5 ms·

While it's true that people that want to understand you would understand you, even if you speak wrong, it's not something "not to worry about". Using the wrong

While it's true that people that want to understand you would understand you, even if you speak wrong, it's not something "not to worry about". Using the wrong gender or articles quickly gives a hint that you are some lowly educated factory worker living in Germany for 20 years and not caring to learn the language.

mk89 8y ago
I agree. Probably it's good to know that it doesn't matter, just so that you feel less fearful and tend to speak more, even wrong....
- wolfgke 8y ago
  > Probably it's good to know that it doesn't matter, just so that you feel less fearful and tend to speak more, even wrong.... Native German speaker here: I disagree with all the sentiment of "less fear". Better concentrate on your ability to formulate grammatically correct sentences. In school, I often felt that the German grammar works somewhat like a mathematical proof system (and asked myself why German grammar is not part of math classes). When studying mathematics, you first have to learn to write correct proofs. It makes no sense to try learn something more deep in mathematics if you have difficulties writing elementary proofs. For German, it is the same: first learn the internal structure (grammar) of the language (just like predicate logic in mathematics) and just like thinking how to express something that you want to prove in predicate logic, find out how to formulate something in German's grammatical structure. Only after this elementary step, you can begin with more complicated things.
  - FabHK 8y ago
    Funny thing though is that most native speakers (of any language) generally don't know the grammar explicitly. They know it implicitly insofar as they speak correctly, but they'll generally be hard pressed to explain why they say things the way they say them.
jlangenauer 8y ago
Yes, but I find that you fill in the blanks as you use and are exposed to German.
pluma 8y ago
That's true but I'd say it's less about appearing lowly educated than about reinforcing your foreign-ness. A lot of Germans are to varying degrees prejudiced against foreigners, especially if you're brown or can be read as Turkish/Arabic or Eastern European. If you pass as white European you're more likely to be read as educated but still learning the language whereas otherwise your language problems are more likely to be attributed to a general lack of intelligence and education. I'm not saying all Germans think this but there are certain cultural clichés around uneducated "southerners" (generally Italy, Greece, Turkey but also Arabs and everything West of France) and Eastern Europeans speaking broken German the same way Americans have stereotypes about people speaking AAVE. In other words broken German has a cultural stigma but depending on how you are read you may be less impacted by it. If your career is going to involve speaking German a lot, it's probably advantageous to speak it well.
- pasabagi 8y ago
  It's also sometimes fun to play with this kind of prejudice: I'm from the UK, but if I'm having a bad language day, a bad hair day, or I'm wearing my work clothes, I get some people being very unfriendly, often rude, because I'm clearly Eastern European. As soon as it comes up that I'm from the UK, the reactions totally change.
- ascar 8y ago
  It also shifts with time. 30 years back the prejudice would have been flipped. As a white immigrant you would've probably been a low educated russian or polish worker, while with a taint you would've been Italian and much more respected. It's the general bad practice of putting individuals into larger groups with a stigma based on visual appearance. I think a lot of the resentment about bad German skills in my generation (80s/90s) comes from 10+ year residents and 2nd generation immigrants not capable of speaking our language correctly.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacobush 8y ago
graup 8y ago
I agree. People will understand you, but they will also judge you. In my experience, Germans are much more ready to notice "wrong German" than English speakers do with "wrong English". This is just a sad fact. My aunt, an American who has lived in German-speaking countries for 10+ years and can say almost everything she'd want to tells me she still gets treated less seriously because of subtle mistakes like that in her speech.
- madez 8y ago
  My experience is that after some time and level of proficiency in a language, some just stop learning and caring. I think that is a pity because I believe that with revisiting the rules in interesting exercises one can fix the mistakes even later. It may help your Aunt to learn German (again) with beginners books. There are good self-learner books with interesting exercises. They are less than 20€ per level and if you are already good, it should be easy to do multiple pages per hour. It would be important for a native speaker to check the answers, though. And also the solutions should be crosschecked with the books solutions, if there are any, because many Germans don't know all the rules correctly. If in doubt, just stick with the book.
- objektif 8y ago
  Why do you think Americans judge less or do not judge?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pelasaco 8y ago
not true, unless you are racist. Some words change their gender depending on the region. Like Radio, Cola, Butter, Bretzel, Kaugummi etc.. they are called "Substantiven mit schwankendem Genus"

mk89 8y ago

I agree. Probably it's good to know that it doesn't matter, just so that you feel less fearful and tend to speak more, even wrong....

