Greetings, yes and no, please and thank you — the bare minimum you need to survive!
Hold onto your Bratwürste, you're about to learn...
- Basic greetings
- "Yes" and "no"
- "Please" and "thank you"
Now that you've met your esteemed tour guide, Jens, it's time for a team-building exercise.
Imagine you're stranded on a desert island with nothing but a bottle of schnapps and your new friend, Jens.
If you're going to survive, you'll need to learn some basic German communication skills — schnell! (fast!)
(Seriously: These skills will also be handy if you're heading to a German speaking region really soon... if you don't learn anything else, learn these things!)
German greetings
Hallo!
Hello!
Guten Morgen!
Good morning!
Guten Tag!
Good day!
Grüß Gott!
Good day!
(Used mostly in southern Germany and Austria)
Guten Abend!
Good evening!
Auf Wiedersehen!
Goodbye! (formal)
Tschüss!
Goodbye! (informal)
Ciao!
Goodbye! (borrowed from Italian; popular with younger Germans)
Germans are all about efficiency, so they often shorten their greetings to a single word. Try some of the shortened greetings:
Morgen!
Tag!
Abend!
"Yes" and "No"
After you and Jens say hello to each other, you’re going to have to work out some logistics for survival. For that, you’ll probably need these important little words:
ja
yes
nein
no
vielleicht
maybe
You can get pretty far with just these few words. For instance, you can use them to stop Jens from trying to eat something he shouldn't.
Jens is going to ask you the following question:
Ist das Essen?
Is this food?
Have a quick think about what your answer would be: ja,neinorvielleicht. Then listen to our suggestion. Do you agree with us?
"Please" and "Thank you"
You never know how long you're going to be stuck with Jens in this imaginary island scenario, so it's best to be polite. For that, you're going to need these words:
Bitte
Please
Dankeschön
Thank you
Danke
Thank you (this shortened version is much more common)
The word bitte (please) can appear in multiple places in a German sentence, just like English
Can you please sit down?
Please sit down.
Sit down please.
However, in German, the most common place to put the word bitte is in the middle of the sentence.
Finde bitte die Kokosnüsse.
Find (please) the coconuts.
Fahr bitte das Boot.
Drive (please) the boat.
It’s good to know how to sound polite during a conversation. However, after a few days on the island, Jens might not be around to converse with if he doesn’t learn some survival skills…fast!
