50 Common German Words Every Beginner Should Know

German is spoken by over 90 million native speakers across Germany, Austria, Switzerland and beyond, and its close historical relationship to English means learners often recognise more than they expect from the start.

Greetings and courtesy

Hallo (hello), danke (thank you), bitte (please, or "you're welcome"), auf Wiedersehen (goodbye, formal), tschüss (bye, casual) — the essential opening phrases.

Numbers

Eins (one), zwei (two), drei (three) through zehn (ten) — German numbers compound distinctively, with the units place spoken before the tens (einundzwanzig, literally "one-and-twenty," for 21).

Family

Mutter (mother), Vater (father), Bruder (brother), Schwester (sister), Freund/Freundin (friend, gendered).

Everyday life

Wasser (water), Brot (bread), Haus (house), Arbeit (work), Schule (school) — notice how close several of these already look to their English cognates.

Grammatical gender: essential from day one

Every German noun carries one of three genders — masculine (der), feminine (die), or neuter (das) — affecting articles and adjective endings throughout a sentence. As with French and other gendered languages, there's no fully reliable shortcut; learning each noun's gender alongside its meaning from the start is the most efficient habit.

Why capitalised nouns matter

Unlike English, German capitalises every noun, not just proper names — a genuinely useful visual cue once you're used to it, since it helps you instantly spot nouns within a sentence, even before knowing their meaning.

A simple way to build from this list

1. Pick five to eight words a day, always learning the noun's gender alongside it.
2. Practice pronunciation out loud, paying attention to umlauts (ä, ö, ü), which change vowel sounds distinctly.
3. Use each word in a short sentence of your own.
4. Review yesterday's words before adding today's.

Look up any German word instantly, with gender shown, offline — English German Dictionary →