4 ms·
I don't think that it's true that the experience listed is a complete given: I lived in a town outside Stuttgart when I was young and my mother had an extremely
by esrauch 3y ago
I don't think that it's true that the experience listed is a complete given: I lived in a town outside Stuttgart when I was young and my mother had an extremely hard time of it along the lines of the article, where despite spending a lot of time trying to learn German the local government officials would refuse to even slow down their speech or use simpler language constructs to effectively communicate with a new learner of German. They were basically hostile and uncooperative because she was an immigrant even though she was visibly trying.
Compared to when I lived in Zurich essentially all government officials were willing to even just entirely speak English after briefly suggesting we speak German and only rolling their eyes slightly that I wasn't competently able to. Navigating the system there as a "first year resident" was zero problem by comparison.
- dontupvoteme 3y agoI'm an American in a different (large) part of Germany (who also lived there before) and I had the opposite, I basically had to ask the foreigner office to speak German with me when i went early this year (they just defaulted to English to be inclusive - I'm not perfect in German but i can speak rapidly and clearly enough that it's never a bother). They were also largely non-German ethnically, but born and raised there, so maybe they had a larger degree of empathy. I'm rather pale myself though and am there as an engineer, so maybe there's some bias or racism built in that you experienced which I wouldn't know that much about :|
- proctrap 3y agoYeah government officials.. You don't wanna deal with them. Not even as a native german. Hasn't gotten better with the new refugees.
- prmoustache 3y ago> Compared to when I lived in Zurich essentially all government officials were willing to even just entirely speak English after briefly suggesting we speak German and only rolling their eyes slightly that I wasn't competently able to. Navigating the system there as a "first year resident" was zero problem by comparison. Switzerland has 4 official languages in a very small territory and even more dialects variations so there is that.
- vidanay 3y agoI once had a coworker who was from Switzerland, and his wife was from Lichtenstein. They told me their dialects are so different, that there are words and constructs that they each use that the other doesn't understand, even after being married for 10+ years.