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I used FORVO to get right pronounciation and heard ''ts''. How do i know when letters are consonant combinations and when they are not?

der temirkhan
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    Why would it sound like 'sh'? – Kilian Foth Sep 07 '20 at 06:11
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    While everybody's right that in this case this is due to the Fugen-s, the underlying rule is much simpler: st can become ʃt only at the beginning of a syllable. And syllables don't spread over word boundaries: Ge-burts-tag. – phipsgabler Sep 07 '20 at 06:46
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    If in doubt, you can look the syllables up in DWDS (or any good dictionary) under Worttrennung. Also, without the jargon, look at how the word breaks down; it's referring to a day -- Tag, so that's its own syllable. (There is a word Stag, in German, something to do with the rigging in a sailing ship. In the highly unlikely event someone was born up there then you might conceivably have a Geburt-stag with the s pronounced ʃ. I'm fairly certain this has never occurred though.) – RDBury Sep 07 '20 at 07:56

2 Answers2

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This is a connection-"s" which connects "Geburt" and "Tag". It's always spoken as "s" and not "sh". You can find it in many other compound nouns.

äüö
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Some compound words in German include a so called "Fugen-s", which is an s that is added to the end of the first word. Unfortunately there is no rule for that.

Geburt is such a word that gains an extra s in compounds, so it becomes Geburts- +word. This is pronounced as ts, as those two letters belong together.

Possible compounds are

Geburts+kalender
Geburts+urkunde
Geburts+tag

This should clarify, why there is no sht-sound.

infinitezero
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