Hello in German: 15 Ways to Greet Anyone (Hallo, Servus, Moin)
8 min read
If you only learn one word of German before your first conversation, make it a greeting. Saying hello in German is easy — Hallo works almost everywhere — but the word a German actually uses depends on the time of day, the region they grew up in, and whether they're talking to a colleague or a friend. Get the choice right and you sound like someone who has spent time in the country. Get it wrong and you sound like a textbook.
Here are the fifteen greetings worth knowing, when each one fits, and how to say them without hesitating.
Start here. If you learn nothing else today, learn these.
1. Hallo — hello
Neutral, friendly, and safe in almost any setting. You can say Hallo to a shop assistant, a new colleague, or a stranger at a party. It is not slang, and it is not stiff. Pronounced HAH-loh, with a short first vowel and the stress on the first syllable.
2. Guten Tag — good day
The formal default. Use it with people you address as Sie: officials, doctors, older strangers, anyone in a professional context. Literally "good day," but it functions the way "good morning/afternoon" does in English. Pronounced GOO-ten TAHK — that final g in Tag hardens into a k sound, which trips up most beginners.
3. Guten Morgen — good morning
Before roughly 11am. See our full guide to good morning in German for the regional variants and how to answer when someone says it to you.
Hallo sits in the middle, which is exactly why it is so useful. It is informal enough for friends and neutral enough that no one will find it rude at the bakery or the office kitchen.
Where Hallo does not work: a job interview, a first meeting with a client, addressing an older person you don't know, or any situation where you would use Sie. In those cases Guten Tag is the correct choice. The rule of thumb is simple — if you would say Sie, say Guten Tag.
One more distinction English speakers miss: Hallo is a greeting, not an attention-getter. To flag down a waiter you say Entschuldigung (excuse me), never Hallo.
German switches greetings across the day more strictly than English does.
| German | English | When |
|---|---|---|
| Guten Morgen | Good morning | Until ~11am |
| Guten Tag | Good day | ~11am to ~6pm |
| Guten Abend | Good evening | After ~6pm |
| Gute Nacht | Good night | Only when leaving or going to bed |
4. Guten Abend is the evening equivalent of Guten Tag and just as formal. Walk into a restaurant at 8pm and this is what you will hear.
5. Gute Nacht is the one people get wrong. It is a farewell, never a greeting. You say it as you leave or before sleep — never when you arrive somewhere at night. Notice it is Gute, not Guten, because Nacht is feminine. That ending change is the accusative case doing its work, and it is a good miniature example of why German articles matter. If der/die/das still feels random, the der die das rules post breaks the patterns down.
Want to drill genders until they're automatic? Article Blitz throws nouns at you and makes you pick der, die, or das against the clock.
This is where German gets fun. Cross a state line and the greeting changes completely.
6. Moin — northern Germany (Hamburg, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein)
Despite sounding like Morgen, Moin works at any hour. Someone in Hamburg will say it to you at 11pm. Often doubled to Moin Moin, though northerners joke that saying it twice counts as excessive chatter.
7. Servus — Bavaria and Austria
From the Latin for "servant" (as in "at your service"). Informal, warm, and it works as both hello and goodbye. Pronounced ZER-vus — that initial s is voiced, like the English z.
8. Grüß Gott — Bavaria, Austria, and much of southern Germany
Literally "greet God." It sounds religious but functions as an ordinary polite greeting, roughly equivalent to Guten Tag in the south. If you say Guten Tag in a Munich shop, you'll be marked as a northerner instantly.
9. Grüezi — Switzerland
The Swiss German standard. Formal-neutral, used with strangers and shopkeepers.
10. Grüß dich — informal, southern
"Greet you." Casual version of Grüß Gott, used with people you're on du terms with.
Reserve these for friends, and for people roughly your own age.
11. Hi — yes, really. German has borrowed it wholesale, and it's extremely common among people under 40.
12. Hey — same deal, borrowed from English, casual.
13. Na? — a single syllable that means something like "so? how's it going?" Uniquely German, hard to translate, and heard constantly. Often extended into Na, alles klar? (so, everything good?). Answer with a shrug and Ja, und selbst? (yeah, and you?).
14. Was geht? — "what's up?" Youth slang. Fine among friends, wrong anywhere else. More of this in our German slang words roundup.
15. Hallöchen — a diminutive of Hallo, playful and a bit cutesy. Common in texts and among close friends.
Germans answer the phone with their surname, not with a greeting. Pick up and say Müller — just the name. In a business setting you'd say the company plus your name: Firma Schmidt, Wagner am Apparat (Schmidt company, Wagner speaking).
Answering with a bare Hallo reads as slightly evasive to German ears. When you're the one calling, open with Guten Tag, hier spricht (good day, this is) plus your name.
Greetings are short, which means every sound is exposed. Three things to watch:
The German pronunciation guide covers these rules systematically. To actually train your mouth rather than just read about it, Speech Champion listens to you say the word and scores it back.
Being greeted is easier than greeting. In most cases you simply return the same word: someone says Guten Tag, you say Guten Tag.
The exception is when a greeting is followed by a question:
Keep in mind that Wie geht's? in German is a genuine question, not a passing formula the way "how are you?" often is in English. A one-word answer is normal; a completely blank one is not.
Ask yourself two questions:
When you genuinely can't tell, Guten Tag is the safer error. Being slightly too formal in German reads as polite. Being too casual reads as presumptuous.
Greetings are the one piece of German you will use every single day, which makes them worth over-learning. Reading a list once won't do it — you need the words to come out without a pause.
Then take it further with the most common German words and the A1 vocabulary list — greetings plus the first few hundred words gets you through a surprising amount of real conversation.
Practicing five minutes a day beats one long session a week. Download the Deutschwunder app and drill greetings, vocabulary, and pronunciation wherever you are.
Explore more: German Greetings Guide · German Pronunciation Guide · Most Common German Words