Hanse Study

Welcome to this German course. Please note that these courses are cumulative, so if you did not complete the previous courses you might face some difficulties in understanding.

Today we will try to advance to a more natural conversation.

Let us start with a new Phrase.

Guten Tag.

“Guten Tag ” literally means good day. It is a very versatile German greeting. You can use this in basically every setting, when you are meeting with friends, visiting family or having a business meeting. It can even be used to say goodbye, also that is a lot less common.

So imagine you and your German friend Bernd are sitting in a coffee shop, and the server comes to your table. She says:

Hallo.

As you probably guessed, “hallo” means “hello”. Greet her and say you would like a coffee.

Guten Tag, ich hätte gerne einen Kaffee.

The server replies with:

Sehr gerne.

And turns to your friend to ask him.

Und was hätten Sie gerne ?

He replies with:

Ich möchte ein Wasser, bitte.

That was quite a lot of new words and phrases, so let us go through it step by step.

“Hallo” is the german word for “hello” and is more casual than “Guten Tag”, but apart from certain formal events “Hallo” can be used in most situations.

We already know “Guten Tag, ich hätte gerne einen Kaffee.”, it means “I would like a coffee”, you could also add a “bitte” at the end if you wanted.

“Sehr gerne.“ , we already used one of these words, “gerne”. Try to figure out what it means from the example. If you do something and you like doing it then you do it “gerne”. Let us try another example. If your grandmother just made some cake and asks you if you would like some, you would say: “Gerne”.

“Gerne” can be translated as “with pleasure”. There is not quite a literal translation for it but “with pleasure” is pretty close. But you also use it to express liking something. You can think of it like an adjective version of like.

We can see this in the next sentence:

Und was hätten Sie gerne ?

She asks “And what would you like?”. This one is still a little too advanced for us so we will return to look closer at it in the future.

Before we look at the last sentence let us look at one more german phrase.

Imagine a mother and her son are in a store, the child wants a toy dinosaur, so he says to his mother: “Mom, Ich will the dinosaur”, but the mother says: “Your birthday is in a month you can have it for your birthday if you want” and the child cries: “But ICH WILL it now.”

So “Ich will” is “I want” but in a demanding tone.

Opposed to this your friend Bernd said. 

Ich möchte ein Wasser, bitte.

He said “I want a water, please” , but the want he used is a polite want, which is more used instead of “I would like ”. If you want something but are unsure of which one would be appropriate, it is always better to say “Ich möchte”. 

So let us try to use the new polite form of want.

I want a beer.

Ich möchte ein Bier.

I want a glass of water.

Ich möchte ein Glas Wasser.

I want a cup of tea.

Ich möchte einen Becher Tee. 

Alternatively you could omit the cup and just say: “I want a tea.“

Ich möchte einen Tee.

Ok let us learn one more word, after you and your friend got your drinks, your friend turns to the server and says:

Dankeschön.

What do you think “Dankeschön” means ?

Here is another example, you are having breakfast with your family and ask your dad to pass you the salt. After he gives it to you, you say: “Dankeschön“

So “Dankeschön” means “thank you”.

This will conclude this lesson, in the next lesson we will continue with expanding our day to day vocabulary.