50 Common German Words Every Beginner Should Know
A starter list of everyday German words with English meanings, grouped by theme, to build a working vocabulary fast.
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
- Pick five to eight words a day, always learning the noun's gender alongside it.
- Practice pronunciation out loud, paying attention to umlauts (ä, ö, ü), which change vowel sounds distinctly.
- Use each word in a short sentence of your own.
- Review yesterday's words before adding today's.
Look up any German word instantly, with gender shown, offline — English German Dictionary →
English German Dictionary
Offline English–German dictionary that handles compound words and noun gender
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