Servus comes from the latin “servant” and it can be translated as “at your service”. If you’ve got a friend who does something you’re not particularly fond of you can say, “Mensch!” followed by their name to express your dissatisfaction. Grüß Gott can be translated as “God greets you” and corresponds to our “God bless you”, being mostly used by seniors. If it is formal, on the other hand, you use it to talk to your boss, your teacher or an authority. It’s often used to show dissatisfaction with someone or something. You can combine some basic vocabulary, and words you’ve learned on this list, to create some native sounding variations: By using these German slang words you’ll sound more native and add more colour to your conversations in almost no time at all. The most common way of asking how are you in German and also the first one we learn is Wie geht es dir?. Actually, the word Na is amazingly versatile. We all want to know [...], Words. It is very formal. On one hand, Wie geht es Ihnen is very formal. No, really, how old are you?, which did nothing for my ego as he thought I was 32. and Wie geht es Ihnen?. “Alter Schwede! Good day, how are you? Although Guten Morgen is a more formal greeting, you can use it if you are not certain of which greeting to choose in a specific occasion. They eye up one another silently in a salutation-standoff, before one folds and emits a precisely enunciated “na?” To add an extra degree of affection to your na, you can append du, for a sweet-sounding “na du?”. Verarschen is a great word to express when someone is messing you around, pulling your leg or taking the piss. Hallo can become Hallöchen (-chen denoting the diminutive, so a kind of little hello), and Tschüss (bye) often becomes Tschüssi. It’s not uncommon to hear Germans referring to particular politicians as “Total bescheuert!” when they disagree with their opinions or policy changes. But it could also be used as a response to something negative, such as, “Robert hat 500 Euro aus meiner Brieftasche geklaut” (Robert stole 500 euros from my wallet), “Krass! Hi is more informal than Hallo, so use it only with your friends and colleagues. They’ve been dating someone for a while and you want to know if they’re serious yet. It never does.” – Lýdia Machová What a thrill to have interviewed Lýdia Machová for our Language Mentors series! Like in English, there’s “I’m sorry” or “my apologies” in Japanese, too. It has both good, and bad, connotations depending on how you use it. Read more about how to use podcasts to learn a language. I even receive emails from friends using “Moin” as a greeting: I find this term really helpful if you’re saying hello to a group of people – like if you’ve just walked into a party – and you’re not quite sure what to say. — a two-letter phatic exclamatory question that carries so many different meanings that it deserves an entire semester of German lessons to itself, and yet it isn’t covered at all. It is not without reason that people say that it is relatively easy for English speakers to learn German because these two languages are similar in many aspects. If Guten Abend is “good evening”, meant to be used during the night period as a “hello” when arriving a place, Gute Nacht is our “good night”, used not as a greeting but rather as a “goodbye” when you are going to bed. Let’s see other informal greetings. One of the best ways to build new vocabulary, and sound more like a native, is to learn the German slang words people use every day. Let’s say you’re talking to a friend about their relationship status. It’s the same word in German as in English. But it’s also an odd word because “geil” technically means, well…horny. I’ll come home soon.). can mean “everything’s clear”, “alright” or “all fine”, but in the context of our article it corresponds to our “what’s up?”. meal time) to greet colleagues in passing during the lunch break, and Hallo zusammen when you say hello to a group of people and want to avoid having to individually greet each person with a handshake. But it’s … Let’s be honest. “Ich bin jetzt bei Ela. The first time I heard this word it was the middle of summer at a wine festival in western Germany. An Assi is someone who is uneducated, unemployed, from a low-income area, who wears fake designer clothes and spends their evenings drinking or doing drugs. Knowing the degree of formality of the word is very important. Most exams will test you on your memory capacity for even some obscure words that you'll never actually need in real life. This is the most common way of saying hello in German and it is the first one we learn, because you can use it in any part of the day or night and also because it is very similar to the English greeting – you just have to replace the letter E with the letter A and you are good to go. The same English has two greetings to be used during the night period, “good evening” and “good night”, German has Guten Abend and Gute Nacht. So how do you apologize in Japanese? Now you’re down with the German “hello,” why not discover some of the coolest compound nouns in the world as you learn German? Wie geht es Ihnen heute? Both these salutations commonly leave the mouths of beefy German men with a beguilingly fluffy, upward intonation. The first thing you say to a person you encounter, no matter if you already know they or not, is “hello”. Can you use your powers of cognate-deduction to figure out what this word means? Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips. Krass is one of those words, because it can be used to portray both good and bad emotion in equal measure. But you can also expand a little bit. Wie geht’s? That guy is a lunatic). “Was für Quatsch redest du?” (What are you talking about!?). You might also learn Hallo (Hello) for more … We’re just chatting. It’s a shortened version of the term, “Alter Schwede” which translates to old Swedish man in English. But lots of people have adopted this as a way of saying “Hello!” in German slang, regardless of what time it is.