle or somewhere at the end. The denomination of it, when you want to speak about it in German, you can call it scharfes S, which means spicy S. Or in the south of Germany, where I grew up, near Stuttgart, we used to call it dreierles S. Dreierles S basically means the S which looks like a three, because indeed it has this kind of three sort of shape. But the official denomination is scharfes S, For whatever reason, it is scharfes S. I do not know why. And important... This is just the names for it. These are just the names for it. It's not the pronunciation. The pronunciation is always the same. It is . And if you cannot type it because your keyboard doesn't have it and you do not have the software installed with the language package on your OS, then you can simply type double S. Meanwhile, in the age of email and less accuracy in the way how we express ourselves when we write, it is acceptable to actually skip it. In fact, in Switzerland, as far as I know, they actually abandoned this form of S completely. Switzerland, the main language in Switzerland is German, by the way, in the written form. They have their dialect, which is called Schwyzerdeutsch, but their official language, among others, of course, French and Italian and an older Latin language, is German. And they abandoned it, and also many newspapers. This goes back 15, 20 years, this debate among the newspapers, among the publishing houses. Should we use this language? Should we not? I like to use it, but this maybe is just to be explained because I deal with this language and I simply like it. But you can skip it. Then why SZ? Well, one reason could be in order to heighten our income. The other one could simply be a question of taste. But there is actually a reason. If you use it, you know instantly that the vowel which stands before the SZ is long. Always. So if you skip it with double S, Switzerland does, many newspapers do, It is actually not right to do. Why? Because we know the rule, if you have a double consonant, the vowel before is short. When you use it, you know instantly it's long. So especially for foreigners who do not know how the word is pronounced, it actually helps you when you You encounter it. It is, after all, just one special letter, so you would not need so much time to get used to that. A couple of examples, die Straße, the street, die Straße, so it's not Straße, die Straße. If you were to replace it with double S, as they do in Switzerland, actually according to the pronunciation rule, you would have to say die Straße, but now it is die Straße. oder groß Go on, Ross. Go on, Ross. In Germany, they actually do not say Großmeck. They actually say Big Mac. So they do not. Germans are very famous for actually kind of translating things from English into German, but they do not say Großmeck. Don't worry about that. And very, very, very typical for Germany. I could imagine if you ask people who have never been to Germany, what would you think of something typical German, they would actually think of this kind of picture. Where a traditionally dressed Bavarian woman is holding 10 liters of beer. Actually, she's holding around 20 kilos in her arms here, because the jar is rather large and heavy. It's also more than a kilogram. And the Maß, the name of this one liter jar of beer is the Maß. And since we know the vowel before it is long, It's much, much easier as if it were replaced by double S, because then it would be die Masse. Masse in itself is not a word, but Masse means mass in German. So it is actually quite good that we have it. The greeting, der Gruß, der Gruß. Or the foot, der Fuß, der Fuß. And just for you to remember, this special S, this S-Z, is always a snake, never a bee. It's always S and never a Z. How about the international conventions? Because other countries do not really have this S. In passports, they actually abandoned it simply because they cannot really type it. So if somebody is called Wiese or Nussbaum, then which is means nut tree then of course they use it um without double s and this world bestseller The Universe in a Nutshell the german translation became something with NussSchale most likely das Universum in a NussSchale something like this and they actually used it both Nuss-Schale with the special letter and Nuss-Schale with one, two, three. You have to be careful not to make it four. I have Nuss, double S, and then Schale starts with another S. So it is correct in German to write three consecutive S. So here we do not have a typo. They used both of it. If you are in doubt, you can simply use double S instead of SZ. Nevertheless, I consider it a very, very helpful tool, especially if you are new to the language, because if you have it, then you can actually pronounce it correct. The vowel long if SZ follows, the vowel short if double S follows. Very well done. I hope that this lesson helped you to get a little bit more accustomed to this one very special letter in German. I hope that the tour goes, I can't wait to see you soon. Grüßt euch! Good day! Now, since we have covered the alphabet, we have covered the Umlaute, we have covered the special letter, now we go to the next step, very important for the pronunciation. is the so-called diphthong. Diphthong simply means that you have two adjacent vowels and together they have a certain pronunciation. Interesting is that when you have it, when you look it up in a linguistics book, they actually tell you that the tongue changes position. It is very, very funny when you speak a language natively and then you read how linguists tell you how to pronounce the language. Then you try to reproduce it according to this plan they give you and somehow it never really fits. I do not know how linguists are doing it. So basically a diphthong means two. It is a two sound if you could translate into English and very often it changes the pronunciation significantly. There