Learn The Most Common Words In German
Maybe you have been thinking about learning German for a while, but didn’t know where or how to start. There are over 150,000 words you can find in the German language that are in current use, but worry not! There’s a secret in language learning that I would share with you.
Did you know that you only need around 250 words to get by as a tourist? This is amount of words you need for survival fluency. And did you know that you can understand about 80% of all spoken language on a daily basis by everyone who speaks the language with just the top 1000 words? And by reaching 2,500 words, you should be able to convey anything that you want to say, although you might need to be more creative with your word preferences and sentence construction.
If you know around 1000 to 3000 words, you are able to converse in almost all languages. Ask about people’s day or tell them how you are doing. The more words you learn, the more fluent you will become in a language. 4000 to 10,000 words will allow you to use more specific vocabulary to discuss professional topics, current events, opinions and other complex topics.
You can speak about almost any topic with ease if you have a vocabulary of around 10,000 words. With enough knowledge, you can also recognize unfamiliar words from context. The number of words native speakers of different languages know can vary greatly, making it difficult to estimate how many words a native English speaker might know. Estimates for the number of words a native speaker could know range from 10,000 to 65,000+. And there is a difference between an active vocabulary and a passive vocabulary. The first is the ones you can use in written and spoken language, and the second meaning the words you can recognize or deduce its meaning. With that in mind, we recommend beginning with the most common words in German.
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In this article, we made a German vocabulary list for learners that are starting out as beginners. We categorized the most common words in German so you will have an easier time finding what you are looking for. We believe that learning the foundation of your target vocabulary is the key to language fluency.
Basic German Words
“hallo” means “Hello” in English.
“Auf Wiedersehen” also translates to “goodbye”.
“Danke” means “thank you”.
Saying “please” translates to “bitte” in the German vocabulary.
The word “Jawohl” means “yes”, while “no” is “nein” in German.
“Natürlich” which means “of course”
The word “love” translates to the German word “Liebe”.
Basic German Nouns For People
“Mann” means “man”, while “Frau” means “woman” in German.
“Junge” is what you call a boy.
“Mädchen” is what you call a girl.
“Freund” is what you call your friend.
“Person” still translates to “person”.
You call your family “Familie” in the German language.
“Sohn” is the son in the family, while “Tochter” is the daughter.
“Diener” or “Dienstmädchen” is what you can call a servant or maid.
“Geliebte” is what you can call your beloved.
Basic German Nouns For Time
“einmal” means “one time” in English.
“heute” means “today” in English.
“Morgen” means “tomorrow” in English.
“gestern” means “yesterday” in English.
“Stunde” means “hour” in English.
“Jahr” means “year” in English.
“Tag” means “day” in English.
“Woche” means “week” in English.
“Vor” means “before” in English.
“nach” means “after” in English.
“Zeit” means “time” in English.
“Wetter” means “weather” in English.
German Words for Weather
The word “hot” in the German language is “heiß”
“kalt” means cold
Rain means “Regen” in German
“Sonne” means sun, while moon is “Mond”
“Schnee” means snow
“Wind” means wind
Common German Verbs
“sein” means “To be”
“haben” means “To have”
“existieren” means “To exist”
“besitzen” means “To own”
“machen” means “To do” or “To make”
“tun können” means “Can do”
“um zu sehen” means “To see”
“gehen” means “To go”
“geben” means “To give”
“wissen” means “To know”
“wollen” means “To want”
“lieben” means “To love”
“glauben” means “To believe”
“sprechen” means “To talk”
“tragen” means “To carry”
“finden” means “To find”
“mögen” means “To like”
“erzählen” means “To tell”
“kommen” means “To come”
“denken” means “To think”
“verstehen” means “To understand”
“lesen” means “To read”
“Essen” means “To eat”
“trinken” means “To drink”
“arbeiten” means “To work”
“benutzen” means “To use”
Common German Greetings
“Good morning” translates to “Guten Morgen”
“Good afternoon” translates to “Guten Tag”
“Good evening” translates to “guten Abend”
“Good night” translates to “Gute Nacht”
“How are you?” translates to “wie gehts?”
What’s up? translates to “Was ist los?”
“What are you doing?” translates to “Was tust du?”
“What’s happening?” translates to “Was ist los?”
Common German Questions
If you want to ask someone their name, you can say “Wie heißen Sie?”
If you want to ask someone what time it is, you can say “wie spät ist es?”
If you want to ask someone where they are from, you can say “woher kommst du?”
If you want to ask someone where they live, you can say “wo wohnst du?”
If you want to ask someone for help, you can say “kannst du mir helfen?”
If you want to ask if you can help them with something, you can say “Kann ich Dir helfen?”
If you want to ask how much is the product or service, you can say “Wie viel kostet das?”
If you want to ask if the person understands what you said, you can say “verstehst du?”
Learn The Most Common Words In German and Never Forget It
Learning by reading is one of the best ways to acquire knowledge, as it exposes you to how the word is pronounced and spelled. Reading through our textbooks also guides you to proper usage of the term, because we provide IPA phonetic spelling.
You are likely wanting to learn a language to communicate with native speakers and have real-life conversations. It is also possible that you are learning for personal reasons, such as hobbies or work advantage. To get there, your language learning methods must be excellent and effective.
By combining the knowledge of several books, you can learn a new language. MostUsedWords aims to maximize output. This means you will be fluent in German, while ensuring that your reading time does not consume your time doing other tasks in your weekly schedule. Our frequency dictionaries make learning as easy as possible.
The most common words in German are available as ebooks from our website. You can also purchase the paperback edition of these books through Amazon.
- German Frequency Dictionary 1 - Beginner German
- German Frequency Dictionary 2 - Intermediate German
- German Frequency Dictionary 3 - Advanced German
- German Frequency Dictionary 4 - Fluent German
Each book contains 2500 words, which has a total of 10,000 most common German words divided into these four books. We offer a discount if you buy the four frequency dictionaries at once. These frequency dictionaries are excellent materials for those who study German language by themselves or in a classroom setting, since they are convenient and handy. If you are looking for learning material, these books will surely help you improve your fluency as quickly and efficiently as you want. If you prefer learning the 5000 most common words in German instead, we also have a smaller discount available for you.