Telling my landlord the hot water is broken: Explaining the problem

🇩🇪 Opening a complaint with leider softens it. It frames the problem as bad luck rather than blaming anyone.

💬 leider sits after the verb here, not at the start like English "unfortunately". You can also lead with it, but then the verb comes right after: Leider haben wir.

💬 Germans say warmes Wasser for hot tap water. heißes Wasser "hot water" sounds like boiling or scalding.

💬 German says "we have no hot water" with kein, not nicht. Use kein whenever you'd say "no" or "not any" before a thing: kein Strom "no electricity".

💬 denn here doesn't mean "then". It just makes the question sound natural and interested, and you'll hear it in lots of everyday questions: Was ist denn los? "What's the matter?".

💬 gestern Abend is literally "yesterday evening". The pattern works for other times too: heute Morgen "this morning", morgen Abend "tomorrow evening".

💬 The W in Wasser sounds like an English v: (VAH-ser). Same in warm and Wohnung.

💬 bleibt "stays" is a handy way to describe something that isn't changing. For example: Die Heizung bleibt kalt "The heating stays cold".

💬 The ü in Küche has no English match. Say "ee" with your lips rounded as for "oo".

💬 im is short for in dem. Germans almost always merge them: im Bad, im Keller "in the basement".

🇩🇪 Landlords ask this to work out whether one tap or the whole boiler is at fault. That decides which tradesman they call.

🇩🇪 In many German flats one boiler or central system runs both heating and hot water. That's why the landlord will want to know if the heating still works.

💬 aber "but" can sit in the middle of the sentence, not just at the start. There it adds a gentle contrast, like "the heating is warm, though".

💬 der becomes den when the man is the one receiving the action, here the person being called. Only masculine words change like this. die and das stay the same.

💬 anrufen "to call" splits apart, and an jumps to the end of the sentence. Same pattern: Ich rufe Sie morgen an "I'll call you tomorrow".

🇩🇪 Usually the landlord or the property management (the Hausverwaltung) books the tradesman for building faults, not the tenant. Check with them before calling one yourself, or you may end up paying.

💬 morgen means "tomorrow", while Morgen with a capital M means "morning". "Tomorrow morning" is morgen Vormittag or morgen früh, not "morgen Morgen".

💬 zu Hause means being at home. For going home, use nach Hause: Ich gehe nach Hause "I'm going home".

🇩🇪 Tradesmen usually give a rough time window, not an exact time, so expect to wait in for a few hours.

💬 German often uses the present tense for future plans, so ich bin da covers "I'll be there". da here simply means "in, at home".

🇩🇪 Gern or Gern geschehen is a warm, natural reply to thanks. Bitte works too and is just as common.

💬 sich melden needs mich to say who will get in touch: ich melde mich. With Sie it becomes Sie melden sich.

🇩🇪 Say Auf Wiederhören only on the phone, since it's about hearing each other again. Face to face, it's Auf Wiedersehen.