German · Beginner

German Introductions: The Seven Questions Every First Conversation Uses

The first real conversation you have in German will not be about grammar. Someone will greet you, ask your name, ask where you are from, and ask whether you speak German. This lesson gives you every question and every answer you need for that moment, in both the polite and the friendly form, and shows you the verb patterns underneath them so you can build sentences of your own.

Everything below comes from the introductory German course, taught by David. Watch it first if you want to hear the pronunciation, then use this page as your written reference.

Start with the right greeting

German greetings are tied to the time of day, and choosing the right one is the first thing a native speaker notices. There are three you need immediately.

If you are unsure of the time of day or the situation, Guten Tag is the one that never sounds wrong.

The greeting is usually followed straight away by a question about how the other person is:

Notice that the question itself stays the same, but the way you hand it back changes depending on who you are talking to. That distinction runs through this entire lesson.

The seven questions that carry a first conversation

These questions are given first in the polite form with Sie, because that is what you will hear from strangers, colleagues and anyone older than you. The friendly du forms follow in the next section.

What is your name?

The letter ß in heißen is pronounced like a double s. Note that German does not ask what your name is, it asks how you are called, so the question word is wie.

Where do you come from?

Woher means “from where”, and the answer uses aus for the country you come from. Most countries need nothing more than their name:

• Ich komme aus Spanien. — I come from Spain.
• Ich komme aus Frankreich. — I come from France.
• Ich komme aus Großbritannien. — I come from Great Britain.
• Ich komme aus Kanada. — I come from Canada.
• Ich komme aus Australien. — I come from Australia.

Where do you live?

Wo is “where” and wohnen is “to live”. The city takes in: Ich wohne in Berlin, Ich wohne in Wien.

Where do you work?

Use bei with the name of a company and in with a type of place. So bei Amazon, but in einer Schule.

Do you speak German?

This is the question you will hear most often as a learner, and there are three honest answers depending on where you are.

Ein bisschen means “a little”, and it is the most useful of the three in your first months.

Which languages do you speak?

Language names are capitalised in German, as all nouns are. Here are the ones that come up most:

If you are learning more than one of these, it is worth seeing how the courses for all sixteen languages are structured, since the introduction patterns transfer across them more than you would expect.

Do you understand?

Add Entschuldigung to the front and you have the single most practical sentence a beginner can carry into a real conversation.

Sie or du: choosing the right form

German has two ways of saying “you” to one person. Sie, always written with a capital S, is polite. Use it with strangers, in shops and offices, with colleagues you do not know well, and with anyone noticeably older than you. du is informal, for friends, family, children and people your own age once the relationship is relaxed.

Here is every question from the previous section in both forms.

Two things are worth noticing. First, the answer never changes: it is ich heiße, ich komme, ich wohne whichever form you were asked in. Second, the du forms all end in -st, which is the single most reliable pattern in this lesson.

Sprechen is the exception in that table. It changes its vowel in the du form: sprechen becomes du sprichst. That is covered with the other irregular verbs further down.

Talking about someone else

Once you can introduce yourself, the next step is describing a third person. You need two words: er for “he” and sie for “she”. Der Mann is the man and die Frau is the woman.

Here are two short profiles, exactly as they appear in the lesson.

The verb ending for er and sie is -t: er wohnt, sie kommt, er arbeitet. And the questions follow the same shape as before:

The two ways German says no

German has two negative words, and choosing between them is one of the earliest decisions a beginner has to make. The rule is simpler than it looks.

This is why Ich spreche kein Deutsch uses kein but Ich verstehe nicht uses nicht. The first negates a noun, the second negates a verb.

How German verbs change their endings

Everything above becomes far easier once you see the pattern underneath it. German verbs change their ending according to who is doing the action. Here are the six persons with two completely regular verbs.

Ihr has no direct English equivalent. It is “you” spoken to several people you would each call du, roughly what English handles with “you guys”. And notice that wir, Sie and sie all look identical to the basic form of the verb, which removes a third of the work immediately.

Arbeiten follows the same pattern but slips an extra e in where the ending would otherwise be unpronounceable: du arbeitest, er arbeitet, ihr arbeitet.

Verbs that change their vowel

A small group of common verbs shift their vowel in the du and er/sie/es forms. The endings stay exactly the same, so there is only one new thing to remember.

sein and haben

These two are irregular in German exactly as “to be” and “to have” are irregular in English. You will use them so often that they stop feeling irregular within a few weeks.

Two more verbs join the same group early: wissen (to know) gives ich weiß, du weißt, er weiß, and it produces the very useful Ich weiß nicht. And gehen (to go) is regular, but hides inside the greeting you already know: Wie geht’s? is a shortened Wie geht es?

The du form ends in -st. The er, sie and es form ends in -t. Almost everything else looks like the basic verb.

If you are not sure which level this material sits at, it is the foundation of A1. Comparing it against the CEFR level descriptions will show you how much of A1 these seven questions already cover.

Saying what you like: gern

German does not have a separate verb for “to like doing” something. Instead it adds the word gern to an ordinary verb. Ich lese is “I read”; ich lese gern is “I like reading”.

It works for other people too: Er schwimmt gern (he likes swimming), sie hört gern Musik (she likes listening to music).

Asking and answering with gern

To turn any of these into a question, put the verb first. German needs no equivalent of the English “do”.

To soften a no, use nicht so gern rather than a flat negative. Ich lese nicht so gern means “I don’t much like reading”, which is friendlier than ich lese nicht gern. And sehr gern works in the other direction: Ich lerne sehr gern Deutsch.

Common mistakes to avoid

Practice

Cover the answers and work through these out loud. Saying them matters more than writing them.

Once these come out without hesitation, the fastest way forward is to use them in full exchanges rather than isolated sentences. Our speaking and listening practice is built around exactly that kind of repetition.

Frequently asked questions

Should I learn the Sie forms or the du forms first?

Learn Sie first, which is the order this lesson follows. It is the form you will hear from strangers, in shops and at work, and using it when du would have been fine sounds slightly formal but never rude. The reverse mistake does sound rude, so Sie is the safer default until someone offers you du.

Why does German not use a word for “do” in questions?

English is unusual here, not German. Where English inserts “do”, German simply puts the verb at the front of the sentence: Wohnen Sie hier?, Sprichst du Deutsch?, Gehst du gern ins Kino? Once you stop looking for a translation of “do”, these questions become much easier to build.

Why is it “aus der Schweiz” but “aus Deutschland”?

Most country names in German are used without an article, so aus Deutschland, aus Spanien, aus Kanada. A small group carries an article as part of the name, and Switzerland and the USA are the two that beginners meet first. Treat aus der Schweiz and aus den USA as set phrases and you will not need to think about the grammar behind them yet.

Is “Wie geht’s?” polite or informal?

The question works in both situations. What changes is how you hand it back: Und Ihnen? to someone you address as Sie, and Und dir? to someone you address as du. If you want to be explicit, you can also ask Wie geht’s Ihnen? or Wie geht’s dir?

How much German does this actually give me?

Enough for a complete first conversation: greeting someone, exchanging names, saying where you are from, where you live, what you do, which languages you speak, and asking all of it back. Add Es freut mich (nice to meet you) at the start and Auf Wiedersehen, Tschüss or Bis bald at the end, and the exchange is complete from beginning to end.

From here, the natural next step is the rest of the present tense and talking about other people in more detail, which is where the following lessons in the course go. If you want to see how these first questions fit into a full beginner-to-advanced route, our structured learning paths map it out stage by stage.