As per annual tradition, German dictionary publisher Langenscheidt has announced the youth word of the year at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Here’s what the kids are talking and messaging about these days.

“Aura” named German youth word of the year in 2024

An increasingly common occurrence, German kids and teenagers have chosen an English word with a slightly new take as their youth word of the year.

German publisher Langenscheidt announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair that the country’s 10 to 20-year-olds have chosen “Aura” as the winner for 2024. By the youth definition, “Aura” is not just an “air of” or “exuding” a certain characteristic, but distinctly a positive one or being someone who has done something good. Do enough good and you can expect to gather “aura points”.

The rediscovery of aura is said to be due to an article about Dutch footballer Virgil Van Dijk, published in the New York Times in 2020 and titled "Solutions Are Expensive. An Aura Is Priceless”. Aura joins “it’s giving”, “vibes” and the post-2020 definition of “aesthetic” in a growing list of Gen Alpha and Zelennial words which are reluctant to say exactly what they mean.

Jugendwort des Jahres runners up in 2024

Alongside “Aura”, “Schere” and "Talahon" were named runners-up in the annual vote. “Schere”, simply meaning “scissors” in German, is another word with a new youth meaning. Originating in the gaming world, young people in Germany now use “Schere” to communicate an admission of guilt or a confession.

Meaning “come here” in Arabic, “Talahon” has been popularised by young Germans with migrant backgrounds to describe themselves, and is specifically associated with boys who wear fake designer clothes, skinny jeans, laptop bags or bumbags and perform hyper-masculinity in TikTok videos.

Since “Talahon” has been used in this new way, it has also been adopted as a racist term to associate German boys with migrant backgrounds with anti-social behaviour and crime. 

In mid-October, Matthias Helferich, MP for the far-right, populist party AfD, which uses TikTok to target the attention of young people in Germany, held a speech in the Bundestag while wearing clothes associated with “Talahons” to call for Germans with migrant backgrounds to be deported en masse.

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