Timeline for How important is knowing German in Germany?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 11, 2018 at 8:03 | comment | added | Martin Bonner supports Monica | OTOH, my son's mother-out-law is in her 60's and speaks essentially no English at all (from East Berlin). Also, if you live in rural BW, you only need to get to A2 proficiency to beat many of the local tradesmen and government officials. | |
| Jul 29, 2016 at 17:38 | history | migrated | from travel.stackexchange.com (revisions) | ||
| Jul 29, 2016 at 11:41 | comment | added | Hilmar | @Graham: Your mileage may vary. I typically find it annoying when specifically US people find out that I'm German and try to talk German to me. Most Americans grossly overestimate their "fluency" and it comes across more like "look, how smart I am". I pulled my kids out of high school German class, since the teacher's German was terrible and a lot worse than the kids'. I think one should quickly converge to the language that works best in any given situation. Sometimes that is German but chances are it will English in the vast majority of cases. | |
| Jul 28, 2016 at 20:25 | comment | added | Tonny | @Graham I agree fully. I can speak reasonably well in German and understand most of what they are saying. But I won't try to write it. But for speaking you can do it by ear: if it sounds right it is usually close enough. And Germans in general are quite forgiving that a foreigner mangles the language a bit. They appreciate the effort you make. | |
| Jul 28, 2016 at 19:12 | comment | added | Graham | For practical purposes, sure - but you'll get a lot more good will if you make the effort. I found that German isn't a difficult language to learn the basics of, because at the basic level it tends to follow fairly straightforward rules. Learn the rules, and you've got enough to work with. The umpteen versions of "der/die/das" are kind of optional when actually talking! :) I also found that Germans are generally happy to use a "standard pronunciation" version of German instead of a local-accent version with foreigners, which is something that doesn't happen in English-speaking countries. | |
| Jul 28, 2016 at 16:21 | comment | added | Willeke | I agree for a short visit but for a longer period of stay you should at least learn to understand the language. (Which might be much easier than learning to speak it.) | |
| Jul 28, 2016 at 13:06 | history | answered | Trains and Planes | CC BY-SA 3.0 |