GermanyAlter
noun, interjection · Informal · AHL-ter
Dude, man — an address term with no reference to age whatsoever. Older than Digga and slightly more mainstream; plenty of forty-year-olds still say it.
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Germany
German Slang for Greetings & Address
7 German slang terms for greetings & address, each with its meaning, how it is pronounced and an example of it in use.
How people open a conversation and what they call each other. These terms carry the most social information of any slang category: one wrong choice marks you as an outsider, or worse, as rude.
Digga
noun, interjection · Informal · DIG-ah
Mate, bro, dude. The dominant address term in German youth speech since roughly 2015, and now so bleached of meaning that it functions almost as punctuation.
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moin
interjection · Regional · MOYN
Hello — at any hour. The northern German all-day greeting, from Hamburg and Bremen up through Schleswig-Holstein, East Frisia and into the northern Netherlands and Denmark.
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na?
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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Schatzi
noun · Informal · SHAT-see
Sweetheart, darling. The diminutive of Schatz, and the default endearment between partners and from parents to children.
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servus
interjection · Regional · SER-voos
Hello and goodbye, in Bavaria and Austria. It works in both directions, which surprises learners who meet it as a greeting and then hear it again as someone leaves.
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yalla
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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