Language Basics - Part 1

For those of you who are curious, this will be as short a sum-up of German pronunciation as I can accomplish. For those of you who couldn't care less, I think you can skip these entries yourself without permission from me.

There are 48 phonemes in German. English has a few less, but it's hard to say exactly how many because it depends on where you are speaking English. Also, German rocks because unlike [freaking darn-blasted inconsistent] English, what you see is what you get in German spelling. Forget junk like "through, threw, thru"...

• German uses the same basic 5 vowels:
  

  
  a: "ah"
  o: "oh"
  u: "oo"
  i: "ee"
  e: "eh"
  

  
  
• Easy, right?
  There are also the "Umlaut" letters. They have those two little dots above them. And yes, they ARE different.
  

  
  ä: "eh"
  ö: like forming "o" with your lips but saying "uhh"
  ü: like forming "o" with your lips but saying "eee"
  Note: when you can't type these on your keyboard, substitute each for "ae, oe, ue," respectively. Everyone will know what it is.

  
  How different, you say? Infamous example:
  

  
  schwül: term for "humid/muggy"
  schwul: slang term for "gay/homosexual"
  

  
  
• German doesn't have diphthongs. So say these as a single vowel sound:
  

  
  eu,äu,oi: "oy" (See how "Deutschland" makes sense now?)
  ai,ei: like the vowel in "mine"
  au: "ow" like the vowel in "route"
  ie: "ee"

Okay. You're done with the vowels. That wasn't nearly as bad as you thought :) .