Master Small Talk in German - Connect with Native Speakers

When breaking the ice and making small talk with native German speakers, it is helpful to use some common and culturally appropriate phrases and topics to start the conversation naturally and comfortably.

Common German Small Talk Starters

• Greetings: Start with a simple “Hallo” or “Guten Tag” (Hello or Good day).
• Asking about well-being: “Wie geht es Ihnen?” (formal) or “Wie geht’s?” (informal) meaning “How are you?” is very common.
• Weather comments: Talking about the weather is a popular small talk topic, e.g., “Schönes Wetter heute, oder?” (Nice weather today, isn’t it?).
• Compliments or remarks about the surroundings: Commenting on the location or event can open dialogue, like “Tolle Veranstaltung, finden Sie nicht?” (Great event, don’t you think?).
• Asking simple questions about the person’s interests or how they spend their day.

Tips for Breaking the Ice

• Germans appreciate politeness and straightforwardness but also a certain level of formality initially.
• Using small talk as a way to create ongoing communication relationships is important, so listen actively and respond naturally.
• Shared experiences or common ground (such as the context you are in) can be useful to build rapport in the conversation.
• Avoid very personal or controversial topics early on; start with light, neutral subjects.

These starter phrases and approaches help create a positive first impression and ease the transition into more meaningful conversation with native German speakers in casual or social settings.

References

• Adjective Phrases in Initial Burst of Small Talk Influence Purchasing Decisions?

• The Power of Small Talk Discourse as Mitigating Conflict in Different Religious Communities in Ntaram

• Identifying Small Talk in Natural Conversations

• Does small talk with a medical provider affect ChatGPT’s medical counsel? Performance of ChatGPT on USMLE with and without distractions.

• A Language Generation Toolkit for Expressing Agreement in Small Talk

• Common American phrases in everyday contexts : a detailed guide to real-life conversation and small talk

• Beyond Grammar and Vocabulary: German and American Differences in Routine Formulae and Small Talk.

• How are you? I’m hot : An interactive analysis of small talk sequences in British-German telephone sales

• To Talk Jesus Is to Talk Politics: The Protestant Church and Resistance in East Germany

• Talk talk, not just small talk. Exploring English contrastive focus reduplication with the help of corpora

• A New Aligned Simple German Corpus

• Supervised Disambiguation of German Verbal Idioms with a BiLSTM Architecture

• Forms and Functions of Idiomatic Expressions in Conversational Interaction

• Noch so ‘ne Phrase, Faust auf die Nase! – Eine phraseologische Untersuchung des Nerv-Sprech

• Zur Darstellung nonverbalen Verhaltens in deutschen und schwedischen IRC-Chats. Eine Korpusuntersuchung

• MaiBaam Annotation Guidelines

• The Use of Phrases Containing misunderstanding in German Discussion Forums

• Phraseologisches Optimum für Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Ein Vorschlag auf der Basis von Frequenz- und Geläufigkeitsuntersuchungen

• At the Lower End of Language—Exploring the Vulgar and Obscene Side of German

• The linguistic landscape of the coronavirus crisis in foreign language didactics by using the example of German