Hamburg owes much of its local colour to Low German (known locally as Plattdeutsch), the common language of both the Hanse League and all of northern Germany for many centuries. The Hanse is long gone and most young people in northern Germany are no longer taught Low German, but the following phrases are still around – and may sound odd to the ears of non-locals.
Moin
Moin is the typical and most popular greeting in Hamburg – and it is also very dear to the hearts of all northern Germans. But beware: despite its superficial similarity, it has nothing to do with Guten Morgen (lit. ‘good morning’) at all! Many German native speakers also get this wrong. Instead, it is widely assumed that Moin derives from the Low German adjective moi (lit. ‘good’ or ‘nice’) and its inflected form moi’n before nouns – for example moi’n dag (Low German for ‘good day’).
So, greeting someone with Moin means something akin to ‘have a good one’. That’s why you can hear Moin – or one of its variants Moin Moin, or Moinsen – at any time of day in Hamburg, even late at night. And depending on the way it is said, it can tell a lot about the speaker’s mood or attitude, from a short grunt to an expression of pleasant surprise or even a cheerful toast!
A quick side note: Moin is usually monosyllabic and delivered with a falling tone. If you are greeted by a short Moin, be sure to respond with a similarly brief Moin. There is a popular saying among notoriously economical northern Germans that even Moin Moin is one word too many.
Klönschnack
This Low German expression for a ‘casual chat’, or ‘small talk’ in general, actually says the same thing twice: both the verb klönen and the verb schnacken are widely used in northern Germany and they both mean ‘to chat’. Combining two words that really mean the same to describe ‘small talk’ is a wonderful example of the northern Germans’ attitude towards redundancy.
Hummel Hummel
The phrase Hummel Hummel and its response Mors Mors derive from the story of historic Hamburg figure Hans Hummel and is popularly called the Hamburg Greeting. However, it has become less of a greeting and more of a shibboleth: whenever someone calls Hummel Hummel, they expect their addressee to reply with Mors Mors to identify as genuine Hamburgers.
Nowadays, the greeting can still be heard as a call-and-response in sports stadiums to cheer on the Hamburg teams, or during rock concerts when touring acts are trying to win over their audience. Visitors should not use this formula with strangers on the streets or they run the risk of irritated looks and revealing themselves as a bit of a tryhard.
Quiddje
This term of endearment in the Hamburg dialect of Low German describes anyone living in Hamburg who was not actually born there. Back in the day, merchants entering Hamburg to do their trades had to pass through the gates of the city wall and pay a fee. In return, they were given a ‘receipt’, which translates to Quittung in German. The word also survives in English legal terms, such as acquittal.
Digger
It may be particularly odd to anglophone ears that the young and the young at heart in the streets of Hamburg call each other Digger. This term is, in fact, full of appreciation and respect to the addressee and gained massively in popularity ever since Hamburg’s hip hop acts broke through into mainstream back in the 1990s.
Digger´s origins are highly debated. Some say it derives from the pastime of ‘crate digging’ at charity shops; while this was a popular pastime in the 1990s, it wasn’t exactly a Gen X invention. More likely, Digger is simply the northern German version of Dicker, itself a shortened version of dicker Freund (‘good friend’), literally ‘thick friend’.
Beer Styles
Ever been thirsty enough to drink up a whole river? In Hamburg you can quench your thirst drinking the Alster – which is not only the inner-city lake, but also the local name for a shandy mixed from Pilsner beer and lemonade. Anywhere in Germany outside the metropolitan region of Hamburg, however, this drink is referred to as Radler, which incidentally translates to ‘cyclist’s (beverage)’.
Another German beer staple is also named differently in Hamburg than anywhere else: the Bavarian wheat beer, or Weißbier, which oddly translates to ‘white beer’. In Hamburg it is called what it actually is: an unfiltered beer made with yeast (Hefe) and wheat (Weizen) grains – and thus (Hefe-)Weizen.
Da nich für / Dafür nich
Northern Germans are not only known to be economical with words, but also very humble – and always happy to help. Exuberant gratefulness is therefore not often reciprocated with the standard German gern geschehen (‘you’re welcome’), but rather with a somewhat shy da nich für (or occasionally, dafür nich). Just see this as the Low German counterpart to the English ‘it’s nothing’ or the French de rien, meaning that this kind of friendly service is not even worth mentioning.
Muksch / krüüsch / plietsch
These more exotic (even for standard German-speaking northerners) expressions surviving from Low German are used to describe characteristics typical particularly of young Hamburgers. Northern German kids are said to be muksch (‘sulky’) and krüüsch (‘picky’) at times, but mostly, they are extraordinarily plietsch (‘clever’).
Tschüss
In Hamburg sagt man Tschüss (‘in Hamburg, they say tschüss’) – those are the words to a popular Hamburg folk song by Heidi Kabel. But what does Frau Kabel mean by that?
Tschüss is thought to have been derived from French adieu (‘goodbye’) – once more via Low German adjüüs. But whenever people in Hamburg bid anyone farewell – especially seafarers – in their hearts, they want them to come back soon. That’s why Heidi Kabel resumes her lyric Das heißt Auf Wiedersehen: Only in Hamburg, goodbye means ‘see you again soon’.