German small talk vocabulary: 299 words
Everyday greetings, polite phrases and small talk to sound natural fast (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese). This page lists 40 of them with their German translations, then lets you practise the full set in either direction with spaced repetition.
English to German: the first 40 words
| English | German | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| hello | hallo | |
| goodbye | auf Wiedersehen | |
| good morning | guten Morgen | |
| good afternoon | guten Tag | |
| good evening | guten Abend | |
| good night | gute Nacht | Said when someone is going to bed, not a greeting. |
| please | bitte | |
| thank you | danke | |
| you're welcome | gern geschehen | |
| excuse me | entschuldigung | |
| sorry | es tut mir leid | |
| yes | ja | |
| no | nein | |
| maybe | vielleicht | |
| of course | natürlich | |
| How are you? | Wie geht es dir? | |
| I'm fine | mir geht es gut | |
| And you? | Und dir? | |
| nice to meet you | freut mich | |
| What's your name? | Wie heißt du? | |
| My name is... | ich heiße... | |
| Where are you from? | Woher kommst du? | |
| I'm from... | ich komme aus... | |
| How old are you? | Wie alt bist du? | |
| Do you speak English? | Sprichst du Englisch? | |
| I don't understand | ich verstehe nicht | |
| Can you repeat that? | Kannst du das wiederholen? | |
| Speak slowly, please | sprich bitte langsam | |
| What do you do? | Was machst du beruflich? | Asking about someone's job or profession. |
| How's the weather? | Wie ist das Wetter? | |
| It's sunny | es ist sonnig | |
| It's raining | es regnet | |
| It's cold | es ist kalt | |
| It's hot | es ist heiß | |
| Have a nice day | einen schönen Tag noch | |
| See you later | bis später | |
| See you tomorrow | bis morgen | |
| Take care | pass auf dich auf | |
| Welcome | willkommen | |
| Congratulations | herzlichen Glückwunsch |
259 more words in the full “Small Talk & Greetings” library, each aligned across seven languages and scheduled for you by spaced repetition. Add it to your account and start drilling English to German in one click.
What to watch out for in German
- Accents count. Answers are graded accent-sensitively, so you need
äöüßÄÖÜ— LinguaSwap shows a one-tap keypad for them while you type. - Capitalisation counts. German nouns are capitalised, and answers in German are graded that way —
hausis notHaus. - 95 words carry a usage note in the full library, for the cases where a direct translation would mislead you.
Practise German small talk vocabulary
Words come back just before you would forget them, and every language direction is tracked separately.