How to Speak Like a Native: A German Slang Words You Need to Know 🇩🇪

So, you’ve been hitting the textbooks, memorizing your declensions, and perfecting your Hochdeutsch pronunciation. But then, you step into a German café, overhear a conversation, and have no idea what they're saying. Are they even speaking the German language? 😵

You see, real Germans don’t talk like your textbook. They use slang words and phrases. All. The. Time. And it's this casual language that make them sound lively, humorous—and, well, actually German.

If you want to sound more natural and connect with native speakers on a deeper level, you need to understand German culture... and part of that means learning a bit of common German slang. "Abgefahrene" from the title, for example, means "cool".

Let’s dive in! 🚀

Why learn German slang words, anyway? 🤔

Imagine this: You’re in Berlin, chatting with locals, and someone says: "Alter, das ist ja mal richtig krass!"

If you don’t know many casual German phrases, you'll probably be confused. But if you're up to your date with your slang expressions, you’ll know they just said, "Dude, that’s seriously crazy!" (whether crazy good or crazy bad, only context can tell you).

So the most basic reason that you need to learn a bit of slang is that it's commonly used and your goal is (presumably) to understand the German you encounter... which includes slang. To go a bit deeper, though, slang is more than that: understanding the phrases used to express certain universal ideas gives you a window into the local culture, humor, and way of life.

Taking the time to learn a few German slang terms, such as the 28 we're about to introduce, will help you:

Anyway, without further ado:

 5 better ways to say hello 👋

Forget your stiff Guten Tag—here’s how Germans really greet each other:

7 more modern phrases used by young people 🎤

Want to sound young, hip and hopefully not how are you doing, fellow kids? Here are some fun German words that are currently popular amongst the youth culture. (If you're reading this in like 2027, use with caution):

7 slang expressions to respond or retort with 🗣️

As much time as you might spend trying to figure out proper grammar and stuff like that, it's really the small little words people hardly notice that will make your speech sound fluent and natural. (If you don't believe me, go try to talk about anything for three minutes without saying umm).

So when the person you're speaking to says something that you just need to respond to, respond with one of these:

4 fun German expressions that don't quite translate 🎨

I'm not sure if we should present these as being a few funny German phrases or perhaps as something deeper—tiny reflections of German culture, perhaps. All the same, each gem you'll see below goes beyond what it might seem to mean on the surface. I've done my best to explain them, but it was a bit hard. We don't really have an English equivalent for these.

I've decided to include literal translations so you can appreciate these for what they really are.

How to learn all of this slang and stuff

You went out of your way to Google "german slang" or something like that, so I'm pretty sure you've come to be aware of an annoying truth: it's actually kinda hard to learn this stuff. Nobody wants to teach it. The Owl That Shall Not Be Named isn't going to feature geil in a lesson, and your German professor at college (hopefully) isn't going to look you in the eye and drop a Leck mich am Arsch!

Now, here at Migaku, we won't teach you this stuff, either—don't quote me on that, actually—but we do give you the tools you need to learn them yourself.

For example, imagine you're perusing German YouTube on your phone, as you do, and then the gnarly dude building a custom longboard lets an "Alter, krass!" rip right into the microphone.

(If your imagination isn't so great, reference the handy dandy screenshots below).

And that "Alter" is underlined in red, indicating that you don't know it yet, so you click on it and see that it's a colloquial expression which means "amazing". That's an awesome word to know, so you click the orange "send to card creator" button and Migaku fetches a bunch of relevant information to make a flashcard for you, as shown below.

That whole process takes about three seconds, then you're back to your video.

It's pretty cool.

You do just do what you do online, and Migaku helps you capitalize on learning opportunities as you stumble into them.

5 swears and mild insults, for good !@#$ing measure 😈

I feel like I shouldn't need to say this, but just in case:

Disclaimer out of the way, here's a short list of essential German phrases you need to know. Our goal here is to achieve a deeper understanding of German culture, after all, and these, too, are part of German culture. They're what German speakers are going to say when they're miffed.

Alas, the most useful bits of German vocabulary you won't learn in German class (lol):

Congrats 🫡 You now sound like a native. Probably.

How not to sound like a weirdo when using these German slang words and expressions 🤓

This concludes our crash course in German slang. You now know how to describe something awesome, have go-to expressions for contexts both positive and negative, and (I hope) have found something that you're sure will give your German language skills a boost.

Now for the most important bit of all—how not to embarrass yourself:

Final thoughts: level up your German with slang! 🚀

Wait, did you just read this entire post on popular slang words? You absolute Ehrenmann!

Mastering German slang takes you from textbook learner to real-world speaker. Whether you want to greet people like a Berliner (Na?), impress your friends with youthful slang (Alter, das ist krass!), or drop some fun idioms (Ich habe Fernweh!)—well, you can do that now.

So, keep these in your back pocket and sprinkle them into your conversations.

Viel Spaß beim Lernen! 🎉

(I'm not going to translate that... but if you were using Migaku, you could just click on each word to see what it means.)