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> "Speak English. If you speak broken German, everyone assumes you are an idiot and behave that way towards you. When you talk English, everybody tries to impre

by wolfgke 10y ago

> "Speak English. If you speak broken German, everyone assumes you are an idiot and behave that way towards you. When you talk English, everybody tries to impress you." While there is some small element of truth in it, this only holds if you are new in Germany (and mostly because of politeness). If you live there for a longer time and don't work on your German, it will turn the other way round.

bitL 10y ago
Yes, this passive-aggressive approach from Germans is pretty common. Tolerating for a while and then forcing you to switch, and then putting you back into "idiot mode" as you both sound funny and can't express anything precisely (and don't even try to read legal documents, even Germans can't themselves). If Mark Twain couldn't learn it properly (read his story about the Museum of Curiosities in Heidelberg), how much chance do you stand? When you start studying German in depth, you are going to soon realize that it's an extremely illogical language despite initial appearances. There are so many idiomatic non-sensical ad-hoc rules, you'd have to learn an awful amount of exceptions that are used daily, you simply have little chance to catch up with the natives that consider them normal... Tja My advice - if you really want to move abroad, move to the US, much less issues overall and English is way simpler up to C2 level (which gets super hard) and you can get a recognition and make a bank way easier.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > Tolerating for a while and then forcing you to switch, and then putting you back into "idiot mode" as you both sound funny and can't express anything precisely That's not true. The typical German mentality is rather: They are/were willing to learn English to be able to communicate with you when you came. But now that you want to stay here for a longer time, you are expected you to learn German, too. So in other words: Some English speakers rather tend to confuse politeness (speaking English at the beginning to native English speakers when they are new to Germany) with acceptance (of having to speak in English to people that stay there for a longer time and are not willing to learn German).
  - vram22 10y ago
    Makes sense to me.
  - bitL 10y ago
    Obviously I was talking about people that achieved B2/C1 level of German but still couldn't "discuss Wittgenstein" with the natives, locking them out of proper interaction at their intelligence level, not about migrants that don't care about learning German at all.

by wolfgke 10y ago

bitL 10y ago

Yes, this passive-aggressive approach from Germans is pretty common. Tolerating for a while and then forcing you to switch, and then putting you back into "idiot mode" as you both sound funny and can't express anything precisely (and don't even try to read legal documents, even Germans can't themselves). If Mark Twain couldn't learn it properly (read his story about the Museum of Curiosities in Heidelberg), how much chance do you stand? When you start studying German in depth, you are going to soon realize that it's an extremely illogical language despite initial appearances. There are so many idiomatic non-sensical ad-hoc rules, you'd have to learn an awful amount of exceptions that are used daily, you simply have little chance to catch up with the natives that consider them normal... Tja My advice - if you really want to move abroad, move to the US, much less issues overall and English is way simpler up to C2 level (which gets super hard) and you can get a recognition and make a bank way easier.

wolfgke 10y ago
> Tolerating for a while and then forcing you to switch, and then putting you back into "idiot mode" as you both sound funny and can't express anything precisely That's not true. The typical German mentality is rather: They are/were willing to learn English to be able to communicate with you when you came. But now that you want to stay here for a longer time, you are expected you to learn German, too. So in other words: Some English speakers rather tend to confuse politeness (speaking English at the beginning to native English speakers when they are new to Germany) with acceptance (of having to speak in English to people that stay there for a longer time and are not willing to learn German).
- vram22 10y ago
  Makes sense to me.
- bitL 10y ago
  Obviously I was talking about people that achieved B2/C1 level of German but still couldn't "discuss Wittgenstein" with the natives, locking them out of proper interaction at their intelligence level, not about migrants that don't care about learning German at all.