Germany
8 German slang terms for filler words, each with its meaning, how it is pronounced and an example of it in use.
The small words that hold speech together: hedges, tags, intensifiers and pause-fillers. Almost invisible to native speakers and almost impossible for learners.
idiom · Colloquial · dass ist meer VOORST
I couldn't care less; it's all the same to me. Not rude, not aggressive — just a flat statement of indifference, and far more common in speech than the neutral 'das ist mir egal'.
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phrase, interjection · Informal · GURN deer
Treat yourself; go on, you've earned it. Said to encourage someone to indulge — the second dessert, the expensive trainers, the day off.
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adverb · Colloquial · HALT
The resignation particle. It marks what follows as an unchangeable fact you have stopped arguing with: 'das ist halt so' — that's just how it is, and there's no point discussing it.
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interjection · Colloquial · NAH — rising tone
A complete greeting on its own, asked with a rising tone: roughly 'hey — how are you?' The expected answer is 'na' back, and the exchange is over. Foreigners consistently mistake it for the start of a question.
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interjection · Colloquial · NEH — short, rising
The German tag question: 'isn't it', 'right?', 'you know?'. Tacked onto a statement to invite agreement, and used far more densely than any English equivalent.
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adverb, adjective · Informal · FOL
Totally, really — the workhorse intensifier of German youth and casual speech: voll gut, voll nervig, voll der Stress.
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interjection · Informal · VAH-lah
I swear; honestly; no joke. An oath used to insist that what you are saying is true, and the single most recognisable item of Kiezdeutsch — the multi-ethnic urban German of Berlin, Hamburg, Duisburg and the Rhine-Ruhr.
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interjection · Informal · YAH-lah
Come on; let's go; hurry up. A general call to get moving, and one of the most fully naturalised Arabic borrowings in German youth speech — used by speakers with no Arabic connection at all.
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Germany