My ultimate point was that learning a language is a fun, rewarding and challenging exercise, but make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. If I speak more German a little better but it's clear I'm an expat, the response is sometimes (i'd say it's 50/50) the opposite.īut as I said, I wasn't making a generalization aside from the residents of one town in one city in one region. It's a paradox: if I speak a little Germany poorly when I'm assumed to be a tourist, the response is usually enthusiastic and kind. That's probably because they still realized you were a tourist. " Never have I had that happen to me in 24 trips over 47 years, "Ĭool, have you spent 2941 days living in Germany? Because I have. Admittedly, I did that once on my first trip (I didn't know any better then) it was embarrassing. We three were only the customers and they knew the waitress and owner, ie a totally local place. The second instance was in 2017 in this small restaurant in Berlin-Köpenick, way out there, where this younger couple, late 40s, (the husband) starting talking to me, again in German. Since the first post-retirement trip, two such encounters readily come to mind, where I was asked where I came from by an older guy with his wife after dinner in the Dresden HI hostel, surprisingly not in English, but German. Maybe the times have changed, maybe older people treat you differently when you are definitely younger than they are. True, I will say that in my 20s Germans started conversations in German with me more often than now. If I am addressed in English as I enter, say a restaurant, solo, seeing that I have tourist written all over me, be it in a tourist area or a totally non-tourist place where I know from the looks and the location of the place, I am the only outsider, the only foreigner, my view is this: they address me in English, I reply in German and it stays that way. ".locals will complain about your German." Never have I had that happen to me in 24 trips over 47 years, whether I was in the boonies, small towns or big urban centers like Munich, Hamburg or Berlin, in western or eastern Germany, north or south. *Applies to Degerloch Swabians only, I'm sure that Germans in whatever tourist town you've visited are quite welcoming and friendly, etc etc etc In summation, by all means, learn/practice the language if you want to and if it "sparks joy" but if you think that it will give you an "in" with locals, you'll only accomplish that by virtue of a time machine wherein you make sure you're born in the right town and go to gymnasium with the locals because everyone else is an outsider and your German efforts will be criticized* I was just at a Besenwirtschaft tonight and the locals muttered in German about my German as if I couldn't understand them and how dare I share a table (there's no option, the besen is crowded and doesn't take reservations) because I apologized for poor German when they wanted to have a conversation with me.Ī younger German couple sat down after the offended ladies left, who didn't converse with the older husbands either, so I guess the standard of being able to converse freely with the locals only applies to foreigners!
No matter what you learn, locals anywhere will complain about your German. I don't think this is at all relevant to someone wanting to further basic German though. "Zum Wohl" is considered perfectly proper for a toast (especially with wine) here in the Southwest but if you want to impress the Swabians you can add the "le" to it. So if you want to drive a German teacher crazy ask her / him to translate one of the videos op platt :-) They also provide a dictionary "Platt - German".
#German grammar app tv#
On public German TV / radio for northern Germany (NDR) you an still find news and entertainment "op platt". This is still actually spoken in northern Germany and does not need any crypto if people from Bavaria are present.
Some German dialects are so special that they are even for Germans hard to understand, e.g. So you can read / listen a German and a foreign language version. If you take my first name Mark it has more than three different meanings depending on the articles "der", "die", "das".įor non-German people who want to learn German based on news I rcommend public TV / radio Deutsche Welle ( They provide news from / about Germany in several languages. Sometimes German language is a little bit difficult. You can use also and as alternative contextual and direct translation approaches the second one provides also sound examples from native speakers.
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