German for Travel, Work and Study

In Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Vienna and Zurich, English handles hotels, airports, museums, ticket machines and most restaurants in the centre, and many younger people speak it fluently and switch unasked when they hear an accent. The switch is less reliable in small towns and the countryside: in rural Saxony, Thuringia or Brandenburg, where older people learned Russian rather than English at school, in Austrian villages and in the Alpine valleys of Switzerland, the pharmacy, the bakery, the guesthouse owner and the regional bus driver often speak German only. Official letters, rental contracts and a doctor's questions are in German everywhere.

German-speaking Switzerland adds a layer. Standard German, which the Swiss call Hochdeutsch or Schriftdeutsch, is the language of newspapers, signs, the news and school, but everyday talk at home, in the shop and in the office kitchen is Swiss German dialect, which a learner of the standard cannot follow at first. Speak standard German and the Swiss answer in it, a little formally; many switch just as readily to English. The Swiss also spell without the ß, writing “Strasse” and “Grüsse”. Bavarian and Austrian dialects are strong in the countryside too, but speakers move towards the standard for a visitor far more readily.

Two weeks of daily practice are enough for greetings and thanks, for catching a price or a platform number said aloud, and for a dozen questions about food, trains, rooms and directions. German spelling is regular, so a word read on a platform sign can be said aloud and understood; the three genders and the cases slow a learner down later, and at a shop counter nobody minds a wrong article. Following a reply spoken at full speed takes far longer.

Register comes first. Sie, the formal you, written with a capital S, is the default with anyone you do not know: the ticket inspector, the landlord, the waiter, a colleague on the first day. Du is for friends, children, students among themselves and anyone who offers it, and the offer usually comes from the older or more senior person. Hostels, start-ups, sports clubs and mountain huts, where hikers traditionally say du to each other, move to du almost at once; an office in Munich or Vienna may keep Sie for years. A greeting on entering a small shop or a doctor's waiting room, and a goodbye on leaving, are expected.

• Austrian words: Austria has its own everyday vocabulary: potatoes are “Erdäpfel” as well as “Kartoffeln”, tomatoes “Paradeiser”, apricots “Marillen”, January “Jänner” and a small bag a “Sackerl”. Germans from the north understand them, and Austrians understand the northern words.
• Swiss words: In Switzerland a bicycle is a “Velo”, a mobile phone often a “Natel”, chicken on a menu “Poulet”, the pavement the “Trottoir”, and to park is “parkieren”.
• False friends: “Gift” is poison, and a present is a “Geschenk”; “bekommen” means to receive, not to become; a “Chef” is the boss, while the cook is a “Koch”; “aktuell” means current, not actual; and “Rente” is a pension, while the rent is “Miete”.
• Numbers said backwards: Twenty-one is “einundzwanzig”, one-and-twenty, so a phone number or a platform is heard units first. “Halb drei” is half past two, not half past three. Decimals take a comma: 3,5 kilometres is “drei Komma fünf”.
• ß and umlauts: The “ß” is a sharp s and becomes “ss” where a keyboard lacks it; ä, ö and ü become ae, oe and ue, which is how they appear on many airline tickets and in email addresses, so “Muenchen” and “München” are the same city.

German runs business in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, in Liechtenstein, in South Tyrol beside Italian and in Luxembourg beside French and Luxembourgish. The Mittelstand, the family-owned manufacturers of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia, works in German from the shop floor to the board, and so do public administration, courts, hospitals and schools. English is enough in Berlin's start-up scene, in research institutes, inside the global teams of the large listed groups headquartered in Munich, Stuttgart and the Rhineland, in Frankfurt's banks and in Zurich's banks and insurers. Even there the canteen, the works council and the landlord speak German, and promotion into management usually assumes it.

The register is formal and stays so. Sie holds until the other side offers du, and in a traditional firm the offer can take years; colleagues on Sie terms are “Herr Weber” and “Frau Schmidt”, never a first name alone. In Germany a doctorate belongs to the name, “Frau Dr. Schmidt”, on letters and often in speech. Austria goes further: academic titles are used aloud and in writing, from “Herr Magister” and “Frau Doktor” to “Dipl.-Ing.” for an engineer, and leaving one off reads as a slight. Directness is a matter of register, not rudeness: a colleague who says a plan will not work is discussing the plan, and a meeting set for nine starts at nine.

Emails open with “Sehr geehrte Frau Schmidt” or “Sehr geehrter Herr Weber” and close with “Mit freundlichen Grüßen”; the Swiss write “Freundliche Grüsse”. “Liebe Anna” or “Lieber Tom” belongs to du terms, while “Hallo Frau Schmidt” has become common in younger firms. Employers hiring a foreigner for a client-facing role usually name B2 as the floor, many vocational trainings, the Ausbildung, expect B1 at the start, and regulated professions set their own bar: doctors prove specialist medical German at C1, and nursing authorities commonly ask for B2.

