Reference · module 1
Hello and goodbye
Everything this module explains, on one page.
Hallo
Greet anyone in German and leave without switching to English.
- German has one greeting that works everywhere. Hallo. In a shop, in a classroom, to a friend or to a stranger — Hallo is never wrong.
- Germans also greet by the clock. Guten Morgen in the morning, Guten Tag through the day, Guten Abend once the evening starts. Slightly warmer than Hallo, and never wrong either.
- Leaving works the same way. Tschüss to a friend, a neighbour, a barista. Auf Wiedersehen to your doctor, your landlord, an official — anyone you would not call by their first name.
The mistake you are about to make
Tschüss!
Auf Wiedersehen!
English has one goodbye for everybody, so Tschüss will feel like it covers everything. To a doctor, a landlord or an official it lands like "see ya". There you need Auf Wiedersehen.
Wie geht's?
Ask how someone is, and answer when they ask you.
- After Hallo comes the question. Wie geht es dir? — how are you? In speech it collapses to Wie geht's, which is what you will actually hear.
- German has two words for you. Dir is for a friend. Ihnen is for a stranger, a colleague, anyone older: Wie geht es Ihnen? Choosing the wrong one is the classic beginner slip.
- The answer is short. Gut, danke. Sehr gut if the day is going well, nicht so gut if it is not. Then hand the question back: Und dir?
The mistake you are about to make
Wie bist du?
Wie geht es dir?
"How are you?" goes into German word for word as Wie bist du?, which asks what you are made of. German asks how it goes to you, and the person sits in the dative: dir or Ihnen.
Ich heiße…
Say your name, ask for someone else's, and understand the answer.
- Germans introduce themselves with a verb English does not have. Ich heiße Anna — literally I am called Anna. One word doing the work of three.
- To ask, turn it around and change the ending. Wie heißt du? to a friend, Wie heißen Sie? to anyone else. The same du and Sie you already met.
- There is a shorter way, heard just as often: Ich bin Anna. I am Anna. It works everywhere heiße does, and it is one less ending to learn.
The mistake you are about to make
Ich bin genannt Anna.
Ich heiße Anna.
"I am called Anna" is a passive, so you reach for a passive in German too. Heißen is not one and needs no helper verb: ich heiße, one word doing all of it.
Woher kommst du?
Say where you are from and ask someone else.
- Woher means where from — the where and the from in one word. Woher kommst du? Where do you come from?
- The answer takes aus, which is out of. Ich komme aus Polen. Ich komme aus der Ukraine — a few countries carry an article, and those are learned one at a time.
- Country names are close to what you expect, and not always. Deutschland, Österreich, die Schweiz, Russland, Polen, die Türkei.
The mistake you are about to make
Wo kommst du von?
Woher kommst du?
English splits the question in two — where and from — so you will split it in German as well. Woher is already both halves; adding von leaves you saying "from where from".
Er, sie, das
Talk about someone who is not you, and point at things.
- Er is he and sie is she. The verb changes with them: ich bin, du bist, er ist, sie ist. Three forms of one verb, and two were already yours.
- To point at anything at all, German uses das. Das ist Anna. Das ist Berlin. Das ist mein Kaffee. It does not change for what it points at.
- Careful with sie. Lowercase sie is she, capital Sie is the polite you, and they sound identical. The sentence around them is what tells you which.
The mistake you are about to make
Der Kaffee? Es ist gut.
Der Kaffee? Er ist gut.
English keeps he and she for people and hands everything else "it". German does not: a Kaffee is der, so it comes back as er. Objects have a he and a she.