The only phrase you need in German

Learning a foreign language can be a challenge for many people (and in my experience, some people seem to have found learning even their own language quite a challenge), so it's always useful if you can bypass all the grammar and vocabulary, and just learn a few set phrases to help out in the most common situations.

The problem with this in my view is that, even if you can ask where the train station is, or order two beers in a pub, or ask how the ticket machine works once you get to the train station (the ones at Cologne-Bonn airport confuse even Germans from other parts of Germany), you're very unlikely to be able to make sense of the answer unless the person you're speaking to is very helpful indeed (and, possibly, speaks English themselves - which, admittedly, is not uncommon in German cities).

So, I wanted to find a phrase which would work in almost any situation, without getting you into further trouble by not understanding what gets said back to you.

I came up with "Ich habe keine Ahnung".

That's pronounced (for a fairly standard English speaker):

• "Ich" with the "ch" as in a Scottish "loch". If you don't know how to say "loch" then just trying to say "ih" with a good emphasis on the "h" is probably good enough.
• "habe", said pretty much like "harbour" but without any final "r" sound (depending on how you say "harbour"). Rhyming exactly with "barber" is good.
• "keine", where the "ei" is how you say the name of the letter "i", and the ending "e" is just a short "uh" sound, or the sound of the "a" at the start of "annoy".
• "Ahnung" (there's no pronunciation significance to the capital letter - it's just a noun, and German puts a capital letter on all nouns), which is probably best described as "R-noong" where you say the name of the letter R, and make the "oo" as in "good" and not as in "food".

What it means is "I have no idea" or "I have no clue".

It can even be used as a response if someone asks you "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" ("Do you speak German?"). The answer may be a little confusing for them, but it'll almost certainly get the point across that there's no point in trying any other German vocabulary on you.

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