Do I need to know German in Germany?

 

Short answer

  • As a tourist: No, you can get by with no or minimal German.
  • To live, work, or study: Yes, you must know German.

Long answer

Tourists

As a tourist, particularly if you stick to relatively popular touristy areas, you can get by just speaking English. A significant number of Germans know enough English that you can ask for directions, order a meal in a restaurant, or get a room at a hotel in English. Maps and guidebooks are usually available in English. A certain demographic in Germany (younger, better-educated) is fairly notorious for immediately switching to English when talking to visitors.

However, “second-tier” attractions may not have any English-language labels/explanation, and you’ll still encounter the a fair number of non-English-speaker, particularly people who don’t work directly in the tourism business (e.g. a cashier in the supermarket). Also, navigating some aspects of your trip (e.g. getting the correct public transport ticket) are more difficult if you don’t speak German - but it’s doable.

If you can, bring a phrasebook. It’s also considered polite to ask if a person speaks English (“Ich spreche leider kein Deutsch, sprechen Sie Englisch?”, “I unfortunately don’t speak any German, do you speak English?”) before chattering away in English. Here is more in-depth guidance to how to handle this situation.

Residents

Daily life in Germany runs entirely in German. Therefore, if you want to do more than see the tourist sites in Germany (e.g. study or work), then you must know at least conversational (B1 on the CEFR scale) German to get by.

Germany has, historically, not been a country of immigrants. It’s also relatively homogenous (culturally and linguistically speaking), which immigrants from countries with much more linguistic diversity may not be used to. Additionally, there are well over a hundred million native German speakers in central Europe, so there is a critical mass of native German speakers. This means that Germany doesn’t do much to accommodate non-German speakers (when compared with countries with larger immigrant populations and/or fewer native speakers).

Immigrants from countries that used to be British colonies sometimes expect a situation similar to their home countries when it comes to the English language. However, in Germany English is not an official language. It’s not a lingua franca for local population groups with various native languages. And while English lessons are part of almost everyone’s school curriculum, English is not the language of the educated, or the language used in most higher education programs. English is only the 13th most common native language of immigrants in Germany.

The language spoken in Germany is German.

This is particularly true of anything “official”; for example:

  • The German housing market is very tight, and finding a place to live is hard. Landlords have to find some way of sorting through the dozens of applicants they get for any given apartment - and “doesn’t speak German” is often enough to put you at the bottom of the pile. If you don’t speak German then you’re also more likely to be scammed by an unscrupulous landlord.
  • In a similar vein, your apartment rental contract will be in German, and you need to read it carefully to understand all your obligations and conditions. For example, it may specify that you must stay for at least six months, or that you have to give three months’ notice. You will also receive letters from your landlord (e.g. raising your rent, paying off your utility bills, etc). Not understanding your contract, or ignoring these letters because they’re in German could be an expensive mistake (for example, 1800€ in this case).
  • You will be interacting a fair bit with clerks from various government offices - and they will only ever serve you in German. Unlike in some other countries, forms and rules are generally only available in German. Germany is a state that requires a certain amount of “engagement” from its inhabitants - you have duties (as well as privileges) when you live here (for example, you must register your address with the authorities within two weeks of moving in). You’ll probably get a few official letters about the former (about anything from the “TV tax” to unpaid debt) - and we’ve had too many sob stories on /r/germany from people who received such letters, didn’t understand them (they were in German, after all), ignored them, and got into trouble because of it.
  • You’ve now found somewhere to live, and would like to get a home internet connection. Not only are most providers’ websites exclusively in German, but even if you go to a telecom shop (and find one with an English-speaking clerk), the contract you sign will be in German. If you don’t understand what you’re signing, you could be in for a rude surprise when you discover what you actually signed up for.
  • You can pretty much forget getting support (e.g. from your bank, your phone company, etc, either in person or over the telephone) in anything but German. There’s only one bank (Deutsche Bank) that even advertises that they have some tellers and financial advisors that speak English - and I honestly wasn’t all that impressed with their level of English. If you want any kind of customer support (e.g. getting in touch with DHL to find out where your package is, or finding out where your money has gone, or how to pay your credit card debt), you’ll have to nearly always do it in German. Even something as trivial as activating online banking or getting your bank statements electronically is fraught with difficulties if you don’t understand the language.
  • Want to buy something from a shop, or send a parcel? If it’s something simple you’re fine, but as soon as you need to ask questions, even simple things can get really difficult really quickly.
  • If the police stops you, then you would do well to know your rights. If you don’t understand what they’re asking (which will only ever be in German) then you may well incriminate yourself unnecessarily.
  • Insurance companies are another fairly important part of daily life which runs almost exclusively in German. While, for example, a few public health insurance companies (e.g. TK) have English-speaking telephone help lines, all the official mail they send to you will be in German (and often fairly dense, legalese German at that - the kind that online translation tools often struggle with). Understanding these letters is often fairly important, as they tell you (for example) how much you owe them, or how much of your procedure would be covered by them.
  • While there are a few English-speaking doctors, if you don’t speak German you’ll be much more limited in your choice of doctor, and communicating with nurses and receptionists in English is a major challenge. Even if a doctor claims to speak English on their website, the reality may be rather different.
  • A significant majority of German websites don’t have an English version. If you’re used to surfing the web in English, this will come as a rude shock, and will make the most mundane web-surfing more tedious and error-prone - for example, even finding out something as trivial as what language a movie will be shown in is fraught with difficulties if you don’t know German. There are also a fair number of high-profile website (such as the one for DHL) which have an English version, but many features are only available on the German version. Not even knowing what key words to search for makes finding useful information online very tedious.
  • If you don’t speak German then you will make silly mistakes, like throwing away the receipt with the code for the gift card you just bought.
  • Your finances can take a real hit if you don’t speak German - for example, inadvertendly signing up for a multi-year gym membership or a higher monthly rate because you didn’t understand what you were signing, or tanking your credit rating by mistake and then discover that you have to pre-pay everything for at least several years,
  • Not speaking German can come back and bite you in the most random of circumstances, such as setting off a fire alarm in a hospital, and then not understanding the explanations from the nurses and firefighters, or the document you signed accepting responsibility. While you should never sign anything you don’t understand, in most situations in Germany you simply won’t have the choice to get a translation of a document, and it will be very difficult to resist the pressure to sign regardless.

