The German alphabet
German uses the same 26 Latin letters as English, plus four extras: ä, ö, ü (vowels with umlauts) and ß (the Eszett, a special 'ss'). Spelling is far more regular than English — once you know a handful of rules, you can read almost any word out loud.
The four extra letters
Ä sounds like the 'e' in 'bed' — Mädchen (girl) = MED-khen. Ö is roughly the 'i' in 'bird' with rounded lips — schön (beautiful) = shern. Ü is 'ee' said with the lips of 'oo' — über (over) = UE-ber. ß is just a sharp 'ss' and only appears after long vowels or diphthongs — Straße (street) = SHTRAH-suh. Capital ß is rare; older texts write SS instead.
Consonants that don't behave like English
w sounds like English 'v': was (what) = vas, Wasser (water) = VA-ser. v sounds like English 'f': vier (four) = feer. j sounds like English 'y': ja (yes) = ya. z is 'ts' as in 'cats': zehn (ten) = tsayn. r at the end of a syllable is soft, almost a vowel: Mutter (mother) ends in a swallowed 'uh'.
Two-letter combinations to memorize
sch = English 'sh': Schule (school) = SHOO-luh. ch after a, o, u is a throaty 'kh' like in Scottish 'loch': Buch (book) = bookh. After e, i, ä, ö, ü it's softer, like a hissed 'h': ich (I) = ikh. ei sounds like English 'eye': mein (my) = mine. ie sounds like 'ee': Bier (beer) = beer. eu and äu sound like 'oy': neu (new) = noy.
Final consonants devoice
At the end of a word, b sounds like 'p', d like 't', g like 'k'. So Tag (day) = tahk, not tahg. und (and) = oont. This is why German names like 'Bach' end with that crisp 'kh' sound.
Capitalize all nouns — get used to it now
Every noun in German is capitalized, in the middle of a sentence too: Das ist ein Haus. = 'This is a house.' Both Das (start of sentence) and Haus (a noun) get capitals. We'll come back to this in lesson 2.
