Small talk with coworkers: Complaining about the weather or commute

💬 German uses the present tense with seit where English says "has been ...ing". Something still going on stays in the present: Ich warte seit zehn Minuten "I've been waiting for ten minutes".

🇩🇪 Bahn covers any train you commute on, including the S-Bahn, regional trains, and even the tram. Saying meine Bahn is the everyday way to mention your commute.

💬 German says numbers "backwards" from 21 up. The ones come first, joined with und: einundzwanzig "twenty-one" is literally "one-and-twenty".

💬 spät means "late", and Verspätung is a delay. You'll hear hat Verspätung "is delayed" in every station announcement.

💬 There's no "of" between the amount and Verspätung; the time just sits in front of it. Likewise zehn Minuten Pause "a ten-minute break".

💬 Nouns ending in -ung always take die. Examples are die Zeitung "newspaper" and die Wohnung "flat".

🇩🇪 Joking about the national rail company's lateness is a classic German bonding ritual. A colleague will almost always nod along.

🇩🇪 Germans use genau constantly, often several times in a row, just to show they're listening and agree. Using it a lot sounds natural, not repetitive.

💬 Verbs of getting somewhere, like kommen and fahren "go, ride", use bin/bist instead of habe/hast to talk about the past. So you say ich bin gekommen, not ich habe gekommen.

🇩🇪 du is the norm among coworkers at many German companies, especially younger or start-up offices. If colleagues address you with du, answer the same way.

💬 Use mit dem + vehicle for "by": mit dem Auto "by car", mit dem Bus "by bus". With feminine words it becomes mit der: mit der Bahn.

💬 The ending follows who you're talking to. Say du Armer to a man and du Arme to a woman.

💬 willst means "want", not "will". It's a false friend, since English "will" is wird or werde in German.

💬 ein becomes einen for the thing you want or have with masculine words like Kaffee. Compare Ich trinke einen Tee "I'm having a tea".

🇩🇪 Offering to grab someone a coffee is a common friendly gesture in German offices, especially after they've had a rough commute.

💬 gerne literally means "gladly". Answering an offer with ja, gerne is the natural way to accept.

🇩🇪 danke alone in reply to an offer can sound like "no thanks". Pair it with something positive, as here, to make clear you're accepting.

💬 nett means "kind" or "nice", not "neat". Swap it to say das ist lieb for something even warmer.

💬 Starting a sentence with hoffentlich pushes the verb right after it, so you get hoffentlich wird es, not hoffentlich es wird.

💬 am is short for an dem. It's used with days and the weekend: am Montag "on Monday", am Wochenende.

💬 wird means "becomes" or "gets", not "will". Swap in es wird kalt "it's getting cold".

🇩🇪 Ending a weather moan on a hopeful note about the weekend is the typical way to wrap up this kind of chat before heading to your desk.

💬 bis "until" builds all sorts of goodbyes. You can swap in other times: bis morgen "see you tomorrow", bis gleich "see you in a bit".