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| Hi everybody! Anja here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common German questions. |
| The question for this lesson is: What do los and gehen mean and how do I use them? |
| Los has no literal translation, but means something along the lines of, “Let’s go.” Gehen, means “to go.” When used together, los gehen means “to start going” when you’re about to leave. |
| Let’s do some examples so you can learn how to use los and gehen correctly. |
| Let’s start with a phrase that uses both. If you and your friends are getting ready to go somewhere, you can use the phrase Los gehts! which literally means, “Off we go!” This lets the people you’re with know that it’s time to get going. |
| Now, let’s do one using just los. Imagine those same friends are taking a while to get ready and you’re starting to get impatient. Then, you can use the phrase Los jetzt! which translates to something like, “Come on, now.” It’s usually followed by, beeil dich which means, “hurry up.” |
| What do you think? Do you understand the difference? |
| If you’ve really got a good handle on it, you can try using this expression, Ich glaub es geht los. This literally means, “I believe it is starting to go.” But, it’s actually used to express shock or disbelief at someone else’s bad behavior. |
| Pretty interesting, right? |
| Do you have any more questions? Leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them! |
| Tschüss, bis zum nächsten Mal! “Bye, see you next time!” |
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