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Comment by SneakerXZ | Hacker News Reader

I am non-German living and working for a startup in Berlin and so far my biggest struggle is the language barrier. If you don't know German you will be fine in your work but outside you will feel as a stranger. You usually feel it when you go to a doctor, you shop for something more complex, you use services where you need to communicate or you go to government offices or when you look for a flat.

It is possible to learn German but it requires huge effort and dedication and not many people are capable of that.

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Bah. I came here with about ten words. The only verb I could conjugate on the day I arrived was erschrecken, a couple of months later I did well already.

The key, and I think this applies to any language, is not NOT BACK DOWN. Some things will be hugely painful, if you back down you just defer the pain. The Germans will want to be polite and helpful (and practise their own English), don't let them.

Some HNers will know about the Israeli language courses after the war, when Israel had a seven-digit number of immigrants, hardly any of which spoke modern Hebrew. Modern Hebrew is an invented language, BTW, so "hardly any" is not an exaggeration. The model that worked was three-week full-time courses where ONLY modern Hebrew was spoken. They didn't let anyone back down: Students went without food until they were able to order in a restaurant where the waiters were helpful but spoke no foreign languages (usually late on the first day).

> The key, and I think this applies to any language, is not NOT BACK DOWN. Some things will be hugely painful, if you back down you just defer the pain [...] don't let them

This is very stressful. Forcing an interlocutor to speak to you in their tongue when they know your language much better than you know theirs, is basically rude, and persistence with impoliteness is stress inducing for many people. I have personal experience of this in France where people would insist on speaking to me, stutteringly, in my native English when I speak perfect, fluent, French. Thus the OPs point about the language barrier being an issue, IMO is very valid.

I am not saying it is not possible and definitely total immersion helps and at some point you will learn the language but it is not easy to spend 9 hours at work where you speak English and after that go outside and immerse yourself to German for a few hours and do that every single day for at least a year.

> I am not saying it is not possible and definitely total immersion helps and at some point you will learn the language but it is not easy to spend 9 hours at work where you speak English

I'm pretty sure at work they understand German, too.

Yeah, that's the key. I studied in a Max Planck Institute in Germany. 80% of the students were international and spoke English, but I could always speak German to the remaining 20% and to faculty. Of course, we'd switch to English for technical discussion, but chit-chatting in German makes a difference.

Also, you can think in German at any time of the day.

> 80% of the students were international and spoke English, but I could always speak German to the remaining 20% and to faculty.

Even more: Of these 80% there are surely many that also would love to get better in German: Why not also agree to converse with them in German, too?

When I moved to Germany I got one native advice: "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 I were in Germany it held...

> "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.

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.

> 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).

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.

Makes sense to me.

I think the primary challenge to learning a new language in the early stages is confronting this self-consciousness.

It's good training in not worrying too much about what other people think of you. What's the harm really in someone thinking you're an idiot? You know it's not the case.

Swallowing your pride speeds up learning immensely. You can even have fun with it--people will see you as funny and non-threatening, which can actually translate to likability quite easily if you don't get a chip on your shoulder about it.

Exactly. Additionally I want to point out that this is what many English speakers expect from foreigners.

Generally good advice when getting to know someone new that you want to like you. That said, you can always speak German to people you know or people whose opinion don't matter.

My issue is having basically no accent (raised with German spoken around me), but the grammar and vocabulary of a ~2 year old. Makes for some really weird cognitive dissonance whenever I open my mouth to a German. I feel you on the "think you're an idiot" thing, definitely jives with my experience.

Out of interest, whats its like studying at a MPI?

There are many MPIs across Germany. So, each one would have its own experience.

i know i may not be representative, but i am still interested in your experience.

The faculty were all rather nice to the students, and since it wasn't in a university, the 50 or so international students were a pretty tightly-knit group of people. They pushed a lot to finish the Ph.D. in 3/3.5 years, which is nice. Having so many experts in a specific scientific discipline concentrated in one place is pretty impressive, too.

My heart was elsewhere the whole time, so I'm not the best person to ask :P Germany itself was enjoyable, and I've met some fairly friendly Germans in WGs. It rains a lot in some places. YMMV, good luck!

This depends on the company. Many Berlin tech companies have a very international staff, and English might be the only common language.

Pretty sure your boss is paying you to program, and your coworker to program — not you to learn German and your coworker to teach German.

At least a year? You sound like the kind of person who couldn't diet to lose a few kilos.

