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GERMAN WORD OF THE DAY

German word of the day: Öffis

You’ll see this shorthand word used often in newspapers or in everyday conversation about local travel.

Published: 5 December 2023 16:45 CET

German word of the day: Öffis

Photo credit: Francesco Ungaro / Unsplash + Nicolas Raymond / flickr

What does it mean?

Öffis is a slang term for public transport and is often used in colloquial conversations or by tabloid newspapers.

How do you use it or where might you see it?

The full word for “public transport” in German – öffentlicher Verkehr – doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

So Germans often just shorten this to öffis in everyday conversation. Öffis is also a blanket term to refer to all modes of possible public transport – whether its bus, train, tram, or even ferry.

a tram in the city center of Vienna, public transport Austria

One of the famous Viennese trams. (Photo by Árpád Czapp on Unsplash)

How to use it?

Das KlimaTicket gilt für alle Öffis.

The Climate Ticket is good for all public transport.

Ich nehme Öffi und nicht mit dem Auto.

I take public transport instead of the car.

EXPLAINED: How does Austria’s KlimaTicket work?

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Ask a German: Do you ever forget the gender of words?

For lots of non-natives, speaking German is a bit like a lottery: when you are not 100 percent sure about the article of a German word, you take a guess. And you have a one in three chance of getting it right.

But knowing whether a singular noun is der (masculine), die (feminine) or das (neutral) is key to developing your language skills in order to construct fuller sentences. Think of it like the foundations: you need to learn the gender of the word as well as the word itself so you can build the rest of your German language house.

But do native German speakers always know whether a word is der, die or das?

Berlin-based German teacher Seraphine Peries told The Local that although German speakers tend to know intuitively what the article of most nouns are because they learn them while growing up, they “definitely” have doubts.

“German native speakers make a lot of mistakes when it comes to certain words,” said Peries. “For example, the word ‘Email’ is feminine in German: die Email. But the further you go south of Germany, they use the neutral form: das Email. So there’s a bit of a discussion about that, it’s a regional thing.”

Peries said there are lots of debates on the gender of English words that been transported into German, as well as newer words.

She also said product names provoke discussion. One of the most famous is Nutella.

“A lot of people say die Nutella because it’s like the Italian ella, but others say der Nutella because they think of the German word der Aufstrich, which means ‘spread’. And then there are people who say das Nutella because it’s a foreign word so they say it must be das.”

Although the makers of Nutella have never revealed the gender of the word so perhaps everyone is right in this case.

And then there are the words that change their meaning depending on the article that definitely confuse natives (as well as foreigners, no doubt).

“A few words in German are known as Genuswechsel (gender change),” said Peries. “These are words that change their meaning when they change gender.”

Peries highlighted the word der Verdienst, which means earnings or income, and das Verdienst, which means merit or credit.

So you could say:

Der Verdienst für die Stelle war zu niedrig.

The income for the job was too low

OR

Es ist das Verdienst der Eltern, dass das Kind so gut erzogen ist.

It is to the credit of the parents that the child is so well brought up.

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