The large universities of Germany teach their bachelor's degrees mainly in German: TU Munich and LMU in Munich, Heidelberg, RWTH Aachen, the Humboldt and Free Universities in Berlin. The same holds in Austria, at the University of Vienna, TU Wien and the universities of Graz, and in Switzerland, where ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich teach their bachelor's programmes in German and ask for C1. English-taught programmes are common at master's level, above all in engineering, the sciences and economics, and each admissions page states the teaching language programme by programme.

For a German-taught degree in Germany the usual proof is C1: DSH-2, TestDaF with at least 4 in every part, telc Deutsch C1 Hochschule, or a Goethe-Zertifikat at C2, with the Goethe C1 accepted by many universities. Austrian universities ask for B2 or C1 depending on the programme. Applicants whose school-leaving certificate does not give direct entry to a German university spend a year at a Studienkolleg, a preparatory college that teaches subject courses in German and ends in the Feststellungsprüfung; entry to it assumes B1 or B2. Vienna's universities run a comparable preparatory German programme, the Vorstudienlehrgang.

Exchange semesters are more forgiving. Erasmus+ places often recommend B1, and host universities run German courses before and during the semester, where the first weeks test following a lecture and a seminar discussion more than reading. The DAAD, Germany's academic exchange service, and the OeAD in Austria are the first addresses for scholarships, and the DAAD also funds places on university summer language courses.

Some come for the language alone: Germany, Austria and Switzerland each issue a visa for intensive German courses at recognised schools, often taken by students preparing for TestDaF, the DSH or an ÖSD exam before a degree.

The Goethe-Zertifikat is the most widely recognised: one exam per level, from Start Deutsch 1 at A1 to the Großes Deutsches Sprachdiplom at C2, on a certificate that does not expire, though some authorities want a recent one. telc Deutsch covers the same scale and is common inside Germany; its C1 Hochschule exam is built for university entry. Austria's ÖSD is recognised in Germany and Switzerland as well. For university admission in Germany, TestDaF scores each of four skills from TDN 3 to TDN 5, and the DSH is set and marked by each university itself, with DSH-2 the usual threshold.

Residence and nationality are where a level is tested most. Germany asks most spouses joining a partner for A1 before the visa, with exemptions for some nationalities; a settlement permit and naturalisation require B1, and EU Blue Card holders reach permanent residence sooner with B1. The DTZ, taken at the end of Germany's integration course, certifies A2 or B1 for those purposes. Austrian citizenship requires B1, or B2 for the early route after six years, and permanent residence builds on the ÖIF integration exam. Switzerland assesses spoken and written German separately: a settlement (C) permit usually asks A2 spoken and A1 written, naturalisation B1 spoken and A2 written, and cantons may set more; the fide test is built for these steps. Germany's Chancenkarte, the job-search card, needs German at A1 or English at B2 and awards more points as the German level rises. These thresholds are revised from time to time, so an application follows the authority's current list.

Levels are measured in classroom hours. The US Foreign Service Institute puts German one step beyond Spanish and French for English speakers, at around 900 classroom hours to professional working proficiency. A1 is a matter of weeks of regular classes; B1, the level most residence rules ask for, takes most adults the better part of a year of steady study; C1 for a degree takes a beginner a year or two of intensive courses.

Goethe exams sit at Goethe-Instituts and licensed partner schools in cities worldwide; telc exams at adult-education centres, the Volkshochschulen, and language schools across Germany and at partner centres abroad; ÖSD exams at licensed centres in Austria and abroad; TestDaF at licensed test centres, on computer; the DSH at the university that sets it; fide at accredited centres across Switzerland.

Four kinds of tool cover self-study: a bilingual dictionary for meaning, tables for verbs and endings, flashcards for memory and daily listening. Look a word up in dict.cc or LEO, whose forums argue over fine distinctions, and note every noun with its article and plural, “der Tisch, die Tische”, because a noun learned without its gender has to be learned twice. Verbformen gives the full conjugation and declension tables; Duden settles spelling, gender and meaning once German definitions read comfortably, from around B1.

Deutsche Welle's learning programmes cover the path from zero: the video course “Nicos Weg” runs from A1 to B1, and “Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten” reads the day's news at a slower pace. Easy German films street interviews in Berlin and other cities with German and English subtitles. Menschen and Aspekte neu, course book series levelled to the CEFR, give grammar a sensible order, and the Goethe-Institut's sample papers show what each exam level asks.

No tool makes you choose between “dem” and “den” while someone waits for the answer, or tells you that a correct sentence sounds like a textbook in Vienna.

German punishes the gap between knowing a rule and using it: the case ending, the verb at the end of the clause, the gender of a noun learned last week. A tutor who hears you make those choices aloud and corrects them in real speech closes that gap faster than any drill, and for anyone moving to Zurich or Graz trains an ear for the speech of the street rather than the recording.

A trial lesson is the time for questions. Ask where the tutor comes from and whether they can prepare you for Austrian or Swiss speech; whether they correct mid-sentence or keep a list for the end; what the first month would cover for your goal; and, for an exam, which Goethe, telc, ÖSD or TestDaF levels their students have passed and whether they work with the official sample papers.