My wife needed a few weeks to be able to speak Norwegian on a conversational level, I didn't need much more than that for German (difficult to count exactly due to travelblah). Once you reach conversational level the rest of the way has a different quality — you'll need to learn more but you've conquered the cliff, the rest is a modest incline.

A lot of individuals just don't feel comfortable speaking a language before they know it well enough. I definitely have a lot of respect for people that can just pick up a few basics and manage to always get their point across. But I just couldn't do it. I'm the kind of person that rehearses what they'll say in the most mundane situations. I'm uncomfortable when the plan doesn't work out.

Recently I even got complimented by a McD employee for telling them my rather lengthy order flawlessly without any need for interruption, made my day ;-D

At some point I accepted that my English is terrible (I'm German) and I decided to not waste any more energy on being embarrassed. Lo and behold, that was were my English really started to improve because I used it much more and also more intuitively. Previously, I first constructed every sentence in my head before uttering it. That works to some extent but it prevents you from developing an intuitive understanding of the language. So my advice is: don't make your life harder than necessary, speak without thinking, you will make plenty of mistakes, but people will think you are cute. More generally, If you show your weakness in life, people usually react very positively.

So I'll risk the downvotes the parent got - massively, and say that he's got a point. You feel uncomfortable speaking the language at an early level? How.. horrible! Please do think about what you have written. Really. I don't even know what to say, it's just so silly.

Of course it's silly. As silly as being, say, shy is. Knowing that it doesn't stem from some rational evaluation or even realizing it hinders you is only the first step.

And btw I didn't downvote the parent. My point was mostly tangential rather than a counter argument.

> My wife needed a few weeks to be able to speak Norwegian on a conversational level, I didn't need much more than that for German (difficult to count exactly due to travelblah).

You guys must be both geniuses. Either that or those "learn X language in 14 days!" books actually work.

Can you elaborate on modern Hebrew being an "invented language"? This is the first time I have heard this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language#Revival

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_Hebrew_language

Just to add to that, "invented" might give the wrong idea. "Revival" is more accurate. It wasn't used in the day to day, and making it useful that way took some work. But it wasn't invented from nothing.

In particular, if you know modern Hebrew, you can mostly read the ancient Hebrew in the bible, which shows it is not truly a new language.

> Just to add to that, "invented" might give the wrong idea. "Revival" is more accurate.

To quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hebrew_language&o...

"The major result of the literary work of the Hebrew intellectuals along the 19th century was a lexical modernization of Hebrew. New words and expressions were adapted as neologisms from the large corpus of Hebrew writings since the Hebrew Bible, or borrowed from Arabic (mainly by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda) and older Aramaic and Latin. Many new words were either borrowed from or coined after European languages, especially English, Russian, German, and French."

In this sense "invented" is not completely wrong.

I'm British and I've been in Germany on and off since 2007. The first few years of learning the language were hard. I spent most of my time with German speakers, and after a few months they got tired of all speaking English for my benefit.

At first spending time in a foreign language environment is immensely tiring. I'd be ready for bed every night at 9:30 just from the mental exhaustion, but after a while things start to click.

To start with you start to get the gist of the conversations going around you. Then you'd start to participate, and finally you'd have a pretty good idea of what everyone is talking about and would be able to converse with everyone in a social environment.

My German is still full of mistakes, and my 5 year old speaks better grammatical German than I do, but people understand me, and that's enough for me.

That's very interesting! I don't think I've read about this process of learning a new language in such a specific way. It makes sense though.

I do have a question, if you don't mind my asking. When I arrived in the US from India, I learned very quickly that accent and voice intonation are very important for first impressions and learning an American accent with good intonation has greatly helped me both personally and professionally. So my question is: is it similar in Germany? I was curios to know whether this was just an American cultural thing or whether it was more universal.

I have a fairly good accent, but I also have a good ear for copying other people and impressions. My accent certainly isn't a typical British/American accent speaking German. The common mistakes are in pronouncing letters in an English way, rather than a German way.

That being said, intonation is relatively easy in German once you understand that all letters in German are always spoken in the same way, and always pronounced (no hidden letters), so once you have the grasp of the alphabet you can pretty much pronounce anything. In other words "Hochdeutsch" (high German) is fairly easy to get to grips with.

The hardest thing is German is the grammar. You simply have to learn the articles and tenses. Even Germans sometimes make mistakes with the articles (der, die, das, etc), which can change based on the tense, verb and base article.

For many English first language speakers, the lack of English grammar knowledge is a stumbling block to learning another language (it was in my case anyway).

