Every vowel of Standard German as spoken in Germany on one chart, placed where the tongue is when you say it. Tap a vowel to hear it and to see how to make it, how it is spelled and which neighbour it gets confused with.
Long tense and held
Short lax and clipped
Diphthong glides along the arrow
Unstressed schwa and -er
Pairs to drill
Positions are typical targets on the standard IPA vowel quadrilateral, and real speakers vary around them. Diphthong arrows show the direction of the glide, not how far it travels. The chart is vector, so it stays sharp at any zoom.
All vowels at a glance
r after a vowel
After a long vowel, r turns into the vowel [ɐ]: Tier[tiːɐ̯], Tür[tyːɐ̯], Uhr[uːɐ̯], mehr[meːɐ̯].
After long a it all but disappears: Jahr sounds close to ja.
Unstressed -er is simply [ɐ]: Vater, Lehrer, aber. The prefixes er-, ver- and zer- have [ɛɐ̯]: verstehen.
After a short vowel, careful speech keeps r as a consonant: Herr, wird, Ort. Everyday speech often turns it into a vowel there too.
Before a vowel, r is always a consonant: Tiere, hören, Lehrerin.
Spelling: long and short
Long is a doubled vowel (Haar, See, Boot), a vowel plus h (Bahn, sehr, Sohn), ie (Miete), or a single vowel before a single consonant (Tag, leben, Ofen).
Short is a vowel before a doubled consonant or a cluster: Mitte, kommen, Stadt, Kind. The spellings ck and tz count as doubled.
ß follows long vowels and diphthongs (Straße, heißen), ss follows short ones (Masse, muss).
It is a rule of thumb. Small function words are short anyway (in, mit, an, das, es), and a few words are long before a cluster (Mond, Obst, erst).
Three habits that help
Get ü and ö from i and e. Say [iː], freeze the tongue and round the lips: that is [yː]. The same move turns [eː] into [øː], [ɪ] into [ʏ] and [ɛ] into [œ].
Keep long e and o steady.See is [zeː] and so is [zoː], with no glide toward i or u as in English say and so.
Start vowels cleanly. A word or stem that begins with a vowel opens with a small catch in the throat and is not linked to the sound before it: ein Apfel, and beachten as be-achten.