Berlin speech is easier to learn than any other German variety in this series, because it is not really a separate vocabulary. It is standard German with about six consistent sound swaps and an attitude.
The sound swaps take an afternoon. The attitude takes longer, and matters more.
The six swaps
ick: ich. The single most recognisable feature. The emphatic form is icke, as in the local rhyme icke, dette, kieke mal.
wat: was. A Low German survival rather than a corruption, which is true of most of this list.
det / dette: das.
jut: gut. Berlin turns initial g into j with great consistency: janz for ganz, jehen for gehen, Jeld for Geld.
ooch: auch. And keene for keine, eene for eine.
nich: nicht, with the t gone.
Put them together and Das ist mir ganz egal becomes Dit is ma janz ejal, which looks impenetrable written down and is completely transparent once you know the rules.
There is also a famous case confusion, where dative and accusative swap places: hab ick dir jesehen where the standard wants dich. Berliners are entirely aware of it and use it deliberately.
The words that are actually different
die Schrippe: a bread roll. Berlin's own word, against the Brötchen of the north and the Semmel of the south. This is the single most useful item here, because you will want one every morning.
die Stulle: a sandwich, a slice of buttered bread with something on it. The word carries a whiff of packed lunches and building sites, affectionately.
die Bulette: a meatball or a flat beef patty. From the French boulette, arriving with the Huguenots who settled Berlin in the seventeenth century and left a surprising amount of vocabulary behind.
die Molle: a beer, specifically a glass of it.
der Kiez: the neighbourhood, in the strong sense of the few streets you actually live in. It has spread far beyond Berlin and started here.
der Späti: the late-night corner shop, an institution the city genuinely invented and one of the few pieces of Berlin vocabulary to have become nationally famous in the last twenty years.
The pastry situation
This is the one that catches everyone.
der Pfannkuchen: in Berlin, the jam-filled doughnut. Everywhere else in Germany that thing is called a Berliner, which Berliners find funny for obvious reasons.
der Eierkuchen: in Berlin, the flat pancake. Which is what everywhere else calls a Pfannkuchen.
So ordering a Pfannkuchen in Berlin and expecting a pancake produces a doughnut, and the confusion runs in both directions across the country all year.
The attitude, which is the actual subject
die Berliner Schnauze: literally the Berlin snout. Blunt, fast, mocking, and not hostile. A Berlin bus driver, market trader or bakery assistant may say something to you that in Munich would start an argument, and mean it as banter.
The rule is that it goes both ways. The Schnauze is not a hierarchy; it expects a reply. Visitors who take it as rudeness and go quiet have misread the exchange, and visitors who give as good as they get are usually delighted by what happens next.
Na?: the complete Berlin greeting, covered in the greetings article, and the purest expression of the same principle. Two letters, and it expects something back.
Why it is worth a fortnight
Because Berlin is where a very large share of people learning German actually end up, and because it is the German variety most likely to appear in music, television and comedy that you will want to follow.
And because it is genuinely easy. Compared to Swiss German or Bavarian, Berlinerisch is a set of rules, not a separate lexicon. Learn the rules and the rest decodes itself.
How to pick it up
Write down the sentence, not the sound swap. Ick = ich is trivial. Dit is ma janz ejal, said by the man at the Späti when I apologised for the exact change teaches you the register as well as the phonology.
Give Translate the whole line. Written Berlinerisch defeats word lookup and reconstructs easily from a sentence.
Then let repetition install the swaps. Six rules, applied constantly, and your ear does most of the work within a fortnight.
The short version
Learn the g to j rule and ick, wat, det, jut, ooch and nich. Learn Schrippe before your first breakfast and Späti before your first Sunday.
And when someone at a counter is short with you, answer back. That is what the exchange is for.
Heard something in Berlin that looked like German with the letters swapped? Put the line into Vokabulo. Free to start on iPhone and iPad. 🐻
