Let's start with the basics. Knowing how to say hello and goodbye is your entry ticket to any conversation. In German, like in English, some greetings are more formal than others.

If you want to be a bit more formal, you can greet people based on the time of day.

When it's time to leave, you also have a couple of options. Tschüss is a common, informal way to say bye. If you want to be more formal, especially when you expect to see the person again, you'd use Auf Wiedersehen.

In German, every noun has a gender: masculine, feminine, or neuter. This might seem strange at first, but it's a core part of the language. The gender determines which article, or "the" word, you use.

The gender of a noun isn't always logical. A table (der Tisch) is masculine, but a girl (das Mädchen) is neuter. Let's look at some common nouns, starting with family.

Here are a few more common objects you might encounter every day.

Now that we have some nouns, we need verbs to make things happen. Two of the most important verbs are sein (to be) and haben (to have). Just like in English, they change depending on who is doing the action.

Here is the present tense conjugation for sein:

To add detail, we use adjectives. These words describe nouns. A great thing about simple German sentences is that the adjective doesn't change.

Let's also learn some numbers and colors.

Now we can form a simple descriptive sentence.

Das Auto ist rot. (The car is red.) Mein Bruder ist groß. (My brother is tall.) Ich habe zwei Schwestern. (I have two sisters.)

Let's review the words we've learned.

Ready to test your knowledge?

Learning these core words is the first major step toward speaking German. Keep practicing them, and they'll soon become second nature.