What does “Fähre” mean in German?

Wir fahren mit der Fähre

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A1 German listening practice · Standard German · Curated for beginners

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die Fähre
German transport word-building
“ferry” — literally “the thing that carries you across and back”

Die Fähre is a ferry, and the clip’s own definition is the simplest way to remember it: ein Schiff, was hin und zurückfährt — “a ship that goes there and back.” The word shares its root with fahren (“to travel, to drive”), the same verb behind Fahrrad (bicycle), Fahrkarte (ticket), and Autofahrer (driver) — once you know fahren, a whole cluster of everyday nouns unlocks with it.

German builds transport vocabulary this way constantly: take a verb of motion and turn it into “the thing that does the motion” or “the thing used for it.” Fähre, Fahrer (driver), and Gefährt (vehicle, more formal/literary) all come from the same fahren family.

Vocabulary frequency

How common is the vocabulary in this A1 German listening practice listening practice?

95.2%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common German words
Based on this reel’s transcript, most of the vocabulary is high-frequency, everyday German.

General German frequency

82.5%
Top 1,000
95.2%
Top 2,000
95.2%
Top 5,000

Spoken German frequency

100%
Top 1,000
100%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000

Words above this video’s level

Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s A1 level.

zurückfährt
1×
Rare / outside top 5,000
kappe
1×
Rare / outside top 5,000
cap; lid
fähre
2×
Rare / outside top 5,000
ferry
schiff
7×
Top 2,000Common in speech
ship; boat
sonne
1×
Top 2,000Common in speech
sun

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-DE 2011 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.

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