Dialogue: Meeting Someone New

When two people of a similar age meet at a party or in a class, German has a small, fixed set of opening moves: ask the name, the origin, the languages, the job. Each of these uses an idiom that a word-for-word translation from English gets wrong, so this is exactly where modelling the real phrasing pays off. Below, two students — Lena and Tomás — meet for the first time and use the informal du throughout, as young peers normally do.

The dialogue

Grammar in context

Wie heißt du? — "how", not "what", for names

German asks for a name with Wie heißt du? — literally "How are you called?". The verb is heißen ("to be called"), and the question word is wie ("how"), never was ("what"). The English instinct is to translate "What is your name?" into Was ist dein Name? — grammatically possible but stilted and rarely said. Native speakers reach for Wie heißt du? or Wie heißen Sie? (formal). See wie: how, how much, and exclamations.

du between peers

Lena and Tomás are young and meeting socially, so they use du from the first line: Wie heißt du?, kommst du, Sprichst du. With an older stranger, a colleague's superior, or in a shop, they would switch to Sie. Choosing du signals casual equality. See the du/Sie decision.

Woher kommst du? and Ich komme aus... — origin with aus

Woher? means "from where?" and is answered with aus + the dative. For your home country or city, German uses aus, not von: Ich komme aus Spanien, aus Wien. von would suggest a starting point of a single trip ("coming from the station"), not your roots. Most country names take no article (aus Spanien, aus Österreich), so the dative is invisible — but it is dative all the same. See aus vs von and wo, wohin, woher.

Ich spreche / lerne + language — no article

Languages, when you speak or learn them, appear bare, with no article: Ich spreche Deutsch, Ich lerne Englisch. English does the same ("I speak German"), but learners sometimes insert das by analogy with other nouns. Don't. Note the verb sprechen has a vowel change in the du form: du sprichst. See when German omits the article.

Ich bin Studentin / Lehrer — professions without ein

This is the classic trap. To state a job, German says Ich bin + the bare profession, with no article: Ich bin Lehrer, Ich bin Studentin. English forces "a" ("I am a teacher"), and learners calque it as Ich bin ein Lehrer, which sounds wrong to a native ear (it implies "one specimen of teacher"). The article only returns when an adjective describes the job: Ich bin ein guter Lehrer. Note also the feminine forms in -in: Lehrer → Lehrerin, Student → Studentin. See article omission and gender of persons and professions.

Was machst du beruflich? — the job question

The natural way to ask "what do you do for work" is Was machst du beruflich? (literally "what do you do professionally") or Was bist du von Beruf?. Here was really is "what", because you are asking about an activity, not a name — contrast it with wie for the name itself.

Numbers and the units-first order

When they state their ages, the units-before-tens order shows up: neunundzwanzig (29), dreiundzwanzig (23) — one word, units first. See number, date, and time errors.

Vocabulary

Common Mistakes