The German Consonant 'z' - Paul Joyce (2024)

FAQs

What is the German sound for Z? ›

The German consonant 'z' is pronounced in the same manner as the English 'ts' sound that is found at the end of words such as 'cats', 'lots' or 'sits'.

Various German consonants occur in pairs at the same place of articulation and in the same manner of articulation, namely the pairs /p–b/, /t–d/, /k–ɡ/, /s–z/, /ʃ–ʒ/.

German has no "th" sound, so "zis" is what they start with before they practice. It's similarly grating to Germans to hear their language mispronounced by others. And yet, English has an "f" sound. German has an extremely consistent spelling and essentially all "v"s are pronounced as "f".

If we compare the German alphabet to the English alphabet, both share the same 26 letters from A to Z. Congratulations! You're already familiar with most of the German alphabet. Now, there are only 4 remaining letters that are missing, which are probably new to you: Ä, ö, ü, ß.

ß : German letter regarded as a ligature of long s (ſ) and short s, called scharfes S or Eszett. (In some typefaces and handwriting styles it is rather a ligature of long s and tailed z (ſʒ).)

Why did Z get removed from the alphabet? Around 300 BC, the Roman Censor Appius Claudius Caecus removed Z from the alphabet. His justification was that Z had become archaic: the pronunciation of /z/ had become /r/ by a process called rhotacism, rendering the letter Z useless.

While many say that the German alphabet has 26 letters just like English, there are also four additional letters in the German language: ä, ö, ü and ß. If you count these, this brings the count up to 30 letters.

development of German languages

…a change customarily called the High German consonant shift. At the beginning of words and when doubled, p, t, and k came to be pronounced as affricates; after a vowel they came to be pronounced as long fricatives.

I think in the German language the word with he most consonants in a row is der AngstschweiĂź, cold sweat, or literally 'anguish sweat'.

The Swiss keyboard layout has no ß key, nor does it have the capital umlaut keys Ä, Ö and Ü. This dates back to mechanical typewriters that had the French diacritical marks letters on these keys to allow the Swiss to write French on a Swiss German QWERTZ keyboard (and vice versa).

What is the double ß in German? ›

In German orthography, the letter ß, called Eszett (IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt]) or scharfes S ( IPA: [ˌʃaʁfəs ˈʔɛs], "sharp S"), represents the /s/ phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs. The letter-name Eszett combines the names of the letters of ⟨s⟩ (Es) and ⟨z⟩ (Zett) in German.

O-umlaut. The letter o with umlaut (ö) appears in the German alphabet. It represents the umlauted form of o, resulting in [œ] or [ø]. The letter is often collated together with o in the German alphabet, but there are exceptions which collate it like oe or OE.

Therefore /s/ and /z/ are different phonemes, even though both of them have a somewhat strange distribution. /z/ never occurs finally, but /z/ is a voiced obstruent, and we have already seen that voiced obstruents never occur finally. /z/ is therefore regular in that respect. /s/ does not occur initially, but occurs ...

In German orthography, the letter ß, called Eszett (IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt]) or scharfes S ( IPA: [ˌʃaʁfəs ˈʔɛs], "sharp S"), represents the /s/ phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs. The letter-name Eszett combines the names of the letters of ⟨s⟩ (Es) and ⟨z⟩ (Zett) in German.

Introduction to [z] as in "always," "prize," and "buzz" Three ways to spell [z] are <s>, <z>, and <zz>. Three ways to spell [s] are <s>, <c>, and <ss>. The letter that sometimes spells [z] and sometimes spells [s] is <s>.