THE VOICE TEACHER IS REGULARLY BESET WITH CHALLENGES in the studio regarding consonant clusters in sung German, as is the singer who approaches any vocal work in the German language. The reputation of the German language as being consonant rather than vowel oriented is commonly appreciated and justifiable. Statistical studies show that the burden of text intelligibility is carried principally by the consonants, to a greater extent than most languages. A language that can produce lexical items such as entsturzt [ent'∫tYrtst] and kraftstrotzend ['kraft∫trctsent] adopts a strongly marked position among the world's languages with respect to the involvement of consonants in its sound system. These words contain ten and fourteen phonemes respectively, of which only two or three are vowels. The remaining clusters of consonants are samples of the subject of this article. The consonant clusters normally encountered in German phonology will be inventoried and contrasted with English. The material is likely to be familiar to many readers, albeit presented in a different, perhaps more systematic perspective than is normally encountered. The subject of German consonant clusters is best dealt with in terms of phonetic, not orthographic consonants. A firm grasp of the relationship between spelling and pronunciation is naturally also essential. Two or three successive letters may represent a single phoneme, as in [arrow right] /c/ or /x/ [arrow right] /∫/ [arrow right] /k/ [arrow right] /t/ Conversely, a single written consonant may serve to indicate more than one phoneme, as in [arrow right] /ts/ This situation is familiar because it is even more pronounced in English. The word scythe contains two consonant digraphs and two letter-vowels, but phonetically only one diphthong and no clusters at all. Since the greatest challenge in consonant clusters is visual (i.e., orthographic), thinking in terms of phonetic consonants should serve to simplify the matter for a student. German, more than most other languages, has absorbed lexical items from other languages into its own vocabulary, particularly from English, French, and Italian. Thus Duden, the principal lexicographic publisher in modern Germany, devotes an entire book to Fremdworter in its series of dictionaries. The process of lexical transfer is a complex aspect of German linguistics, particularly regarding pronunciation norms. Some words, such as Situation, have been subsumed into the phonological patterning of German, while others have retained the pronunciation of the word in the language from whence it came, or have struck a middle ground, such as Orange and Weekend. This diversity of phonetic transfer gives modern spoken German a particular flavor, and reflects the country's central geographic position in Europe. There are similar examples in English, such as cul-de-sac (where the French pronunciation has been distorted) and naive (which retains the original, although English idiosyncratically employs only the feminine form). This article will confine itself to the consonant clusters that occur regularly in the standard lexis, referring to combinations resulting from foreign influences only when appropriate. It is useful to consider consonant clusters in two quite distinct groups: syllable-interior, and across syllable or word boundaries. Part I of the article will concern itself with the former; Part II (to appear in the March/April 2008 issue), with the latter. Recognition of which group an example belongs to is the first step toward establishing correct pronunciation, and in some cases is necessary to discriminate between two potentially correct pronunciations. Before outlining in tabular form the cluster environments of German and English, it will be useful to consider all the consonantal combinations that are admissible in each language. A detailed theoretical account of the phonotactic rules and constraints of each language will not be necessary for our purposes. …