Hello everyone,
And welcome to the first word of the day of 2026. Hooray.
I hope you had a great start into the new year and are ready for more German learning on YourDailyGerman than ever.
And today, we’ll start with something that’ll be absolutely and utterly useless for the next 12 months, because today, we’ll talk about
The Meaning of “Guten Rutsch”
Seriously, I originally wanted to get this out before the turn of the year but didn’t manage to finish it in time.
Anyway, so if you live in a German speaking country or you have some German coworkers or friends, you’ve probably heard the phrase Guten Rutsch quite a bit because it’s what Germans say to each other around the turn of the year. Or I should say BEFORE the turn of the year. Because if you say it one second past midnight on New Year’s Eve, it’s already super awkward.
Rutsch comes from the German verb rutschen which can mean to slide and to slip. We’ll talk about that in more detail in a lesson soon, where we’ll explore what type of sliding it is exactly and also explore the various prefix versions like ausrutschen which is a translation for to slip, abrutschen which also is a translation for to slip or rausrutschen which, again, is a translation for to slip.
Okay, no, I’m kidding. Rausrutschen means to slip out, so that’s different, I guess.
But yeah, more about that coming soon.
For today, the best visual image for rutschen is a kid on a playground slide. What the kid does is rutschen and the slide itself is called die Rutsche.
And that also kind of fits with what we mean when we say Guten Rutsch.
We basically wish the other person a good “slide” into the new year.
- “Guten Rutsch.”
“Dir auch, wir sehen uns im neuen Jahr.” - Literally:
“A good slide (to you)”
“To you too, we’ll see each other in the new year.”
And there’s also a variation with the same idea.
- Rutsch gut rein!
This quite literally means “slide in well!”.
And I have to say… guten Rutsch is kind of like Feierabend in that it’s a REALLY handy phrase and I really miss it in English.
As far as I’m aware (and please correct me if I’m wrong), in English you’d just say “Happy New Year” to someone if you say good bye to them on the 30th of December for instance.
And to me and my German brain, that feels kind of weird, because the new year is not there yet.
We basically make a clear distinction:
We generally only say “Happy New Year” when it’s already started. Though you can make it work in advance if you add something like “schon mal”. That basically marks it as “in advance”.
- Frohes Neues schon mal.
- Happy New Year (“already”).
But what really doesn’t work well is to say Guten Rutsch to someone after midnight, when the year has already started. Like… bro, what do you mean? We just did the rutschen. Is there another rutschen coming up?
Cool.
One comment about tone real quick and then we’ll wrap it up.
Guten Rutsch is a bit colloquial. You can totally say it to strangers in a store for example, but if you’re writing a somewhat formal email, it might be a bit out of place.
Then, you could use something with the more “neutral” sounding kommen.
- Kommen Sie gut ins neue Jahr.
- Have a good “transition” into the new year.
The German here doesn’t sound anywhere near as formal as the English translation though. It sounds positive, friendly and warm, but without that little colloquial spark of rutschen.
And that’s it for today.
Now you know what Guten Rutsch means exactly and why you absolutely won’t need it for the next 12 months. Because the year has already started.
Let me know if you have similar phrasing in your language, and of course if you have any questions about guten Rutsch or any of the phrases, just leave me a comment and I’ll clear things up.
And as I said, we’ll do a more detailed look at rutschen soon, so stay tuned.
For now, I wish you a frohes Neues Jahr mit viel Gesundheit, Liebe und Freude und wir sehen uns bald.
Bis dann!
Weirdly, I’m slapped with a paywall just for this article – all others seem to be fine. I’m a member, of course.
Whops, sorry! I added a new membership tier yesterday and accidentally marked the categories it applies to the wrong way. So now, this was marked as “needs the new membership”.
It should be fixed now, so you should have full view :)
Yep, works perfectly now :)
Hallo und frohes neues Jahr!
The tradition in the Bulgarian language is, that we don’t say almost anything before the 31st Dec, maybe a “Have a nice celebration” at most.
But right after the 00:00s of 01st Jan we say the equivalent of “Happy New Year” (Честита Нова година!) and a more colloquial “For many more years ahead!” (За много години!) when we first see/hear from someone in the new year.
My girlfriend just confirmed :) (Neja e ot Sofia)
My kids go to my mom’s house New Year’s Eve so my wife and I can celebrate late into the night and she has them bang pots and pots at midnight and my kids of termed Dec 31 as “Pots and Pans Day”, so they tell everyone to “have a good pots and pans day” lol.
Anyway in English we say “have a happy new year” as way of indicating future prior to the new year actually hitting. If someone just says “happy new year” the future longer phrase is implied, but I think it is more common to say “have a happy new year” where a german would say guten Rutsch
Ah nice, good to know that subtle distinction :)
As a long time viewer of the PBS broadcast of the Vienna New Year’s concert, I have always loved the “prosit Neujahr.” Is that an Austrian regionalism or what?
Great, as usual!
Hello everybody.
I would like to thank the people who have made it possible to obtain an sponsored scholarship.
I really appreciate your great support.
Thanks again.
Victor
Danke! Can’t wait to use them in about 12 months.
