All German word comparisons · Back to the topic overview
Meaning, sentence patterns and examples
| Word | Core meaning | Typical context | Grammar |
|---|---|---|---|
| hin | Toward a destination; thereward | Movement to another place | Adverb/separable particle: hingehen → geht hin; no governed noun case. |
| her | Toward here; toward the speaker | Approach and arrival at a viewpoint | Adverb/separable particle: herkommen → kommt her; no governed noun case. |
hin
Meaning and usage: Hin often directs attention to where someone is going. The destination may be stated or already known. In “Wo gehst du hin?”, the speaker asks about that destination. This is the conversational equivalent of “Wohin gehst du?” rather than a question about where the person currently is.
Grammar: Adverb or separable verb particle; uninflected. Hingehen separates in a main clause: Sie geht hin; zu-infinitive: hinzugehen; perfect: ist hingegangen. A following location phrase supplies its own preposition and case; hin does not itself take a noun object.
Wo gehst du nach dem Kurs hin?
Where are you going after the course?
Der Laden ist gleich um die Ecke. Ich gehe kurz hin.
The shop is just around the corner. I will go there briefly.
her
Meaning and usage: Her brings the movement toward the person speaking or another contextually established reference point. If you are standing in the kitchen, “Komm her” asks someone to approach you. Viewpoint also operates in narration; it does not always mean the author’s physical position.
Grammar: Adverb or separable verb particle; uninflected. Herkommen separates: Sie kommt her; zu-infinitive: herzukommen; perfect: ist hergekommen. Her also appears in non-directional constructions, including time expressions: Das ist lange her means that was a long time ago.
Komm bitte kurz her; ich möchte dir etwas zeigen.
Please come over here for a moment; I want to show you something.
Wie bist du heute hergekommen?
How did you get here today?
Overlap and context
The contrast becomes clearer in longer forms: dorthin directs movement to there, while hierher directs it to here. A destination can be the focus even when it is not physically far away. These are viewpoint words, not distance measurements. Also learn fixed expressions as units: hin und her can describe back-and-forth movement, and her in a time expression no longer describes physical approach.
Common mistakes
- Do not use a static location word when you mean a destination: hier describes here, while hierher explicitly means to here.
- Keep separable particles at the end of an ordinary main clause: Ich gehe hin, not Ich hingehe.
- Do not force the movement rule onto Das ist lange her; that expression concerns elapsed time.
Memory aid: Imagine a reference point labelled “here”: hin heads toward somewhere else, and her comes toward that point.
Try it
You are standing beside your desk and want a colleague to approach you. Choose: “Komm bitte ___.”
Show the answer
her
The movement is toward your current position. Hin would point toward a destination treated as away from this reference point.