Making friends in Germany without speaking German just got much harder. While most university-educated Germans speak at least reasonable (often better) English, the language of informal communication is German. You’ll always be shut out of the informal chatter to some degree, even if they make an effort to only speak English when you’re around (and I’ve seen it countless times that there is a very strong tendency to lapse back into German). Not speaking German can often end in social isolation.

People who move to Germany with German-speaking partners (e.g. an Irish man coming to Germany to live with his German wife) will find that they will be very heavily reliant on their partner for managing all the minutiae of their daily life in Germany (anything from calling a plumber, to understanding whether a letter is junk mail or not, to sorting out the issues with the home internet connection). This loss of independence can be quite wearing and put a strain on the relationship.

According to a survey of expats and immigrants to Germany, about 60% say that it’s difficult to live in Germany without knowing German. Here are some recent discussions about the struggles of daily life without speaking German:

Students

If you want to study at a German university in German (and the vast majority of courses are in German), then you can only enroll in the course if you have a certificate of German fluency (usually C1, but it depends on the university) - which makes sense, given that you’ll be expected to understand complex texts and express ideas in German. Even universities offering degree courses in English often require students to have conversational (often B1, but, as above, check the specific university’s requirements) German, in order to make sure that students can get through daily life.

Working

The overwhelming majority of jobs in Germany require you to speak fluent German, and unless an employer is absolutely desperate, they won’t consider candidates with less than C1 German.

Now, there are exceptions to this rule. Certain IT jobs, as well as a few engineering and finance jobs (particularly in large multinational companies) can be done in English. The demand for IT professionals in particular is so high that companies are willing to accommodate non-German speakers and have an English-language working environment. However, it should be noted that even in a nominally English-language environment, much of the informal communication (e.g. at lunch) tends to take place in German, so you’d miss out on this if you don’t speak German. Additionally, even in a specifically English-language workplace much of the communication can be in German.

Coming to Germany without knowing German

Is it possible to come to Germany and survive daily life without knowing German? Yes, just about - but it’s tough, frustrating, and a little risky. Even mundane, everyday tasks become very tedious and error-prone. You would do well to pour all your free energy into learning German. Having said that, there are a few things that can help you in the interim:

  • Machine translation tools like Google Translate and Deepl can help to translate German text. While they often make mistakes, they can be useful to get a general idea of what some text means.
  • Bilingual friends are a godsend. Be extra nice to them, and they can help you to translate documents, accompany you (e.g. when visiting a government office), help you in navigating a website, etc.
  • If you’re moving to Germany for a job, and if your employer will pay for it, hire a relocation agency to help you get your life in Germany set up. These will help you to find a place to live, accompany you to the various offices, help you to fill out paperwork, sort out a telephone and internet connection for you, and so on. They’re not cheap, but they take an enormous amount of work off your shoulders for the first few weeks.
  • If making German friends is hard at the beginning, you can always make friends with fellow immigrants/expats. However, don’t stay inside the “expat bubble” for too long!
  • The major cities (Berlin in particular) have larger communities of English-speakers, so it’s a little easier to get by there without speaking German (mostly because there will be a number of other people in a similar situation).

In these recent discussions, a few Redditors shared their techniques for getting by without knowing German: