Prices are a very familiar topic in daily communication. Different countries have different currencies. Today's article introduces currency, and how to ask about and state prices in German.

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1. Currency in Germany

• In Germany there are 2 kinds: banknotes (Euro) and coins (Cent).

• The Euro is symbolized as €.

• Euro banknotes come in the denominations 5€, 10€, 20€, 50€, 100€ and 500€.

• German coins come in the following denominations: 1 cent, 2 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, 20 cent, 50 cent, 1€, and 2€, where 1€ equals 100 cent.

2. How to ask and state prices in German

When you want to ask and answer about prices in German, you can use these sentence patterns:

• Was kosten/kostet....?

• Wie viel kosten/kostet....?

→ Es/das/...…kosten/kostet.....

• Was machen/macht....?

• Wie viel machen/macht....?

→ Es/das/…machen/macht.....

• Wie teuer sind/ist….?

→ Es/das/…sind/ist…....

Was kostet diese Hose? (How much do these trousers cost?)

→ Sie kostet 5€. (It costs 5 euros.)

3. How to read prices in German

a. Short way of reading

• We read only the Euro part, then pause for a beat and read the Cent part.

1.20€ – eins zwanzig

5.70€ – fünf siebzig

***Note: This way of reading is usually used when the cent part is a 2-digit number.

b. Full way of reading

• We read the Euro unit, and if we want, we can also read the Cent unit.

3.17€ – drei Euro siebzehn (Cent)

7€ – sieben Euro

23.63€ – dreiundzwanzig Euro dreiundsechzig (Cent)

***Note: This way of reading can be used in every case. In particular, there are some cases where it must be used:

• When the price is a round number of Euros: 8€ – acht Euro

• When the number of cents is 10 or less: 50.04€ – fünfzig Euro und vier Cent

c. Reading in slang

• 0.30€ – 3 Groschen

• 10 Cent – ein Groschen

• 50€ – ‘n Fuffi (slang, commonly used in Berlin)

• 100€ – ‘n Hunni (slang, commonly used in Berlin)

• 3000€ – drei Riesen (slang)

• 1,000,000€ – eine Mille (slang)