One point to mention is that Germans seem to be particularly accommodating to my German language failures, impressed simply that I can converse in German. I am however white Caucasian and British. I'm not sure that same would apply if I was from Tunisia and black. In other words, I'm not sure if I have an observational bias. Other nationalities and cultures may have a vastly different experience to me.

I can't say anything about German culture, but I have an alternative hypothesis to your suggestion about American culture.

My experience, as a native speaker of US English, is that English speakers from India often fall into the category of "speak English fast and fluently, but with a strong accent that is hard for my US-trained ears to parse".

If someone with a strong accent speaks English slowly, I have time to adapt to the accent and figure out what they are saying; not so with someone who speaks quickly.

When talking with certain people from India (and Scotland), I am very tempted to just nod along instead of confessing, "I realize that you are speaking perfect English, but I have absolutely no idea what you are saying".

> I learned very quickly that accent and voice intonation are very important for first impressions and learning an American accent with good intonation has greatly helped me both personally and professionally. So my question is: is it similar in Germany?

First: There aren't many varieties of German (and you will probably want to learn "Hochdeutsch" (high German) which is the variation that is spoken in Hannover in its purest form) - yes there are varieties, but this is not a concern for most people learning German as a foreign language. So there simply isn't such an analogue to Indian English accent vs. American English accent in German for making first impression etc., since there is "mostly only Hochdeutsch".

As long as you have a correct pronounciation it is much more important to be really certain in the grammar (the German grammar has its ugly parts which even some low-educated Germans do wrong; so if you want to make an educated impression it is important to be very certain in the grammar) and have good vocabulary. If you really are able reach this level of German as a foreign speaker, I believe there will be hardly anyone who doubts your willingness to learn. :-)

Some resources that could be helpful:

http://www.howtogermany.com/ http://www.exberliner.com/ http://www.meetup.com/berlin-expats/

Guess one could get help and exchange info there. But I'm speaking without experience here.

Could you (and others here) give some experiences with the issues you mentioned? Doctor, shopping for something more complex etc. I can imagine it's difficult with governmental stuff, but for the others I assume there should be solutions. E.g. going to doctors in expat-heavy boroughs, going shopping in tourist-oriented areas etc. But I could be completely wrong. So please tell me about your (negative) experiences and the barriers /showstoppers.

You find solutions to these problems and you survive. You ask your HR to help you, you ask your acquaintances or friends to go somewhere with you or call somewhere for you and you start limiting your options only to places where they speak English based on sites where they gather English speaking places.

But at end of the day you limit your options because of your handicap and it decreases quality of your life.

Isn't that kind of expected? I mean, if you move to Shanghai I wouldn't expect you to live only speaking English. Or, if you apply to startup Chile, and decide to stay there, at some point I would expect you to learn Spanish. Learning any language takes time and effort and it's integral part of adapting to your host country culture and people. I would even say it's key for a successful relocation.

Indeed, but what I wanted to say this kind of article creates an impression Berlin is cool place with a startup scene where anyone can move and work there and a lot of people ignore their quality of life will decrease because they don't know the language.

I still don't get your point. I would expect someone moving to some other country to at least read about that place. If I was moving to China, because the startup scene was so good over there, I take for granted that at some point I will have to learn Chinese. It would be very, very naive to move to a country because you read somewhere that the startup scene is so cool somewhere and then realize they don't speak English at the grocery store where you get your croissants.

> It is possible to learn German but it requires huge effort and dedication and not many people are capable of that.

I'm a little bit surprised: Relocating for a job in a completely different country (with a different language, culture etc.) also requires huge effort and dedication in my opinion. Why were you capable of doing this step but claim that learning German is so hard? Yes, it takes a little bit more time, but I can't see the orders of magnitude difference in required effort and dedication.

I know a few Greeks who went to German language schools for a few months, when they arrived at Germany and they speak German really well. Yes not perfect, but fluent.

You cannot compare these. You relocate once and after that it is done. Learning a language is on going process that has a lot of phases and you need to do it continuously every single day.

I don't want complain how learning German is hard. I only wanted to mention something that nobody says when they talk about Berling being tech hub.

You don't have this issue in Silicon Valley. Your working language is also your life language.

> You cannot compare these. You relocate once and after that it is done. Learning a language is on going process that has a lot of phases and you need to do it continuously every single day.

Living and working in a foreign country with foreign language/culture is an ongoing process continuing every single day, too.

Is there anywhere else where learning the local language doesn't play the same role?

Netherlands should be better. But you still need to learn the language to get really integrated. Though there are people that've lived for 10+ years and don't know it there.

