To help pronounce this one, remember that ‘qu’ is more of a ‘kv’ sound. Although a great honor, his name turned out to be one of the hard words in German! To honor his medical contribution, his name landed into the German dictionary as both a verb and a noun. In this case, you can blame Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, the doctor who patented the procedure in the late 19th century. What’s more daunting than going for an x-ray? Some would say trying to pronounce the German word for an x-ray. Who knew a single word could be a tongue twister? 6. The hard part comes when you try saying it all together as one word. Arbeitslosigkeitsversicherung (Unemployment insurance)Īnother brilliant logical compound noun here! Although this is the longest German word on the list, once you break it up into individual parts, it’s actually not that bad. In fact, this may be one of the most difficult German words to master. The German ‘r’ at the beginning of the word followed by ‘ü’ is what makes this one hard to pronounce. Sometimes we love the logic of German, but that doesn’t make the pronunciation any easier!Įvery time we try to pronounce this one, it comes out as a strange sound rather than an actual word. Freundschaftsbeziehungen (Friendship relations)Īnother classic compound noun in the German language is the word for “friendship relations.” Breaking this word up, you’ve “Freundschaft” meaning friendship and “Beziehungen” meaning relations. This turns the meaning into a small box of matches, which is written as Streichholzschächtelchen (though it looks like it should mean so much more.) 3. If you want to complicate it even further, add ‘chen’ to the end of it and an umlaut to the ‘a’ (ä). Want to ask someone for a box of matches? You better be prepared for a tongue twister! There’s a reason this makes the list of the hardest words in German. Before you make up your mind, wait until you see (and hear) the rest of the list. Many English speakers struggle, and some even consider this the hardest German word to pronounce. Eichhörnchen (Squirrel)Īlthough squirrel is also tough to pronounce in English, it’s a classic when it comes to difficult German words to pronounce. If you’re ready, let’s dive into some of the hardest German words to pronounce. Throw some funny-looking letters (and sounds) in there and you've got a recipe for a pretty hard language to pronounce. While the length of a word isn’t necessarily proportional to its difficulty, the sheer number of letters is enough to terrify even the most advanced language learner. They’re a trademark of the German language. Compound nouns combine several different elements from singular nouns to form one, very specific noun. So, why are there so many hard German words? It’s usually because of compound nouns. While there are several complicated German words, the language is also home to some beautiful German words, many of which express concepts that don’t exist in the English language. The German language has a reputation for being quite aggressive and filled with words that are hard to pronounce. Here are our top 10 hardest German words and how to pronounce them!
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