Learn how to use some common German greetings
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| Hallo, ich heiße Laura. Hi everybody! I’m Laura. |
| Welcome to GermanPod101.com’s “Deutsch in 3 Minuten”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn German. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to be grateful to people by saying Danke. In this lesson we’ll learn some of the most common greetings used in Germany. |
| Fertig? Are you ready? Los! So let’s start! |
| The most used informal greeting is: |
| Hallo! |
| [slowly] Hallo. |
| Hallo means “hi” or “hello”. We should only use this greeting with friends or relatives. |
| The most used *FORMAL* greetings will change depending on the time of day. Let’s start with: |
| Guten Tag! |
| [slowly] Guten Tag! |
| Literally, Guten Tag means "good day". As a rule of thumb we can use Guten Tag only during the daytime—from late morning until early evening. |
| In the morning we say Guten Morgen, “good morning!" |
| [slowly] Guten Morgen. |
| During the evening we say: |
| Guten Abend! |
| [slowly] Guten Abend! |
| Tag, Morgen, and Abend is German for day, morning, and evening, respectively. Easy, right? |
| What should you say when you leave? German people usually say Auf Wiedersehen! when leaving in a formal situation. |
| [slowly] Auf Wiedersehen. |
| Auf Wiedersehen means “good-bye.” |
| If we say good-bye to friends or our relatives, we use the informal word Tschüss! |
| [slowly] Tschüss! |
| Now you can greet people in many different ways in German! |
| Let’s review them all again. |
| First, the greetings: |
| Informally, we simply say Hallo. |
| Formally, use Guten Morgen! in the morning. |
| Guten Tag! in the afternoon |
| and Guten Abend! in the evening. |
| When leaving in a formal situation, we say: |
| Auf Wiedersehen! |
| And in an informal situation, it’s: |
| Tschüss! |
| It’s easy, isn’t it? |
| Now it’s time for Laura’s Insights. |
| Due to a huge variety of dialects in Gemany you might hear many different greeting phrases depending on the area. In Austria and in the catholic southern part of Germany they even say Grüß Gott, which means “greetings to god”. In the past, people from the north could barely talk to people from the south, since they spoke very different languages. But nowadays, if you use these common phrases then everyone will understand you, I’m sure! |
| During the next lesson we’ll learn the meaning of the phrase Sprechen Sie Englisch? Do you already know it? We'll be waiting to talk about it with you in our next Fast German/ Deutsch in drei Minuten lesson. |
| Tschüss! |
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