17

If you have a word like 'Strasse' and it forms part of a street name for example, then I would assume that you still pronounce the word as though it were by itself.

But are there examples of when you wouldn't pronounce ST as SHT?

adolf garlic
  • 1,541
  • 3
  • 17
  • 23

2 Answers2

33

In standard German pronunciation, this happens when (and only when) st is the first part of a syllable.

Straße -- Stra·ße -- /ˈʃt/

verstehen -- ver·ste·hen -- /ˈʃt/

Kasten -- kas·ten -- /st/

bester -- bes·ter -- /st/

fast -- fast -- /st/

I'll add that there are a few loan words that can be pronounced without the SH sound, e.g. Star, Stimulus, Stracciatella, Spam, Stil. See the comments for some discussion on the subject.

Tim
  • 16,600
  • 18
  • 86
  • 165
  • 3
    +1; correct for standard German. – OregonGhost May 31 '11 at 10:01
  • @OregonGhost: Right, I'll add that disclaimer :) – Tim May 31 '11 at 10:04
  • I think every 's' in first syllable which is followed by 't' or 'p', is pronounced /ˈʃ/. –  May 31 '11 at 10:09
  • 1
    @Gigili It doesn't matter which syllable it happens in, as long as it's the onset. – Tim May 31 '11 at 10:11
  • @Tim: When it happens in first syllable then 'st' or 'sp' is the first part of a syllable then it's surely pronounced /ʃ/ .. even if it is not what the question is asking for. –  May 31 '11 at 10:20
  • 1
    Does the same hold true for SP = SHP then? Sorry, it's not completely clear – adolf garlic May 31 '11 at 10:25
  • @adolf: Yes, as Gigili said, it's the same rule with sp. – Tim May 31 '11 at 10:26
  • 6
    Some northern Germans, especially in Hamburg, do what is called "Stolpern übern spitzen Stein", pronounced without /ʃ/. My grandfather (originally form Soltau) and my uncle used to talk that way. My mother consciously changed to the standard way when she was a teenager in the 1950s. – starblue Jun 01 '11 at 11:29
  • Loanwords like stabil, Stracciatella or Stimulus pronounced WITHOUT the sch- sound quite overblown. – bot47 Jun 29 '11 at 18:16
  • Well, how do you know it is the first part of a syllable? – Debilski Jun 29 '11 at 19:49
  • @Debilski: It comes naturally :) How to divide a word into syllables should probably be a new question (if it's on-topic here). – Tim Jun 29 '11 at 20:29
  • @bot47 is right here, some loanwords are correctly pronounced with sh sound, but may be also pronounced without. Stracciatella is correctly pronounced Italian, but in German, it's also typically pronounced with sh (and tz instead of the Italian cc). Star, on the other hand, is mostly pronounced without sh. – OregonGhost Jun 30 '11 at 09:01
  • @OregonGhost: Star SHOULD be pronounced without Sch- to avoid confusion with the german translation of "starling" – bot47 Jun 30 '11 at 09:08
  • @bot47: Duden provides both pronounciations though, with the English pronounciation coming first (which is different from the Latin loanwords, which either have the sh version first or even as the only one). A note to learners: The German word Star (with two different meanings: a bird and an eye disease) are of course always pronounced with sh, as bot47 already implied :) – OregonGhost Jun 30 '11 at 09:15
  • 1
    @Oregon Stracciatella is practically always pronounced Italian in Austria. – Phira Jun 30 '11 at 13:00
  • @thei: I just tested a few pronounciation examples for the word in both meanings (the ice-cream and the soup - didn't find one for the cheese (; ), and they were all like Italian. However, I never heard it pronounced that way here in the North :) – OregonGhost Jun 30 '11 at 13:18
9

Many people tend to pronounce Latin-derived words with sharp s, like Strategie, though it is still correct to pronounce it as sht. However, there are also many dialects, especially in Northern Germany, that always prounounce it as st, not sht.

On the other hand, I could think of a different case: Martinstrasse vs. Martinstraße (Martins-Trasse vs. Martin-Straße). Of course, in the first case, it's no longer Straße ;)

OregonGhost
  • 14,206
  • 1
  • 59
  • 83