How to pronounce the German "R" 

It depends on the region you grow up in. The most common pronounciation of R is actually [ʁ], the voiced uvular fricative. It's not really "rolled", but somewhere between your rolled German R and a "Kehllaut" (I think you did a video on those few years ago, like the "ch" in "acht")

For all Americans watching this: If anyone complains about your German pronunciation, just tell them you come from the Erzgebirge (the mountain chain south west of Dresden on the Czech border), because their dialect uniquely features an "American" sounding R. You can make your claim even more credible by knowing about the local christmas traditions.

I'm a spy and I find this video only partially helpful, yet entertaining.

One big exception to pronouncing the R as a vowel. If you are the singer of Rammstein, you always want to roll the R as much as possible.

"Unless you are a spy!" And even then you can apparently get away with the heaviest possible British accent by claiming to be born and raised at the foot of Piz Palü... As long as you don't order three beers. *nerd mode off*

In a dialect in my region "hören" is basically pronounced as "höan", so depending on where exactly you are and who you're talking to the vowel r is a lot more used than the normal r

How often did you practice the different "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" sounds? It was quite hard for me despite being a German antive speaker.

Sehr nett, die ganzen Begriffe noch mal auf deutsch in die Untertitel zu schreiben. Danke dafür.

3:31 Saying "In German, the r can sometimes be a vowel" in a non-rhotic dialect of English sounds a bit ironic ;)

1:59 baa baa banküberfall!

I am a phonetics teacher in Germany and this is a brilliant video, which I am very grateful for and which I acutally use in university classes but, as far as I know, the most commonly-used High German 'r' sound is ʁ​ (not R) which is a voiced uvular fricative (stimmhafter uvularer Frikativ) but maybe they use the uvular trill where you live?

Don't worry about speaking perfect, we can barely understand each other's dialects, it doesn't matter if you have an accent.

I love those deep dives into language science. It's a lot of fun for me. Unfortunately, most of my friends become very quickly tired of the topic. :(

Listen to a lot of Rammstein and then start to sing alongside.

One of your best videos. Very informative.

I study linguistics and I'm surprized at your knowledge on phonology!

As a Portuguese living in Germany for 10 years I always found tremendously difficult to pronounce the "ch" like in "auch", "acht" or "Michael". On the other end no German (Michael or not) can ever correctly pronounce my name "João" so I call it even.

The rolling "tongue" r is not only used in southern Germany. For example in eastern Hessian dialect this is also the case. Mostly older people are rolling the r, just because they still speak this dialect. So this has nothing to do with the "Bühnendeutsch" in this case.

Da kann ich nur zustimmen, sehr gut gemacht und erläutert! Danke.

I couldn't produce the alveolar trill until I was about 9 or 10 years old. And I'm from Austria. It felt a little bit disabled, actually.

The rolling R is not only used in "Bühnendeutsch, but almost always when singing.

Ok, jetzt rrrrrrrrrrrrollt es ganz schön in meinem Kopf

A German linguist named Theodor Siebs introduced the first standard pronunciation in 1898. It was called _die deutsche Bühnenaussprache_ or _Bühnendeutsch_ or stage pronunciation. This kind of German pronunciation is unique. Every speech sound had to be pronounced clearly, with /p t k/ in initial position were followed by a clear /h/. An alveolar trill 'r' was the standard pronunciation, which means all r's had to be pronounced just like a Spanish 'r'. There was no vocalized /r/ that is heard like /ah/. There were no syllabic consonants for the pronunciation of -en and -el. Thus, such words as _reich_ , _über_ , _Urlaub_ , _arbeiten_ , _Wappen_ , _backen_ , _Apfel_ and Katze were just pronounced [raɪç], ['yːbər], [ˈuːrlaʊp], [ˈarbaɪtən], [ˈvapən], [ˈbakən], [ˈapfəl] and [ˈkhatsə] respectively. All people in German-speaking countries understood this stage pronunciation. Unfortunately, this artificial pronunciation was used formally in Germany until 1950s because the second type of standard pronunciation appeared: _Deutsche Hochsprache_ . Today, its name has been changed to _Deutsche Aussprache_ . The second type of German pronunciation is more difficult to many learners of German since a uvular 'r' is the standard pronunciation and it becomes a vocalized 'r' [ɐ] when the letter 'r' is at the end of words and before consonants. This means that 'r' is pronounced like /ah/ at the end of words and before consonants, but it is pronounced just like a French 'r' when it appears in other positions. The endings -en and -el become a syllabic-n and a syllabic-l respectively. Thus, _reich_ , _über_ , _Urlaub_ , _arbeiten_ , _Wappen_ , _backen_ , _Apfel_ and Katze should be pronounced [ʀaɪç], ['yːbɐ], [ˈuːɐlaʊp], [ˈaʀbaɪtn̩], [ˈvapm̩], [ˈbakŋ̩], [ˈapfl̩] and [ˈkʰatsə] respectively.

