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Comment by bayesianhorse | Hacker News Reader

I just recently read that foreign students in Germany are failing extraordinarily often. Mostly because of the language.

For someone who wants to go down that route in the US I would heavily recommend learning German intensively for at least two years before even going to Germany, and make sure you can read German almost as fast as their native (English/Spanish) language.

A good starting point is Duolingo.com!

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Background: Germany has tons of foreign students, many from countries with poor school systems. I don't think that their performance is informative about how someone from the US would fare. But yes, speaking German is certainly a plus, even if your program is in English.

The article states that no German is needed for many masters programs.

Living in Germany is relatively difficult without speaking German, even today.

Is it? That is the opposite of my experience! I spent a few months in Berlin and I had to struggle to get people to speak German -- nine out of ten times someone would hear my American accent and immediately switch over to English... I wonder if it varies region to region (I admittedly didn't get out of Berlin too often)?

Berlin != Germany

Just like Austin != Texas

Berlin is pretty much an exception. My wife has family all over Germany and outside of Berlin and possibly Hamburg I find that very few people speak decent over even any English. And it gets worse the further east you go.

That being said it also seems to be generational. People under 30 tend to know English at a much higher rate than those over 50.

Bullshit. I live in Germany and am learning German but everyone here speaks English. If you even sound the slightest bit non-German they respond in English. It does vary from city to city but I have experienced this universally and have colleagues who have lived elsewhere in Germany that this is indeed the case.

I know lots of Germans who speak almost no English or would very much prefer not to, in any case. That even includes recent graduates.

It's also somewhat like being disabled, e.g. you have to get everything explained to you personally.

There are also English BA programs, like our program in computational linguistics. We have a lot of international students, including students from the US.

Even most masters programmes are still in German (I would say at least 90%). English programmes are getting more, but there you have the problem that still most people will be native German speakers. Even if most people there would speak excellent English it would still slow down the pace and lead to a reduced quality of teaching.

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