Greetings in German: Hallo, Servus and Moin
The greetings in German are Hallo (hello), Guten Morgen (good morning), Guten Tag (good day), Guten Abend (good evening), Tschüss (bye) and Auf Wiedersehen (goodbye), with Servus, Grüß Gott and Moin in different regions. Hallo is the one to learn first: in German film and television dialogue it is said nearly three times as often as Hi, the next greeting on the list. Below are the greetings with how to say them, where each is used, and a ranking of how often German films actually use them.
The greetings in German
| Greeting | Say it | Meaning | Use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hallo | HAH-lo | hello | with almost anyone |
| Guten Morgen | GOO-ten MOR-gen | good morning | in the morning |
| Guten Tag | GOO-ten tahk | good day | the formal hello, through the day |
| Guten Abend | GOO-ten AH-bent | good evening | from the early evening |
| Gute Nacht | GOO-teh nakht | good night | when someone is going to bed |
| Tschüss | chuess | bye | the everyday goodbye |
| Auf Wiedersehen | owf VEE-der-zayn | goodbye | the formal goodbye |
| Willkommen | vil-KOM-en | welcome | to a guest |
| Servus | ZEHR-voos | hi; bye | in Bavaria and Austria |
| Grüß Gott | grues got | hello | in southern Germany and Austria |
| Moin | moyn | hi | in northern Germany |
On the phone, the formal goodbye changes from seeing to hearing: Auf Wiederhören, "until we hear each other again".
Hallo, Guten Tag or Moin?
German greetings follow two lines: how formal the situation is, and where in the German-speaking world you are.
- Hallo is the safe everyday greeting, informal without being familiar.
- Guten Tag is the formal one, for a shop, an office or anyone you would address as Sie.
- Tschüss is the everyday goodbye and Auf Wiedersehen the formal one.
Which "you" goes with which greeting is counted in formal and informal you.
The regional greetings are where German gets interesting. Servus is used in Bavaria and Austria, for hello and goodbye alike. Grüß Gott, a greeting that names God, is the everyday hello in the same south. Moin is the northern hello.
Which greetings do German films say most?
We counted each greeting in German film and television subtitles.
| # | Word | Meaning | Per million words | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hallo | hello | 823.2 | |
| 2 | Hi | hi | 285.9 | |
| 3 | Auf Wiedersehen | goodbye | 164.2 | counted as wiedersehen |
| 4 | Willkommen | welcome | 149.7 | |
| 5 | Tschüss | bye | 104.6 | both spellings |
| 6 | Ciao | bye | 21.0 | |
| 7 | Grüß Gott | hello (south) | 17.7 | counted as grüß, which also starts grüß dich |
| 8 | Servus | hi; bye (south) | 3.1 | |
| 9 | Moin | hello (north) | 2.1 |
Hallo is first, at 823.2 times per million words, with Hi second at 285.9. Auf Wiedersehen, counted by its second word, is the commonest goodbye at 164.2, ahead of Tschüss at 104.6.
The regional greetings barely register: Servus at 3.1 and Moin at 2.1. That says less about Bavaria and Hamburg than about subtitles. Most of them are translations of English-language films, written in standard German for the whole German-speaking world, so a translator's "hello" becomes Hallo, never Moin. You will hear the regional greetings in the regions, not on screen.
Phrases of two words, such as Guten Tag and Guten Morgen, cannot be counted this way, because the subtitle counts are of single words: Morgen is also “tomorrow”. The table keeps to the one-word greetings, which is most of them.
Where the greetings come from
- Servus is Latin for "servant". Wiktionary traces it to a greeting once said to a lord, "(I am your) most humble servant", shortened to one word. Italian ciao has the same history.
- Tschüss came into German from Low German adjüs, which goes back through Dutch to Spanish adiós or French adieu. A word for "to God" became the most casual goodbye in German.
- Moin is a northern word whose origin, Wiktionary says, is not clear.
Answering a greeting
- Hallo, wie geht's? — Hi, how are you?
- Guten Tag, wie geht es Ihnen? — Good day, how are you? (to Sie)
- Gut, danke. Und dir? — Fine, thanks. And you?
- Freut mich. — Nice to meet you.
- Bis morgen! — See you tomorrow!
- Bis später! — See you later!
Danke is counted in which language says thank you most, and Hallo is compared with the greetings of seven other languages in hello and goodbye, ranked.
Learn them in a sentence
Greetings are the first lesson of the free German course, Verbavia (our own course), with a recording of each. Hallo is among the thousand words German films say most; bitte and danke go further and make the 100 most common German words. Other everyday sets: family members in German, colours in German and the days of the week.
Sources
- Wiktionary: Servus, tschüss and moin, for the meanings, the regions and the origins (tschüss citing Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache).
- The counts are from OpenSubtitles 2018 (Lison, P. & Tiedemann, J., 2016, aclanthology.org) through Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords lists, content licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, github.com. They are computed by
scripts/frequency_thousand.pyand printed from its output rather than typed.