Excuse me.
Useful when getting a stranger’s attention or apologising for a small interruption.
FREE BEGINNER LESSON 4 · GERMAN
German: A little politeness
Be polite, get someone’s attention and respond to thanks.
Neutral and polite · useful expressions. Learn the meaning, listen to the pronunciation, then practise in the interactive lesson.
Practise this lessonOpening vocabulary referenceUseful German phrases and their meanings
Please.
Its meaning depends on the exchange. As a reply to danke, bitte means you are welcome.
No problem.
A friendly reassurance after a small apology or request.
Goodbye.
A standard polite farewell with strangers or people you address as Sie.
How the sentence works
Bitte can mean please, you are welcome or here you are, depending on the situation. Entschuldigung politely gets attention or apologises. Sie is the polite you, written with a capital S even inside a sentence. Auf Wiedersehen is a polite farewell.
A short conversation in German
Excuse me.
No problem.
Thank you.
You are welcome.
Words to recognise
please / you are welcome
excuse me / sorry
the problem
again
Listen to the whole phrase before focusing on each word. You can replay as often as you like, and the interactive lesson uses pictures and a short exchange to put the meaning in context.
Open the interactive lessonThe opening six teaching lessons are free, including the mini-tests after lessons three and six. A test accepts any answer and shows the score and corrections at the end. No typing or speaking aloud is required.
Keep learning German
Free five-minute audio lesson and MP3 · Language learning games
The pronunciation uses prepared synthetic voices. Credits and licences explain the free voice models. Independent native-speaker certification is not claimed.