Actually in my experience, if you are American and don't speak using the American R, people in Germany tend to be disappointed.

I'm surprised you didn't compare R as a vowel to the RP pronunciation.

Uvula? I believe the technical term is “that little dangly thing that swing at the back of my throat”.

In an area called "Lippe" - east of Eastern Westfalia - the "R" is pronounced as "A". Schirm = Schiam.

I'm surprised you didn't mention Scooby-Doo. As a ghost-hunting cartoon dog, he has a unique American dialect of pronouncing every word with an R.

What can I say but "excellent"!

This guy is amazing!! I wish i had him as a professor at school.

If you use a rolling r or a uvular trill ⟨ʀ⟩ or voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] at the end of a word (like Tor, Uhr or war (was)) instead of a Schwa (ə), you just sound a bit.. well.. strange, but it still sounds German, kinda. It just sounds a bit.. too German. Like when Brits try to imitate ze GeRRRRRRman Language.. But nevertheless, it's still better than the often heard american-r, the alveolar approximant [ɹ]... If unsure how to sound a r at the end of a word, use the English "better", which is also more of an a-sound (bett-ah), so a Tor=To-ah, Uhr=Uh-ah is fine.

That is so interesting, I had no idea that so many r's were spoken in German! I feel like the alveolar and uvular families are qualitatively very different, but once you are comfortable producing one sound in the family, you can much more easily learn to say the others of the same family. Coming from a language which uses the alveolar trill, I found it very difficult to learn to say the uvular r's that the Germans around me were saying. But once I learned to pronounce one of them - which in my case was probably the uvular trill, I was also able to adjust the pronunciation to match whatever I was hearing.

Unless of course you are in France and try to speak with a foreign accent, then a good chunk might either actually not understand you or refuse to listen. 😅

The best video explaining "R"" sound!

You are a better German Teacher than my German teacher in my German school, when they teached us vowels... and i got confused in primary schools for reasons like that! Tor would be only one vowel... but isnt....

Where I went to school (Austria) there is a valley where they speak a very rolling R. One student from there drove our French teacher nearly insane.

Again what learnd ;) Thank you

Love to see you do one of these on Danish phonology. Especially their pronunciation of the letters "r" and "v". ;-)

In reality I think I pronounce EVERY R that’s at the end of a syllable as a vowel. In your example Uhrwerk I would say „U[e]-we[a]k“. So there are even two different vowel sounds the R can make: After A, E, O it is a short „a“: Art -> „A-a-t“, Pferd -> „Pfe-a-rd“, Ort -> „O-a-t“; and after I and U it is like a short E-sound: Vier -> „vi[e]“, Kur -> „Ku-e“. 😄 At least that is the case in my region of Germany/NRW.

RRRRRRRRammstein, ein Mensch bRRRRRRRRennt.

Its even interesting for a native german to watch your videos :) greetings from Anhalt😉

You took a bit complicated topic and turned into much more complicated topic with those scientific words. Thank you.

I was looking for a video like this cause I wanted to know how people from other countries think our R is pronounced. This video explaines it to the point.

In Austria in many regions and especially old people use an alveolar trill / tap :)

love the medical imaging shoutout

True story, my girlfriend is from northern Germany and I'm from Austria, near the Bavarian border. We both can't do the r the way the other does.

There's no shame in striving for perfection in your pronunciation. It's easto understand and people will appreciate it!

This video helped me a lot!!! Dankee

As a kid for the longest time I thought the German brewery Riegeler was called Riegela, because of their ads on radio.

I really should repeat my linguistics classes, or at least have a look into the textbook again, which I fortunately still own. Thank you, Andrew, for giving me this brilliant idea. (And don't ask me how I struggled with the French R, Bavarian that I am.)

Actually made me realize that we almost only use that vowel R in our dialect here...

I am a speaker of (Southern) Austrian German, so... 1. I don't use the alveolar trill 'r' at all and I don't know any native speaker here who does that. In fact, I am not even able to make that sound. 2. As for the uvular r... Take a sip of water and gargle. That's the sound you are searching for. Try to make that sound with ever decreasing amounts of water. 3. I never thought of the 'vowel r' as an 'r' at all. To me it's rather an 'a' albeit a murmurous one. There's an 'r' in writing but in the pronounciation there is rather a vague 'a'. Non-rhotic varieties of English went a few steps further and turned -er into a clear -ah. 4. Don't spend to much time practicing your r's. Just use your familiar English one and you'll be understood.

As a German Northerner, I roll the "R" in the back. But I always wondered why I never was able to do the "R" of Bavarian dialect. You are the first to tell me that it is done with the tongue. Well, I still simply can't do it, but now I know what to look for!

Fantastic video, thanks a lot! Now I can do weird R sounds alone at home 😅

Vielen Dank mein Herr, du has helped mich lernst Deutsch

I’m amazed that I found that so interesting and enjoyable wow!

Quite interesting even for a native German speaker. Greetings from Neu-Isenburg!

I don't think I can do either trilled German r. I always try the uvular, but I think when I say it it just sounds like a voiced velar fricative

That reminds me of the tense dialogue between Major Hellstrom, Corporal Wilhelm Wicki, Lt. Archie Hicox, and Bridget von Hammersmark in the basement bar. Major Hellstrom was so hell-bent on figuring out the specific areas in Germany based on accents. One biggest mistake Lt. Archie Hicox was gesturing wrong fingers...

Unless you are a spy or...Ästhet ? ;)

Holy shit this is so helpful!!! I couldnt be sure when to use [R] or how to actually pronounce it but now i just put my tongue is the right position and like magic!!

Another video telling us about something unexpectedly interesting :)

you are amazing!!! instant follow. are you sure you're from england?? i have NEVER heard someone not german say EVERY sound of "uhrwerk" in SUCH a doubtlessly german way 0_0

Suffice it to say, Andrew, that the English sound most nearly equivalent to a German R sound would be that used by Scottish and northern English speakers. Right?

I love that he doesn't put pressure on the German language learners saying they shouldn"t overthink pronunciaton just need to be understandable while giving useful tips and also serious scientific facts about the sounds.

Hallo rewboss, ich hätte einen Themenvorschlag für ein linguistisches Video... Mach doch mal ein Video über die deutsche Grundwortstellung... Also ich meine es gibt SVO-Sprachen wie Englisch, SOV-Sprachen wie Japanisch, VSO-Sprachen wie klassisches Arabisch etc. Beim Deutschen ist es ja so, dass man auf den ersten Blick denkt, es sei eine SVO-Sprache, und dass man bei der genaueren Analyse aber bei SOV mit Verbzweitstellung im Hauptsatz und VSO in Entscheidungsfragen landet.

Highly interesting! _ What might also be interesting: the "g" at the end of a syllabe or of a word. "wenig" - some people say "wenik", others "wenich". Same with e.g. "Weg". etc.

Und als nächstes die verschiedenen "ch", oder hatten wir die schon? Für viele ausländer ein großes problem. (Französischer akzent einfach gemacht: sprich sch statt ch und lasse ansonsten das h weg)

Thanks for this vid, it helps my accent insecurity :D

5:20 That is not correct I would say. The rolled R was actually very common in German lands and has died out over the last two centuries. In the 18th century you could find the R being rolled pretty much all over the place and as far as I know, middle high german also used rolled Rs.

As a Mecklenbourgian: Don't use "-er" at the end of a german noun. Just say "-äh". Normally other Germans don't recognize, that we're sloppy with our endings... Nobody ever has called my dialect a dialect...

In The Hague the r is a vowel too, when at the end of any word. Lekker is lekkah, bier is bieah, etc etc.

I'm wondering about the second line of IPA transcription at 2:30 I assume it referrs to the German pronunciation so why is there a [​ɔ] instead of [oːˈ]?

If you're about to order three beers, be sure to raise the correct German fingers.

Speaking an perfect R might help that german people won't answer you in English after you asked in German.

Von Dir kann aber echt jeder noch was lernen! :-)

I live so darned close to the German border and I go shopping there weekly, I've had German classmates and friends yet still the freaking vowel R trips me out. I usually just use my Dutch (voiced alveolar trill) R instead and it's never caused any confusion.

Me, a spy *sighs*

Im always fascinated how we pronounce the same latter differently in different situations. Here with Uhr and Uhren. Never realized this. Last year it was "n" in for example "Wirsing" vs "Nürnberg". First one the tongue is back, the letter one is at the front.

I figured the difference between the [ə] ending in "eine" and the [ɐ] ending in "einer" would be an important distinction, at least if you're going for the standard pronunciation.

I really want to get the uvular one right, we don't have it at all in spanish so it's like using an austin powers mating call to speak

I roll my Rs depending on the height of the heels I'm wearing. BTW, 'Uhrwerk' said aloud has no 'r' in it, the sound you hear is represented by the written 'hr'.

i never saught it would be that hard to speak german. I worked with the americans for some years and the Hausmeister talked the best. He said talkin the Bavarian way is the esiest. And 99,9 percent he was right. I never herd a non german talk such a great bavarian^^ What i wanna tell you is - Do not take your time for small things when better things could been spoken of.

To this day I always was under the impression that the rolling of the r with the tip of the tongue was a standard practice in northern German dialects/accents or Plattdeutsch - and also done by people I definitely wouldn't call "posh"😅 (my grandma does it, as well as her family and you can hear actors in Northern German tv shows talk like this. Although it usually doesn't sound "properly" rolled, but more like a short "hit"🤔).

I don`t think it is the uvula that vibrates it is a bit more in the front.

Amazing

3:11 On that topic, do any languages besides English actually use any sort of labial/labialized articulations to their “r” sounds?

From my region, the ore mountains in Saxony, we roll the R like a Barrel xD

the most important letter for anglo-speakers to learn, not only german, but languages in general. Very important especially for americans.

I think it is bad advice to tell students not to worry about the /ə/-/ɐ/ contrast at the end of unstressed syllables. German differs from English here. In Southern British English there is /ə/-/ʌ/ in stressed and some unstressed syllables like in undone, which is /ʌn'dʌn/ and not */ən'dʌn/ or */ən'dən/, but /ə/ and /ʌ/ are merged in reduced context like -er in butter /'bʌtə/. In German, the /ə/-/ɐ/ contrast exists in all contexts and is important even at the end of unstressed syllables because of the high number of minimal pairs resulting of the contrasting declension endings -e and -er as in eine vs. einer.

wow didn't expect that MRI came up

5:33 Ah ha! I heard it

Fork! I was just sweeping my hand left when the glas shattered. Gave me quite the scare, searching my desk for something broken! O_o Damn those studio monitors... that stereo image was just too real. lel =D

The pronouncing of r is different in Germany, every Region every dialect every Accent are different in pronouncation. In Frankiona you hear an rolling R Sound.

Can we have this video for the letter ö please? ;)

That's what I try to tell my friends who say I'm going to be laughed at or not understood when I travel to Berlin (fingers crossed). My German will be far from perfect, but I think it''ll be understood. Meanwhile....I'm still working on the sounds and vocabulary.

Even I as a German am not able to pronounce the rolling R. Sometimes it works depending on how much fluid is in the back of my mouth. In the front I'm just not able to roll it. The American R is not a problem at all. So if I try to pronounce the R and it's not like - er in the end (so that the R becomes a vovel) my R sounds a bit like the CH sound from the rear of your mouth. In Germany it's not a problem at all, but when I try to teach German to foreigners they are always confused about the pronunciation of the R and try my broken version.

Well and I'm from a region in Germany where people manage it to put two 'r'-sounds in the word 'Banane'.

Now I want to roll the R at the end of my username.

6:49 pretty good --- actually native quality but nevertheless I'd say most people pronounce hören as one syllable ... so again with turned up a like höan or better hööan as the ö has to be long