Scandinavian countries: 80 - 90% of them speak English.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/scandinavian/

http://www.thepolyglotdream.com/scandinavianenglish/

True, but you'll still not be completely integrated on a social level until you speak the native language.

Pretty much every young person in the western world speaks English, so I'd say anywhere where that is the local language.

Sorry, you are really deluding yourself here. Not even in Scandinavia or in the Netherlands - where literally everybody speaks good english - english alone is enough.

You will always feel alienated without the local language.

> "You will always feel alienated without the local language."

My experience throughout Europe is that people generally have enough knowledge of English that you can get through a 2 week holiday without knowing the language. But even during those two weeks you start to learn little things to make life a bit easier. I don't understand people who go to a foreign country and expect to live without learning the local language. It's hard work but not impossible and just seems arrogant.

You cannot compare holidays with actually living there. In your everyday life you have problems that you don't experience as a tourist or did you order a plumber to fix your pipes? Or did you buy a television that you had to return because it was not working correctly? Try to figure out these problems with your A1 German.

That was my point. Maybe I wasn't clear enough.

1. You may be able to do 2 weeks there without learning the language.

2. That doesn't mean you can live there without learning the language.

Unless I'm misreading the parent comment, he is saying that it is not as important in countries were English is the primary language, because most people moving there already know it as a second language and don't have to start from scratch?

How are you defining 'western world'? I live in Spain and, outside of the tourist resorts, very few people speak English.

As a French, I'm the only one who can speak/read English of my whole family (regardless of the age).

You will always be an outsider if you don't speak the local language.

Pretty much everywhere in the world english is a second language...

Most big Asian cities.

I can't imagine not learning the local language quickly if I lived in another country. To me it's part of the fun but it als shows respect. English speaking countries expect immigrants to speak English. So why would things be different anywhere else?

this. I think many German startups perceive it as hip to speak English (while 95℅ of the team speaks fluent if not natively German), and completely neglect the real world negative consequences this policy creates. IMHO the benefits are in most startup cases near none. First, for most German startups your market is German speaking, second almost any super English only speaking talent is going to be even more exited to work for you if you can offer them assimilation, valuable German language work experience, and give them access to all German society has to offer. This is especially true for any immigrant. Finally, in the long term some people might not care about participating in society, watching news, speaking to people without a stilted veil of a foreign accent, or bugging a friend to get a repairman to come to their house, but the vast majority will prefer to be treated as other Germans not as outsiders and be able to fully function in society.

I read somewhere (can't find the reference right now) that many German companies require everyone to speak English in the workplace because of pan-EU work policies. It's an interchange language that also allows citizens from Sweden & Italy etc to work with German speakers, since they all share solid English-as-a-second-language speaking skills. It isn't just limited to startups.

[That said, I absolutely believe immigrants should make every effort to learn the native language, it's why I've spent so long trying to learn German before attempting to move there.]

This is true - externally i.e. outside the 100 million+ people German speaking market. If you need to do business with Swedes, you will do this is English, same for most other EU member states. My point was specific to startups though, once you are a large established company with offices across Europe, English becomes much more beneficial.

Exactly. That was the main reason why I left Germany. If you want to stay, it should be your first priority to learn german.

isn't it normal? most of the world does not speak english as first language, especially in Europe, where each country, even the smallest, use its own language.

Yes, it is normal. I am just saying what is the biggest struggle of non-German worker of Berlin startup from my point of view that almost nobody takes into consideration when they talk about the Berlin startup scene.

An hour a week with a tutor can make a marked difference.

While living in Switzerland, I found that High German was not useful and so I would have to learn Swiss German to be able to order a coffee, understand commands in exercise class, &c. Swiss German is not in practice mutually intelligible with German and is for the most part an oral language, lacking online resources or even a standard orthography. Trying to learn from papers and linguistic studies was not working...so I got a tutor.

The combination of appropriate source material and targeted corrections made a huge difference in my progress and for a long time after returning to the states I was much more comfortable with Swiss German than High German.

>It is possible to learn German but it requires huge effort and dedication and not many people are capable of that.

Interesting. Wondering whether your native language is English. While mine is not, I'm pretty fluent in it. Why I am saying this, is because I've been learning German slowly for a few months now via the Duolingo app on mobile, and I did not find it (so far, anyway) to be very difficult. And that - not finding it difficult - surprised me a bit, because I had heard from friends in high school that they though German, for instance, was harder to learn than French (anecdote only, not data). I thought about the possible reasons for this (my not finding it too hard), and came up with one: since I know English, and German and English have some words and historical and cultural background in common, I could make educated guesses in many cases about the meanings of German words, before learning what they meant (because they were similar to English words meaning the same thing), and also in some other cases, after learning what the words meant, I could, with hindsight, relate them to English words meaning the same thing, just spelled a bit differently. This trick does not work for all words, of course, but does for enough of them, that it eases my learning. Also, I've developed a memory trick to associate new German words with known English words. It's not really anything new, just a form of association of the new word with a memorable (to me) English word or phrase, using what I think is called the memory palace method or something like that (I need to look up if that is the right one I mean).