Also, how to say “can’t wait” idiomaticly? I don’t believe it is “I kann nicht mehr warten, dass…”.
I guess its “Ich freue mich sehr darauf, …”?
We don’t do “can’t wait” over here.
We form a line and then we wait.
And we’re all very very trained thanks to Deutsche Bahn.
Seriously though, I’d say the best choice is “Ich freue mich drauf”. “Ich kann es kaum erwarten es zu verwenden” is just a little bit too clunky to be an emotional idiom like that. Everybody is already bored when you’re just halfway through and the emotion of anticipation is gone.
Does “ich freue mich drauf” have the same kind of slightly sarcastic feeling of the English “can’t wait”?
Hmmm, no, not really. It feels pretty genuine, but we also don’t say it as often.
“ich freu mich!” without a “drauf” is more common, but that too does feel very genuine in my mind.
Thanks for the lesson, Emanuel. It’s not usual to wish someone a happy new year in advance in English either. Or, at least, that’s the case in Scotland, and we’re so keen on the whole new-year’s eve-celebration thing that we have a strange-sounding name for it: Hogmanay.
The exception is in the phrase ‘(We wish you a) Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year’, as commonly used in festive greetings cards. Once Christmas is past there’s no wishing anyone a happy anything (unless it’s using the sort of ‘in advance’ formulation that you mentioned) until 1 January rolls around.* I hadn’t thought about it before, but now it strikes me as odd that there’s this 26-to-31 December hiatus when wishing would seem weird (unless it’s wishing that one didn’t have to go back to school/work, or wishing we hadn’t eaten/drunk as much).
*There’s a question mark over how many days into January it’s proper to wish someone a happy new year. There’s no hard-and -fast rule. I suppose it probably becomes rather redundant by the second week in most circumstances.
That was super interesting! I hope English speakers of other regions weigh in too. I’m curious if it’s just Scotland or more general.
Also REALLY interesting point about how long it’s appropriate to use “Frohes Neues (Jahr)”. In my mind, a week is fine, though toward the end, I’d prefer the LONGER phrase (not just “Frohes Neues”) and maybe an added disclaimer “erstmal”, which kind of signals “let’s get this out of the way before we get to the real stuff”.
Even us Sassenachs (as I believe the Scots call the English) don’t say Happy New Year before 1st January (except in combination with Christmas greetings). My Mum always called the days from 26th to 31st the “Dog Days” We didn’t have a dog, I think it denoted a sense of anticlimax and dullness. Are there Hundtags in German?
Wow, we do have “Hundstage” and there is even a movie with that title, but they are in SUMMER because the sun is close to some star constellation called dog or something (and they’re usually very hot).
The time between Christmas and New Year’s is called “(Zeit) zwischen den Jahren” and I usually associate it with freedom, party and good mood. But that might just be me.
You’re really great at explaining things!
Danke :)!
Hallo,
Some 2026 typos:
“quite a because it’s what German say to each other” (quite a bit because it’s what Germans say to each other)
“talk about that in more details” (talk about that in greater detail)
“that’s also kind of fits what we mean when they say” (that also kind of fits with what we mean when we say)
Frohes Neues!!
Many thanks, really interesting and now, I only have to remember for 12 months!
That’s my new patented learning system called E-SRS. EXTREMELY Spaced Repetition System :)
Danke, Emanuel! Und frohes Neues Jahr!! (This is exactly the length of article about German that I manage!! )
Camille
*can manage
Kind of the same for me at the moment. My plan for this year is to post more often, but more focused. I’ll do longer lessons every now and then, but I really feel like having an article have like 2 key takeaways and not be a “compendium” as the older ones often are.
But in your plan for zippier lessons, please don’t stint on discussing the linguistic twists and turns! They make your material stand out from the rest, and feed the way I enjoy learning and using language. Es tut mir so leid wegen deiner fetten (!?) Erkältung. Momentan scheinen Sie überall verbreitet zu sein…
No worries, I just feel like having a more clearly defined topic. Word relations and finer points on usage are what’s interesting about the topic for me, so I pretty much only write when I find some story to tell in that area :).
Ja, mein Husten ist glaube ich verschleppt seit Herbst. Ich hoffe er kommt jetzt mal richtig raus.
Frohes Neues Jahr wünsche ich dir, lieber Emanuel. I hate to disagree with you, but the phrase “Guten Rutsch” comes actually from the Hebrew word “Rosh”, meaning “beginning”. But the Germans quickly converted it to Rutsch, and from then on, it was and will forever be “the slide” into the new year. I actually learned this from Dilyana Hunley of Germanskills.com.
Liebe Grüsse und gute Besserung von Malkah
Oh that’s very interesting. I didn’t know that.
It’s definitely possible considering how many Jiddish phrasings there are but DWDS does only call it “an option”, so they don’t present it as a fact.
But yeah, it would make a lot of sense. Or maybe some Germans heard it and didn’t even know what it meant in Hebrew and just assumed it was “Rutsch”.
You’re a star! I now understand how to use the phrase. You always explain things so well. Peter, Brisbane.
Danke, Emanuel. Hilfreich und vernünftig