German greetings and essentials
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
(Used mostly in southern Germany and Austria)
Germans are all about efficiency, so they often shorten their greetings to a single word. Try some of the shortened greetings:
"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:
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:
Have a quick think about what your answer would be: ja, nein or vielleicht. 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:
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.
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!