> And that - not finding it difficult - surprised me a bit, because I had heard from friends in high school that they though German, for instance, was harder to learn than French (anecdote only, not data).

In my opinion (native German speaker) German is at the beginning harder than French for English native speakers. After you got to some level both languages are about equally hard.

For the reason: To become fluent in German you have to know inside out how to conjugate a verb (there are some ugly verbs and tenses) and declinate a noun/adjective (in all three grammatical genders, singular and plural) in all tenses/cases, which is really ugly at the beginning for people who aren't used to it. The best way to learn this is in my opinion brute training until you can do it blindfolded.

The reason why I emphasize this is that you will not be speaking fluently if you have to think for seconds each time what the correct conjugation/declination is for the verb that you want to speak now.

As soon you got over this ugly part (which, because it is ugly you better should be learning it directly at the beginning, so that you have it in you reflexes), German and French are in my opinion about equally hard.

Thanks for the advice, in general.

>For the reason: To become fluent in German you have to know inside out how to conjugate a verb (there are some ugly verbs and tenses) and declinate a noun/adjective (in all three grammatical genders, singular and plural) in all tenses/cases, which is really ugly at the beginning for people who aren't used to it. The best way to learn this is in my opinion brute training until you can do it blindfolded.

Like learning multiplication tables by repeating them out loud and/or writing them out, multiple (heh) times :)

I guess that makes sense, particularly if there are not very systematic rules that define those things, i.e. you just have to memorize it (and is that what you mean by 'ugly' - that it does not follow logical rules by which one can figure out, say, verb conjugations of verb B after knowing it for verb A?)

E.g. I realized a bit after starting the Duolingo course, that it was not clear (without knowing it already) when to use Der vs. Die vs. Das, and some other things like that; even Sie means both She and They (in different contexts) - at least it was not explained in the app, AFAIK - could be I missed some part of it and need to re-check.

I think I need to now get some proper learning books for it. Duolingo can take you only so far, I guess.

> I guess that makes sense, particularly if there are not very systematic rules that define those things

There are systematic rules for this, but you don't want to derive the result each time you want to express something. Compare it to applying a formalized multiplication algorithm each time you want to compute something from your multiplication table (up to 100) vs. memorizing the table. You have to understand the rules (just as you have to understand how multiplication works) for conjugating/declinating, but to apply them in practise you have to rote train them as often as you don't have to think about the rules anymore (because you really don't want hesitate for seconds what the correct, say, declination is).

Thanks again for the elaboration. I'm getting what you say, and that was sort of why I referred to learning multiplication tables by rote, above.

It's pretty late for me, so I will read and reply to your and @lorenzhs's (thanks to you too) comments again tomorrow, if I have anything further to say or ask. Good stuff.

"Sie" has multiple meanings: in addition to the two you mentioned it's also the form of "you" used for strangers/official stuff/... it's usually capitalized in that meaning, and always plural even when talking to only one person. Prepare for lots of confusing moments with the Sie-vs-Du question.

>"Sie" has multiple meanings: in addition to the two you mentioned it's also the form of "you" used for strangers/official stuff/

Ah, thanks. I remember now that a few days ago I subconsciously noticed this - or rather, had a doubt - because I thought I had seen "Sie" used for all the three meanings, but wasn't sure (they did not all occur in the same session of using the app). Thought I had got it wrong between the meanings She/You or She/They. Good to have it cleared up.

Interesting. Hindi has 3 words for "you": tu, tum and aap.

The first is for informal usage with familiar people, such as friends or relatives, the second for more formal usage, such as in business or with people you don't know from before, and the third is the more respectful one, such as for elders or superiors in business or people of official rank, such as a judge, priest, etc.

> it's usually capitalized in that meaning

Not only usually capitalized in that meaning, but always.

Not everyone does it, though. I mean technically yes, it's required grammatically, but it's one of those rules that isn't always obeyed. It's a mistake but common enough to be aware of it.

