Wendy Foster

Whether you’re planning a trip to Germany or another German-speaking country, you’ve heard an unfamiliar German phrase and want to know what it means, or you just want to get into the spirit for your town’s annual Oktoberfest, knowing some basic German can give you the confidence you need.The first part of this Cheat Sheet includes basic German expressions, questions that let you gather information or ask for help, phrases to use when ordering from a menu, and German numbers and dates.

Maybe you're familiar with some basics of German grammar, but you want to become more confident in both writing and speaking in German. This quick overview will reacquaint you with personal pronouns — try to memorize these and be sure you know all three cases — and help you brush up on present tense verb construction.

All languages have ways of showing what role a noun plays in a sentence. In English, a noun’s position in the sentence tells you how it’s being used. In German, the endings on the adjectives and articles that accompany the noun, which are based on case, tell you the noun’s function in the sentence. Here’s a quick overview of the German cases and the relationship they have with nouns, articles, and pronouns.

Getting your hellos and goodbyes straight in German is a matter of keeping in mind how well you know someone. If you’re on formal terms — in other words, if you’re addressing one or more people with Sie (zee) (you, formal) — then you have one set of expressions. When you’re on du (dooh) (you, informal) terms of address, you go with conversational expressions.

You should know that talking at great length about your family is a far less popular pastime in Germany than in the United States, perhaps because Germans place a lot of value on privacy. Even so, you need to know how to talk about family, just in case the topic ever comes up. In the United States, discussing family, die Familie (dee fâ-mee-lee-e), is a great way to get to know someone.