Saying hi courtesy of Aidan Jones (Flickr)

We all know that learning another language is hard work. Even after over twelve years getting to grips with German, I still hear myself make the odd mistake – infuriatingly often in the very simple territory that I was supposed to have conquered many years back. Nevertheless, after having lived here for a while, simple things like greetings and pleasantries usually just roll off the tongue without requiring too much effort – “Guten Tag” and “Wie geht es Ihnen?” and so forth.

In fact, I’m even well enough integrated to use local Northern German dialect greetings like “Tach!” and “Moin moin”. The problem with doing so, however, is that people take you for a native and start to talk to you as if you were one; so when I first started saying “Moin!”, friends in Hamburg started saying “Moin, na?” back and then looking at me expectantly, like I was supposed to reply with something quite definite. Yet precisely what I was supposed to reply eluded me completely.

“Wie geht’s?” for example, has a clear answer: “Gut, danke, und dir?” It’s the friendly “How are you doing?/ I’m fine”-thing that they teach you early on. “Na?” as a greeting, however, is something you will not find in any textbook: believe me, because I went looking.

Indeed, in dictionaries and so forth, you will find “Na?” as meaning “well?” or “so?” – i.e. it’s an interrogative particle. In standard German, it often indicates interest, speculation, even accusation, as in the following examples:

Interest: “Na, was ist denn daraus geworden?” – “So, tell me, what became of it after all?”

Speculation: “Na, da hast du wohl nur staunen können, oder?” – “Well, I bet you were gobsmacked!”

Accusation: “Na, bist du schön anständig geblieben?” – “Well then, have you been behaving yourself…?” (with the ironic implication that the speaker thinks you probably haven’t…)

Armed with this knowledge, things started to get clearer after I overheard a “Na, wie geht’s?”, which would clearly be an indication of interest: “Tell me, how are you?”. A true Eureka moment! So, I thought, “Na?” is just a shortened question as to one’s wellbeing, a bit like the English “Y’aright?” from “Are you alright?” or the French “Ça va?” from “Comment ça va?”.

Under those circumstances, you would think, the quandary as to what to answer becomes distinctly less worrying: confronted with a “Na?”, you simply reply “Mir geht’s gut danke, und dir?”

Well, if that’s what you think, you’d be wrong. Wrong because, when I used this answer, people looked at me slightly oddly. The conversation staggered for a second, quickly recovering equilibrium, but nonetheless being somewhat wrong-footed.

Grüßen kommt gut an: It's always nice to say hello

So I kept on listening out for “Na?” situations, making a mental note to remember the responses I heard. And after a couple of weeks of sitting in cafés, trains, friends’ living rooms comically holding out my ear until it was stretched and covered in broken capillaries, I worked out that there is only one acceptable answer to “Na?”: and that is “Na?”

It’s bizarre. Both sides ask each other “Na?” and straight after that, the conversation continues without further ado. Often it’s not even phrased as a question any more: “Na” says one, “Na” replies the other, sardonic and deadpan. Sometimes, you’ll hear it with really strong emphasis on the first half of the syllable, which can sometimes sound as if the person you’ve just come across doesn’t want to be friends with you anymore (although they do).

As I’ve recently found out, it’s not just me who’s phased by this. Like so much in the German language, “Na?” is a bit of a North-South thing, with people south of Hannover starting to have real difficulties with the concept. There would also appear to be an element of modishness in it – i.e. people who want to be cool say “Na?” to each other as a way of seeing whether the other person is in on the joke and replies with “Na”. Lots of Germans aren’t: there are internet forums where they ask other Germans what to reply.

I myself am quite used to it now, though. What I like about it is that it elegantly sidesteps the whole “Hello mate, how are you? I’m fine thanks”-thing without being impolite. Essentially, you’re saying: “I care about you enough to ask you how you’re doing, but I’m not really interested in the whole pass-the-time-of-day-conversation, so let’s just get down to business” – that’s quite a lot to pack into one syllable.

And, for learners of German, the best thing about it is: it is absolutely impossible to say it wrong.