In my opinion there is a cultural difference here: While in English, as I see it as a foreigner, if many people spell something wrong, it becomes an accepted spelling, in German if lots of people spell something wrong, it is still considered as wrong. There are even websites for common spelling errors and wrongly used words which you can link to in internet discussions to convince someone that/how their spelling was wrong, such as

> http://www.das-dass.de/

> http://www.dassdas.com/

> http://seit-seid.dassdas.com/

> http://wie-als.dassdas.com/

> http://einzigste.dassdas.com/

> http://standart-standard.dassdas.com/

>The reason why I emphasize this is that you will not be speaking fluently if you have to think for seconds each time what the correct conjugation/declination is for the verb that you want to speak now.

Yes, makes sense.

Learning is easy if you're interested. Einstein's advice to his daughter was something along the lines that you should pursue your curiosities because that way you can learn anything effortlessly.

For me, learning English was effortless, and Mandarin is no longer difficult as I now have a goal and an interest in learning. On the other hand, I never properly learnt to program though I started with QBasic at the age of ten, because I had no clear goal for it. Likewise with French and Japanese, and German while I lived in Berlin - I never saw myself living in any of the three countries for a long time.

I think Duolingo helps a lot in learning because you don't need to plan out times to sit down with books to study, making it less of a chore and more a natural part of life. Learning in school is really no way to learn. For me its always been books, movies, and the internet.

Duolingo is good, but I'm not sure it's a great measure of understanding the language. I've been teaching myself German over the last 5 years using Duolingo (and LingQ) and I've completed all the German lessons (Level 23) - and while I can read German reasonably well now, I would still struggle to write or speak fluently in German. Thinking of what you want to say quickly is a skill that Duolingo doesn't really teach - but maybe that's where iTalki or LingQ Skype classes come in. [Native English speaker here, for what it's worth.]

>Duolingo is good, but I'm not sure it's a great measure of understanding the language.

On further thought, I agree. When I wrote what I wrote above, it was in the back of my mind, to also add that I don't think the rate of progress that Duolingo shows for me, can be even near correct. E.g. after these few months (which also had gaps of a few days now and then during which I did not use the app), it now tells me I am 14 or 15% fluent in German - which I don't think can be the case at all, even without knowing much about the structure of the language, the number and kinds of grammar rules, tenses, the number of words in the German vocabulary, etc.

(I'm probably much lower, maybe 1 or 2% is my guess, if such a thing can even be measured.)

Also, some of my school friends who said German was hard to learn - for others, were Germans (who also spoke good English), so they likely knew what they were saying.

>and while I can read German reasonably well now, I would still struggle to write or speak fluently in German.

Interesting. Will have to see what my experience is as time goes by.

>Thinking of what you want to say quickly is a skill that Duolingo doesn't really teach

Will check that as time goes by. Maybe immersion is more useful for that skill.

The 15% fluency could be accurate - another way to interpret that number is that you struggle to understand 85% of the language. (Even after completing the German lessons, Duolingo says I'm only 49% fluent.) Duolingo is still great though, because it keeps you practicing every day. I'm amazed at how much more I understand now compared to when I started. It's worth persevering!

> (Even after completing the German lessons, Duolingo says I'm only 49% fluent.)

Interesting. A sort of logarithmic scale maybe.

>Duolingo is still great though, because it keeps you practicing every day.

Agreed.

>I'm amazed at how much more I understand now compared to when I started. It's worth persevering!

Definitely worth. I'm enjoying it. Thanks for the info.

I've lived in Germany before, and my advice is to try to speak and listen to the language as much as you possibly can.

Don't know the word for something in German? Just throw in the English word and say the rest in German. Will the person you are talking to understand what you are saying? Sometimes they will and sometimes they won't. The point is to try to speak as much German as you possibly can.

I found it helpful to make a list of words I needed to say, but couldn't. Then I'd look them up and put them on flash cards until I learned them.

Pay attention to the words other people are using when they speak to you. Sometimes you'll catch on to what the word mean without having to look them up and other time you'll need to look them up. I learned so much just from listening to other people.

When you're speaking German (or any other language you're learning), you will make mistakes and you will feel like a fool. The most important part is to not let that stop you. Keep making mistakes and keep making stupid blunders, and learn from those mistakes. Anyone who isn't afraid to make mistakes and look stupid will learn a lot faster than someone who is.

I was talking to some German students who were recounting some particularly embarrassing language mistakes an American exchange student had made. They did think it was pretty funny, but they also really liked and respected him for trying really hard to speak German, even if he did make mistakes. This same student eventually ended up speaking very good German, and I'm pretty sure it was because he was willing to continue trying despite making lots of mistakes.

> It is possible to learn German but it requires huge effort and dedication and not many people are capable of that.