wolfgke 8y ago
> Probably it's good to know that it doesn't matter, just so that you feel less fearful and tend to speak more, even wrong.... Native German speaker here: I disagree with all the sentiment of "less fear". Better concentrate on your ability to formulate grammatically correct sentences. In school, I often felt that the German grammar works somewhat like a mathematical proof system (and asked myself why German grammar is not part of math classes). When studying mathematics, you first have to learn to write correct proofs. It makes no sense to try learn something more deep in mathematics if you have difficulties writing elementary proofs. For German, it is the same: first learn the internal structure (grammar) of the language (just like predicate logic in mathematics) and just like thinking how to express something that you want to prove in predicate logic, find out how to formulate something in German's grammatical structure. Only after this elementary step, you can begin with more complicated things.
- FabHK 8y ago
  Funny thing though is that most native speakers (of any language) generally don't know the grammar explicitly. They know it implicitly insofar as they speak correctly, but they'll generally be hard pressed to explain why they say things the way they say them.

jlangenauer 8y ago

Yes, but I find that you fill in the blanks as you use and are exposed to German.

pluma 8y ago

That's true but I'd say it's less about appearing lowly educated than about reinforcing your foreign-ness. A lot of Germans are to varying degrees prejudiced against foreigners, especially if you're brown or can be read as Turkish/Arabic or Eastern European. If you pass as white European you're more likely to be read as educated but still learning the language whereas otherwise your language problems are more likely to be attributed to a general lack of intelligence and education. I'm not saying all Germans think this but there are certain cultural clichés around uneducated "southerners" (generally Italy, Greece, Turkey but also Arabs and everything West of France) and Eastern Europeans speaking broken German the same way Americans have stereotypes about people speaking AAVE. In other words broken German has a cultural stigma but depending on how you are read you may be less impacted by it. If your career is going to involve speaking German a lot, it's probably advantageous to speak it well.

pasabagi 8y ago
It's also sometimes fun to play with this kind of prejudice: I'm from the UK, but if I'm having a bad language day, a bad hair day, or I'm wearing my work clothes, I get some people being very unfriendly, often rude, because I'm clearly Eastern European. As soon as it comes up that I'm from the UK, the reactions totally change.
ascar 8y ago
It also shifts with time. 30 years back the prejudice would have been flipped. As a white immigrant you would've probably been a low educated russian or polish worker, while with a taint you would've been Italian and much more respected. It's the general bad practice of putting individuals into larger groups with a stigma based on visual appearance. I think a lot of the resentment about bad German skills in my generation (80s/90s) comes from 10+ year residents and 2nd generation immigrants not capable of speaking our language correctly.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jacobush 8y ago

graup 8y ago

I agree. People will understand you, but they will also judge you. In my experience, Germans are much more ready to notice "wrong German" than English speakers do with "wrong English". This is just a sad fact. My aunt, an American who has lived in German-speaking countries for 10+ years and can say almost everything she'd want to tells me she still gets treated less seriously because of subtle mistakes like that in her speech.

madez 8y ago
My experience is that after some time and level of proficiency in a language, some just stop learning and caring. I think that is a pity because I believe that with revisiting the rules in interesting exercises one can fix the mistakes even later. It may help your Aunt to learn German (again) with beginners books. There are good self-learner books with interesting exercises. They are less than 20€ per level and if you are already good, it should be easy to do multiple pages per hour. It would be important for a native speaker to check the answers, though. And also the solutions should be crosschecked with the books solutions, if there are any, because many Germans don't know all the rules correctly. If in doubt, just stick with the book.
objektif 8y ago
Why do you think Americans judge less or do not judge?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

pelasaco 8y ago

not true, unless you are racist. Some words change their gender depending on the region. Like Radio, Cola, Butter, Bretzel, Kaugummi etc.. they are called "Substantiven mit schwankendem Genus"