German Temperatures Spoken: Grad, Minus, Komma

A temperature is three pieces of information stacked into about a second of speech: a number, a sign, and a unit. German gives them to you in an order English never uses. The number arrives reversed, the unit lands after it, and the sign, the one bit that decides whether you need a coat, can turn up at the very end of the phrase.

That is why fünf Grad minus catches people out. You have already filed the answer as five degrees, moved on, and then one unstressed word at the back of the sentence flips it ten degrees the other way. This guide covers the three parts in the order you hear them, with real clips from the practice corpus.

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How a German temperature is spoken

The basic frame is the number, then Grad:

Two things about Grad make it easier than it looks. It is never pluralised after a number, so it is ein Grad, zwanzig Grad, minus fünf Grad, always the same short syllable with no ending to catch. And Celsius is almost always dropped in ordinary speech. You will hear the full Grad Celsius on a science programme, not from someone telling you what the weather is doing.

So the unit gives you a fixed, unchanging landmark. Everything hard about a spoken temperature is in the number in front of it and the sign around it.

Vierunddreißig Grad: the reversal, at speed

Every two-digit German number is said back to front, and temperatures live almost entirely in two digits. Vierunddreißig is literally four-and-thirty. If you are decoding left to right you will have committed to a 4 before the dreißig arrives to tell you it was a 34 all along. The general case is covered in why German numbers are backwards; what matters here is that a temperature gives you almost nothing else to hold on to while you sort it out.

Now the same sentence one degree warmer. This is the pair worth replaying, because in a real forecast this is the whole difference between the two readings you might get:

The information is at the front. In a two-digit temperature the tens are the ending and the units are the beginning, so the difference between 34 and 35 has already been and gone by the time you hear dreißig. Train the first syllable, not the last one.

Höchsttemperatur: the word that warns you

German forecasts announce a temperature before they say it, and the announcement is a compound word. Four of them cover nearly everything:

These are long words, and that is the point: they take about as long to say as the number does, which buys you a moment to get ready. Treat Höchst- and Tiefst- the way you treat a platform announcement's Gleis. The word itself is the alarm, and the number is right behind it.

The plural forms usually mean a range is coming, which is two reversed numbers back to back with only und between them: Höchstwerte zwischen fünfzehn und achtzehn Grad. There is no gap to think in, and Grad only shows up once, at the very end.

Minus: the sign that can arrive after the number

Below zero, German has three ways to say the same thing, and they put the sign in different places:

The first one is kind to you. Minus is short, unstressed and easy to lose under a run of speech, but at least it comes first, so if you catch it you know what kind of number is coming.

The other two are the real problem, and they have no English equivalent that behaves the same way. English can say "five below", but the "below" is stressed and it still comes before you have finished the phrase. German lets a complete, correct, positive-sounding temperature go past and then adds one word at the end that inverts it. If you close the answer as soon as you hear Grad, you will get it wrong by ten degrees.

Do not close a temperature until the clause ends. This is the single habit that fixes minus. Hear the number, hold it, and wait for the sentence to actually finish before you write anything down. Fünf Grad and fünf Grad minus are the same first three syllables.

One more trap sits inside the freezing range, and it has nothing to do with the sign. Winter temperatures are exactly where vierzehn (14) and vierzig (40) collide, along with the rest of the -zehn against -zig pairs. Minus vierzehn is a cold morning and minus vierzig is Siberia, and the two differ by one consonant at the end of the word. That family is worth drilling on its own, and we cover it in German number minimal pairs.

Komma: the decimal you actually hear

German writes decimals with a comma, so 5,2 °C on a screen is 5.2 °C in English notation. Out loud, a temperature says that comma: fünf Komma zwei Grad. With more than one digit after it, the digits are read one at a time, so 20,45 is zwanzig Komma vier fünf, not zwanzig Komma fünfundvierzig.

What makes this worth a section is that the very same comma is silent in a price. Here is 5,55 €, and the slot where the comma sits is filled by the word Euro:

And in the fastest form of a price, nothing at all fills the slot. Two numbers land back to back and you are expected to know where the comma went:

So the rule is not about the symbol, it is about what kind of quantity you are hearing. Money drops the comma. A measurement says it. Hearing Komma is a strong signal that you are in measurement mode, and the same split runs through German weights and measures, where a shop quantity can also use fraction words like anderthalb instead of a decimal.

Temperature is the simplest corner of all this, because it only really goes two ways. A forecast rounds to whole degrees and you will not hear a comma at all. A measured reading, a record or a body temperature keeps one decimal and says Komma out loud. There is no fraction-word version: nobody gives you the weather in anderthalb Grad.

Where spoken temperatures come at you

• The forecast. Radio, TV and podcast weather, usually a high and a low, often as a range, and always fast. This is where Höchstwerte and Tiefstwerte earn their keep.
• Small talk. Wie warm wird es morgen? is one of the most reliable conversation openers in German, and the answer is a bare two-digit number plus Grad.
• At the doctor. A fever is a temperature with a decimal: achtunddreißig Komma fünf. In quick speech you may also hear the Komma dropped the way a price drops it, as achtunddreißig fünf.
• In the kitchen. Oven settings are three-digit and round: auf zweihundert Grad vorheizen. Recipes read aloud are one of the easier places to practise.
• Winter travel. Road and rail warnings pair a minus temperature with a place name, so the number sits between two things you also need to catch, much like the platform number in German train announcements.

How to train this specifically

1. Wait for the clause to end. Minus can come last. Nothing else on this page matters as much as not committing to an answer early.
2. Learn the four compound words. Höchsttemperatur, Höchstwerte, Tiefsttemperatur, Tiefstwerte. They cost an evening and they tell you a number is coming.
3. Drill the first syllable of two-digit numbers. Vierund- against fünfund- is where 34 and 35 separate, and it happens before the word is half over.
4. Practise the -zehn and -zig pairs in the minus range. 13 to 19 against 30 to 90 is the family that does real damage in winter.
5. Use Grad as a full stop, not a finish line. It confirms that what you just heard was a temperature. It does not promise the sentence is over.

Every clip on this page is a real question from the Zahlhaus corpus, the same audio the app uses for German numbers. If you caught both temperature clips first time at full speed, the app will push you faster. If either needed a second play, that is the gap to work on.

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