Actually I'm german and I think to learn every bits of our language takes a huge effort. I mean we maybe don't have so many Characters like the Chinese ones. But our huge rules of grammar and special word cases makes it ridicoulus. And then there is the "Neue deutsche Rechtschreibung", which of course some things were reversed in the last years.

Basically when just ignoring all those stuff you are probably understood by the most people here even if they will likely try to correct you but I guess except a few there aren't much people that really know how to correctly use the language as a whole.

> But our huge rules of grammar and special word cases makes it ridicoulus

I'm German but living in the US for the last few years. I've had American friends in Germany and from what I understand, most things are pretty "regular" compared to other languages. Not that many exceptions. People tell me that pronunciation is usually pretty straight forward compared to e.g. English. There are also some weird rules that I don't recall ever hearing before. e.g. everything ending in "-chen" or "-lein" uses "das" as an article.

Not sure if German learners can confirm/deny the learning complexity compared to other languages.

yeah the basic stuff. but when it comes to tenses, etc. Just look at job descriptions, even feminists don't care about our language.

Neue Rechtschreibung makes things simpler when learning the language. It's only hard to internalize the changes, but esier when learning from scratch. It brings spelling and pronunciation in line. For example, daß doesn't make any sense if you know that "ß" is preceded by a long vowel whereas "ss" (as n the new spelling, dass) is preceded by a short one.

Others have already noted that the other things you mentioned may not be as bad as they seem to you.

I was thinking how useful it would be to have some "bilingual districts" in at least the top EU cities - areas where you could expect everything to also work in English (including doctors, shops, schools, etc.).

For example, I'm considering relocating with my family from Rome and would prefer to stay in the EU, but the UK isn't an option anymore. I'm not planning to move permanently, so, being sure to be able to do everything (not just work) in a comfortable enough way without having to learn the local language would be great.

> I was thinking how useful it would be to have some "bilingual districts" in at least the top EU cities

There are many people who (in my opinion rightfully) complain that when English speaking people talk of "bilingual"/"multilingual" they nearly always mean "native language + English" instead of "native language + another common language". For example in the southwest of Germany many people will understand French, too. But you stated clearly that this is exactly not what you mean.

> I'm considering relocating with my family from Rome

Here also Italian + French or Italian + German would be a very natural combinations for a bilingual district in Rome or Italy (Austria, Switzerland and France border to Italy - thus these combinations would be very natural).

Yes we could also create N! districts, where N is the number of languages spoken in the EU...

On a more practical level, I and my wife already speak English fluently, I have two remote teams composed with people from three different nations with whom I speak English, and having to learn eg German would make me need to use 3 different languages (4 for my wife, who is Russian). Seriously, the only shot we have at a European lingua franca at the moment is English.

Well, maybe I'll just have to move to Ireland or Canada if I actually move.

> Seriously, the only shot we have at a European lingua franca at the moment is English.

If we look at the language knowledge in the EU

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...

51% knowledge for English is far from a lingua franca in Europe. At least German (32%) and French (26%) are also very common to know. In this sense you shouldn't think that there is some European lingua franca, but rather a small set of languages which has the property that if you know them, the probability is high that you will be understood.

As a matter of fact I wrote that English is our only shot (= hope) to have a lingua franca. If it has to be two separate languages... that means you just don't want a lingua franca. Which of course is perfectly legitimate, but I look forward to a future where my daughter will be able to work and live in any EU country without having to learn dozens of languages.

> ...I look forward to a future where my daughter will be able to work and live in any EU country without having to learn dozens of languages.

But that is already true. Learn German, French, maybe Russian or English -- and you can speak with a lot of people.

Can I ask where you are from and how long you have been there? Are language classes not an option with the amount of work involved with the with working at a start up there?

That is crazy, I like in SEA and I've never felt not knowing the local language is an issue. Especially for the things you mention: doctor, flat and government stuff.

Germany have always been a stickler for dubbing things though, maybe they don't put as much effort into it.

> Germany have always been a stickler for dubbing things though, maybe they don't put as much effort into it.

There are hardly any countries that put more effort into dubbing foreign movies than Germany, but in this points Germans are perfectionists: If a dubbing doesn't use all the possible nuances that the German language allows for the best possible translation, people will complain. I've read (can't give source, it was many years ago) that among computer translations for pairs of "popular" Western language pairs, the pair "English -> German" is among the most difficult to handle. In my humble opinion this is because German is very exact in its wordings and allows to express lots of subtleties by its very free ordering of clauses. This makes it necessary to read additional things into the original text, which computers have difficulties with.