are quite a few diphthongs in German. You have the standard I, where you do not have any kind of change of pronunciation. But for instance, if you have a look here, which by the way means egg in German, this E in German is pronounced I as well. So the pronunciation of this one and of this one is identical. Then you also have a very popular diphthong over here. EU becomes OI, so O-I, OI, in 95% of the cases. We also have the actual OI, which doesn't appear so often in German. AU is a diphthong. And of course, this one, which we already had, maybe you remember, in the plural form, this one is also pronounced identical as this one, OI. Here we have a couple of diphthongs from foreign languages. For instance, AI. So AI from French, then it becomes das Faible. Faible means if you have in German, it means that if you have a weakness for something, for instance, Ich habe ein Faible für Eiscreme. It means that I'm actually crazy about or I'm getting weak if I'm confronted with it in a certain positive connotation. Or you also have this diphthong from English, i.e., for instance, male. So it changes the pronunciation a little bit. Or you have a U. In French, it becomes an O. They are fortuitous. We even have that word in German as well. Well, it basically means this kind of larger more comfortable chair some people call it a short sofa name it as you wish or we have a Y in English and it becomes a like in dust spray or here EU in French is forte for instance forte is the cultural part of the newspaper the cultural section of the newspaper and then you have OU in French as well but become patrouille we also have that word in German as well die patrouille F for OI like foyer and you I from English or French grapefruit in English or like guillotine So you see, there are quite a substantial amount of diphthongs, also from foreign languages, but the most important ones in German, obviously, are EI, which is I, and AU, which is OI, because they are read directly. changes the pronunciation and you do not have a reference point from English or French. What is the difference between a diphthong and a hiatus? This is actually a rather linguistic aspect but I mention it nevertheless because it helps you avoid mistakes. A hiatus means two consecutive vowels but in two different syllables which means that there is a small Cut, a small break between these two vowels and there is no fusion. This makes it very different from a diphthong. The diphthong kind of sucks them together and the hiatus forces you, when you pronounce it, to be a little bit, maybe a tenth of a second, maybe even less than that. For instance, you have here der Hinduismus. Der Hinduismus, we do not say Der Hinduismus, I say you and I. So this letter here and this letter you and I do not melt together because there are two different syllables. It obviously means Hinduism or Das Museum. you don't say das Museum Because the rule is, if you have yi and then yu, it should actually become oi. But it is not oi, because two different syllables, museum, or the ruine. It's not the ruine, it's the ruine. It is not really difficult. The only tricky part is that you have no rules for it. You simply have to learn it by heart. And this, obviously, you can only do by listening or talking to native speakers. who are also accustomed to the difference between diphthong and hiatus. You should actually go to the street in Germany and ask randomly, ask the people whether they know this difference. I could imagine that 95% don't. Well, now you do. So you already are better than the natives in certain aspects. Congratulations for that. See you next time. Bye-bye. Welcome back. Willkommen zurück. Let's get right into the action. Diphthong number one. In my opinion, also the most important one is ei, which usually is pronounced , in most of the cases, if it is in the same syllable. There are a couple of exceptions. Not all are pronounced , then when you do not have them in the same syllable, and not all diphthongs pronounced are written ae. We will have a couple of examples a little bit later on, but it is important to remember this idea whether two consecutive vowels are inside the same syllable or they're actually spanning over two syllables. The classic, das ei, das hier ist ein ei und das hier sind eier, eier is the plural of ei ei. Christmas, Weihnachten. Weihnachten actually means holy nights, if you translate it a little bit freely from German. Or die Eifersucht. This little boy here has a heart full of Eifersucht. Eifersucht means jealousy. The bucket, der Eimer. There is a nice expression in German, es ist alles im Eimer. When everything is in the bucket, it basically means that the whole thing, the whole project is basically destroyed. Und die Schweinerei. Schwein means pig. A Schweinerei is basically a huge mess. It can also involve dirtiness, not necessarily just unorderliness. Schweinerei. So basically here, the three kids have produced a huge Schweinerei with two At the same time, I could even imagine that this was the reason they produced it. So, a couple of examples of AI not written EI. It is a convention, unfortunately. There is no reason whatsoever. Why der Mais, which means corn, is written with AI, but almost same sounding rice, der Reis, is written with EI. You simply have to learn that by heart. Or the shark is der Hai, which is also written with AI. And if you would actually write H-E-I, then you would actually pronounce it as in English, hey. It would be a greeting, so the shark is H-A-I or here, another one, der Kaiser, the Emperor. Der Kaiser, never written with AI, it is written EI and then there are a couple of words which can be written in both ways and then they change the meaning. For instance, das Waisenkind, you could also say der Waise. If it is written with r-e, it means orphan. But weise, as you have it written here, means sage. Und der