What does “Zwanni” mean in German money slang?

Gebrauchte Konsolenspiele kaufen und um den Preis feilschen

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B1 German listening practice · Standard German · Picked for people who know some

💡 Did you know?
Zwanni
German slang for a 20-euro note
'A twenty', the casual flea-market German word for €20

German flea-market and street talk has its own short money words. Zwanni is the casual German for a 20-euro note, like English “a twenty.” It belongs to a small family of money slang: Fünfi (€5), Zehni (€10), Hunni (€100), and Tausi (€1,000). Germans drop these into haggling, friend-group splits, and casual price talk; you wouldn’t see them in a contract.

In this clip, a man is buying used Game Boy cartridges at a flea market. The seller offers two for Zwanni (“twenty”), the buyer counters at zweiundzwanzig (“twenty-two”), and they shake on it. The whole back-and-forth is everyday German flea-market grammar, with Zwanni as the shorthand that signals “we’re being casual here.”

How common are the words?

How common are the words in this B1 German listening practice video?

91.4%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common German words
Most of the words in this video are common German words.

How common in written German

85.2%
Top 1,000
91.4%
Top 2,000
95.3%
Top 5,000

How common in spoken German

96.6%
Top 1,000
98.3%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000
👄 Words for talking
This video uses words people often say in German.

Harder words in this video

These words are harder than B1. Here is what they mean.

zwanni
3×
Not in top 5,000
Swiss German for twenty
zweiundzwanzig
3×
Not in top 5,000
twenty-two
kütt
1×
Not in top 5,000
kiss (imperative)
portable
1×
Not in top 5,000
portable
psp
1×
Not in top 5,000
(acronym) PSP — PlayStation Portable

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-DE 2011 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.

★Where you hear this
  • ▸In German flea markets (Flohmärkte) in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich
  • ▸In German used-car and online-classifieds talk (eBay Kleinanzeigen)
  • ▸In German gaming-collector YouTube and retro-game channels
  • ▸In German friend-group bill-splitting at Stammtisch and Biergartens
  • ▸In German hip-hop and rap lyrics about money (Bushido, Kontra K)

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