New answers tagged colloquial
1
For the least troublesome experience, I would simply go with "Mineralwasser". You are -- rough guess -- about 50% likely to either be asked "mit oder ohne Kohlensäure?", or by default just given sparkling water.
If asked "mit oder ohne", tell them "mit". Done.
There is an additional thing to watch out for, which is Tafelwasser. No, Tafelwasser is not tap ...
0
Since nobody mentioned it yet: If you only care about the carbonated part and not about the mineral part (i.e., if carbonated tap water is fine for you), you can just order Sodawasser.
If carbonated tap water is not available for some reason, the waiter will usually suggest carbonated mineral water instead, and you only have to agree.
Note: Duden describes ...
0
As different dialects abound in Germany (making communications difficult) as as they tend to often be quite different form one-another the first advice would be to stick to Hochdeutsch. There it becomes a matter then of saying "Ich möchte bitte Sprudelwasser". You might also just ask for water "Ich möchte bitte Wasser" and might then be asked "mit oder ohne ...
2
If you just want to be understood you might also say
(Wasser) mit Zisch
Kribbelwasser
Brizzelwasser
nervöses Wasser
bitte (in) sprudelig
and so on. Those words are more or less figurative, and any good German speaker should understand them. (Sorry to say that the service personnel in restaurants and bars quite often are not good German speakers.) Those ...
9
I'm from Germany and while I guess most people would understand "Wasser mit Gas", it definitely sounds very odd to a native German speaking person.
Actually, water with gas is the default in Germany. I myself usually just order "ein Wasser bitte". 99.99% of the time it will default to water with gas or you will be asked whether you want it with gas ("mit ...
1
To add one observation:
Mineralwasser will get you a sparkling water in almost all cases, but some waiters will not double check with you and might give you a flat water. I suppose that this is a regional quirk. I'm from the western region but the waiter/waitress might be socialized anywhere, so I can only guess why Mineralwasser sometimes didn't give me ...
10
Collection of regional usage
For sparkling water there are various terms in German, and the common use in everyday life varies considerably in the various regions of the German speaking part of the world.
Therefore I offer here a community Wiki to collect the popular usage.
Think of how you would most shortly and clearly tell a waitress that you would ...
10
In Germany, sparkling water is pretty much ubiquitous. I personally dislike all sparkling beverages and I found out that if I just ordered water (Wasser) it would be sparkling water. I would almost go as far as saying that any order for simply water will get you sparkling water but that will probably be disproved by that one single restaurant sitting right ...
-3
"Ein Mineral, mit"
...followed by an eye contact (the waiter will be nodding while noting/entering) should be enough.
You already seem to have found out that Gas does not even clarify (and worse, sadly). Of course you can ask the manufacturer: "Wie kommt das Gas in die Flaschen?". This is gas in its physical sense. Also "Gas geben" is OK when it is about ...
7
For utmost brevity, you might say "mit", and hope to be understood, at least if asked "mit oder ohne?"
Otherwise, the other answers apply. Kohlensäure would be my first guess. Sprudel is well acceptable. The bottle I'm looking at right now says classic, which is not even German, but shows a trend which I wouldn't have guessed existed, if it wasn't mentioned ...
29
In Germany, Mineralwasser typically refers to carbonated sparkling water. Many people, including me, who were raised in Eastern Germany, would call all carbonated sparkling waters Selters, even though Selterswasser is a brand of a particular water from a mineral spring in the Taunus region.
If only water is mentioned, you can specify, whether it should be ...
0
Sparkling water is called "Wasser mit Gas", or "Wasser mit Kohlensäure". For normal water one says "stilles Wasser" whereby one could also say "unruhiges Wasser" for sparkling water, but nobody say this!
So I would use "Wasser mit Kohlensäure" for sparkling water in German.
25
There are so many ways to express this and so many degrees and notions of what makes a sparkling water sparkling. When I first used the term "mit Gas" in German it was a humorous copy of how to express it during the vacation I had before (Spanish- "con gas"). Maybe the term "mit Gas" generally was imported into German, because "Gas" is usaully not used for "...
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