weise, basically, if you do not know whether it's written with A or with E, might actually be the orphan or the sage. And if you say der weise, weise, might actually be the sage who has been an orphan, or the other way around. Die Saite, if it is written with A, E, as we have it here, is a string. For instance, the thing, the string you use in order to make a tennis racket, this is called Saite in German, but die Seite with E is simply a page. For instance, a book on page 25, Buch, Seite 25. und So here, indeed, it is very, zwanzig very important to avoid misunderstandings, to know which is which and what is what. Then, of course, you a couple of cities and countries, Thailand or Thailand, you have a written R-E, very you do not necessarily have a written A-E to make it R-E. much. And here you have a couple of actually just one example of A-E not pronounced R-E. And you already know the reason, it simply spans over two syllables. My favorite example, because you can make a very funny mistake here, is be inhalten. Be inhalten means to contain. For instance, here in this example, you could say das Schwein, das Sparschwein. This is how we call something where you save money. It is done with a pig. I actually had one of these at school when I was seven, eight, nine year old boy. And das Schwein beinhaltet Münzen. This pig contains coins. This is what beinhalten means. It is not beinhalten. If you would pronounce it as if it were one syllable, beinhalten, das Bein, is the leg, und halten means to hold. It would actually mean to hold the leg. Something like this, like a monkey. Beinhalten. No, it's beinhalten. Very, very funny mistake you can actually make with it. Beimpfen. Beimpfen, you could also say impfen. It means to vaccinate. Beimpfen is simply a little bit more direct, a direct way to say it. So Beispiel hier, der Arzt beimpft den Jungen. The doctor administers a vaccine to the boy. Or a little bit of Galaxy, die Perseiden. It's not die Perseiden. It's also not Poseidon. It's die Perseiden. Why? We already know it because it spans over two different syllables. Very well done. I hope you're good. See you next time. All the best. Bye-bye. Welcome back. We have just covered I. Now we are going to cover OI. This is the other one of the two very, very important diphthongs. There are actually two in this second group that are pronounced identical. So if you're after pronunciation O, E, OI, It can be written e-u or it can be written e-u. Both have the same pronunciation. And as we had it with e-i, we also have it with e-u. Not all e-u are pronounced oi and not all diphthongs pronounced oi are written e-u. The reason is exactly with that it might actually span over two syllables, or it is something from a foreign language. Examples with regular oi, heute, meaning today, or die heute, which is the plural of die Haut, Haut means skin, die heute means skins, or die Eucharistie, die Eucharistie, the holy meal you are having in church. Eucharistie or Eucharistie. Both pronunciations are acceptable. Europa, our beloved continent. Europa. Das hier ist Europa. Das Euter. Euter means udder. The thing, the milk is flowing out from a cow. Das Euter. Or this sort of plant which climbs up the buildings is der Efeu. Der Efeu. And then we have O-I, which is not written E-U. For instance, the capital of beautiful Vietnam is Hà Nội, Hà Nội. Or heroin is Heroin. In German, here, you also have it spanning over two syllables. So in the case of heroin, it is not just that it is a foreign word, it also spans over two syllables. I suppose. And. You have it in egoist, also spanning over two syllables, und Autoimport. Here it is actually very visible because it is not just two syllables, it is also actually two words which have been compounded together. They are Autoimport, which is the importation of cars, and egoist is the same meaning in German and in English. And then a couple of other examples, the co-in-si-dence. The co-in-si-dence, obviously co- is already as a prefix, a syllable, so it spans over two syllables. You have this pissoir. Here actually, depending on how you pronounce it, it actually goes into the French pissoir. It is this kind of Toilet, sort of toilet you find on the male toilets, on die Toilette, the same thing, OE, coming from French actually, is pronounced a little bit differently. But here, EU not pronounced OI, EU not pronounced OI, is hier jemanden beurlauben. Jemanden beurlauben ist euphemistic. It's that beautiful, the soft language way to say that you fired someone. Urlaub actually means vacation in German. So when you fire someone, you simply tell him that you have set him free in order to make a vacation. It also sounds very similar to starvation, by the way. beurteilen means to judge someone or to assess someone. It can actually have both connotations. And in both cases, Be- is simply a syllable in itself. And then the word starting with U is actually a different word put together two syllables. So it's not beurteilen. It sounds very strange. It's almost impossible to pronounce beurteilen or beurlauben. It's even... Actually, the first time I tried to pronounce it as if it were the diphthong, to put it together. It's beurlauben oder beurteilen. Die Beunruhigung. Die Beunruhigung. Jemanden beunruhigen means to put someone in an uneasy situation. Die Beunruhigung could actually be caused by an alarm clock, for instance. Then you suddenly wake up. Oder beurkunden. Beurkunden. The Urkunde is a certificate, the Urkunde is the verb basically to hand out a certificate for a certain variable. EU and EI are very important in German, and this is why we covered them a little bit more extensively because it is a very popular source of mistakes, but I hope that the last two lessons could help you a little bit as far as this is concerned. I hope you're good. And I'm very much looking forward to seeing you again. Bye-bye.