There are even people who say that the German dubbing of some American movies is yet better than the English original.

A bit of a digression, but...I strongly dislike dubbing and simply cannot enjoy a dubbed drama or film.

First, you have the distracting mismatch between the actor's mouth movements and the dubbed dialogue.

Second, the way an actor speaks in their native language is an intrinsic part of their performance. A dubbed performance will be different, but can never match the original (unless we're talking about a poorly acted, poor quality production).

To give an example, the Scandinavian series The Bridge has won great praise for the performance of its lead (Sofia Helin). This has been a big international hit (in the UK it was shown subtitled). Can a dubbing actor really ever inhabit a character in the same way as the original performer? (Don't forget the dubbing actor also sits in a room performing the dub, not on location like the original actors).

There is one scenario where I understand dubbing is necessary: children's films. But even here, you can notice a difference. When Disney dubbed the Japanese animated movie Spirited Away, they did a very good job with the American voice actors. However, if you listen to the original Japanese soundtrack, you come away with a different impression of the film because the Japanese language has a very different tone and inflection to English.

> I strongly dislike dubbing and simply cannot enjoy a dubbed drama or film.

The problem is that often the original screenplay contains cultural references that are not known in the audience that the dubbing is made for. So you have to replace the cultural references by ones that are understood by them. The same holds for puns, word plays, songs etc. These have to be rewritten.

In this sense a dubbing (at least in Germany) is much more than a rough translation of the original spoken text, but often a reinterpretation. Thus I wrote that there are even people who say that the German dubbing of some American movies is yet better than the English original, since the translators are even more creative in the wordings than the original screenplay writers.

To give one example: In Finding Nemo, the German names of the two sharks (besides Bruce) are Hammer (hammer) and Hart (hard) (in the English original they are "Anchor" and "Chum"). Now you have to know that in German "Ich bin voll der Hammer" ("I am full the hammer") is a very plebby way of saying "I'm the greatest". If you now keep in mind that Hammer and Art were dubbed by some German comedians which have a very turkish-plebby image you will understand why the German dubbing of these scenes is much more funny in German than in the English original.

Also, the combination "hammerhart" is a colloquial word, maybe comparable to "smashing" (as in, great) in English. Those two names are just a great pun.

I have only ever seen animated films/series where things like that occurred (which isn't dubbing as someone else pointed out).

When it comes to live action movies, I stopped watching dubbed versions a long time ago, at least in situations where I'm not watching together with people who don't understand English that well.

I cannot enjoy dubbed films as much as originals for a number of reasons. First of all the voice actors rarely match the tone/behaviour of the original actor very well, which detracts from the experience.

Then there's the problem that there actually aren't all that many voice actors in major productions so I tend to instantly recognize the voice actors (or at least recognize that I have heard that voice many time before) within seconds. Finally I just don't think most dubs are very good - they feel forced, cold, detached, often times like the voice actor was bored; you just notice that they were recorded in a studio and not on the actual set.

It bothers me enough that if say, Amazon Prime Video only has the dubbed version and not the original of a movie I was going to watch, I'll just watch something else instead.

Edit: In case it wasn't obvious, German native speaker here

Yeah, no. German dubs are absolutely terrible. And I'm saying that as a native speaker.

As a native German speaker too, I still hold by my claim that dubs for most other languages than German are worse.

It's not dubbing when it's an animation. Then it's simply a different voice track. The 3D models don't have a voice.

I'm not disagreeing, but it can still be annoying because the voice does not match the 3D models mouth movement.

I have a strong dislike towards dubbed versions where I'm capable of understanding the original. I've only seen the dubbed (German) version of The Bridge and it was excellent. Very captivating and I thin the voice actress did a great job. Obviously I can't compare to the original.

Some English -> German dubs which are said to be very good include most of the Monty Python stuff (believe it or not) and The Big Lebowksy.

I'm not exactly recommending this, but there are communities in Berlin whose main language is English, Turkish, Polish, Russian, whatever. It will probably hurt you in the long run, but you could always "live" in one of these.

Learning German isn't that hard, it just takes time.

Depends on how you see the world. I know many people who don't speak German and as germans say "fühlen sich wohl".

It does have the advantage that none of the subtle NLP based advertising will have much effect on you.

Been feeling the same since Im living here in Berlin (about 3 months), I know I need to learn the language otherwise I'll never stop feeling like a stranger, but its hard to find time after work, I tried the German course for a month but it was so tiring, now I'm just trying to learn at my own pace with Babel and some audio courses.

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