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"Switch to English" only in West Germany? | ||
Tags: Convincing native speakers | Germany | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| MerkVallaj Diglot Newbie Hungary Joined 4495 days ago 7 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English Studies: German, Russian, Romanian | Message 1 of 27 12 January 2012 at 5:35pm | IP Logged |
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There is a frequently recurring stereotype on this forum, that if you speak German to a German, and he/she detects bad grammer usage, slow speech and other hinderances to communication, he/she will switch to English so you can communicate better. Another reason is that many Germans want to practice English and that's why they switch.
However, in my experience this stereotype may only be true for the former West Germany. Last summer I spent a few days in Berlin. My hotel was in the former East Berlin. From check-in to check-out I only spoke German to the hotel staff and they never asked me to switch to English, even if I noticed myself making some language mistakes while speaking, or I thought about how to say something in German. The receptionist even smiled a little at my efforts. And the hotel staff were all young people in their twenties. I always tried talking in German whenever I could in shops, bakeries etc. and in the former East, nobody wanted me to switch to English. Sometimes I started talking to someone in English rather than German and I met some people who didn't know a word of English. The only person who wanted me to switch to English was an immigrant Turkish at a food stand. When I crossed over into the former West Berlin, practically all I heard was English, not a German word anywhere, and the streets were FULL. Needless to stay I liked East Berlin better. :) Did you have similar experiences in Germany? Maybe the language situation is the same in the more rural parts of the former West Germany? 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Rameau Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5901 days ago 149 posts - 258 votes  4 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Danish Studies: Swedish, French, Icelandic | Message 2 of 27 13 January 2012 at 7:59am | IP Logged |
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With the exception of a single day in Stralsund, and about nine days in Berlin (whose east/west status is a bit unclear), the entirety of my time in Germany was spent in the west, yet I never experienced a single instance of someone forcefully trying to shift a conversation to English (one did once offer--in German--to switch after learning I came from the English-speaking world, but seemed more that satisfied with my explaining that a major reason for my traveling to Germany was to practice using my German "in the field", so to speak). Nevertheless, I have know people whose vocabulary and grasp of grammar could scarcely be said to be particularly worse than my own, yet reported that people were constantly doing this to them. But I think I have a suspicion as to why.
As far as I can tell, Germans--and people from most other countries, for that matter--don't really evaluate a person's linguistic ability by their grammar and the like. Obviously, if you're making really major goofs which impede understanding, they're going to notice and possibly switch, but no one's going to get particularly hung up on whether you get the gender of a word or two wrong, or make an occasional declension error. Instead, there are two much more immediately noticeable factors they take into account above all else: your pronunciation, and your general confidence in speaking. As long as your pronunciation is reasonably good (and I don't mean a near-native accent or anything like that; just a general consciousness of the way certain sounds might vary from those of your native language, and especially an ability to recognize and reproduce a language's "rarer" sounds), and you speak it at a reasonable pace without grasping for words all too often, most people will speak German to you without batting an eye, even with the occasional grammatical goof or less-than-idiomatic construction. However, the opposite is also true: if your pronunciation isn't particularly good, or even if you simply seem rather hesitant when speaking, even if you have the best grammar in the universe, people are still going to assume you struggle with the language. And such was the case with the two associates of mine I mentioned above: though their German was quite good in other respects, they had extremely strong American/Canadian accents, and thus people falsely assumed they lacked proficiency in German. And it is, of course, most certainly true that people in larger cities--especially those people working in the service sector--like to show off their cosmopolitan character by speaking English (or any other language) whenever they can. And while none of them ever tried to switch a conversation to English after I had begun it in German, there were incidents where a service person, noticing I was reading an English-language book or having seen my passport, did try to slip the odd English word into the conversation (usually ridiculously basic ones like numbers or the word "tissues" and such, and certainly never more complex terms that a non-native speaker might conceivably genuinely not recognize--those were uniformly in German, like any sensible person would do), but I tended to find that more amusing than annoying, as it was obviously not intended as a slight to my own abilities so much as a "Look! I can speak other languages, too! Helloooo, fellow citizen of the woooorld!" The hotel point is interesting, though, as I think that's a field in which, contrary to stereotypes, people are actually quite glad to speak the local language with you. When I was in Berlin, for instance, I stayed in a hostel which seemed to be pretty heavily patronized by English speakers with no knowledge of German at all (and indeed largely flooded with young Britons on university holiday with few other concerns beyond boozing it up), yet not only were they more than willing to speak German with any guest who tried to so, they in fact seemed delighted to do so--very possibly precisely because their job required them to speak so much English. It's also important to remember that the linguistic situation in Berlin is in no way representative of the rest of the country. I was actually quite surprised to meet a number of fellow Anglosphereans who had lived in the city for many months, yet were utterly incapable of having even the most basic conversation in German. In Frankfurt one could likely do something similar, but elsewhere in the country, I wouldn't expect that get terribly far without a knowledge of German. Of course, when visiting other countries, English speakers tend above all to congregate in places where people are most likely to speak English, which often leads to a skewed impression of just how good the locals' English is--and this strikes me as being very much the case as far as Germany is concerned. Also, I'd imagine that as a native Hungarian speaker, you'd be far less likely to be angeenglischt than someone from North America, the UK or the like; Germans don't switch to English just because they detect that someone isn't from Germany, but rather because they judge them to most likely be from the English-speaking world (which is usually easy to recognize due to the infamous diphthongized vowels). I suspect that was another factor in my never being addressed in English--I was usually assumed to be a Russian, which meant it wasn't necessarily a given that I spoke English in the first place, yet I did obviously speak German, so it was better to stick to that than to switch to a third language and risk embarrassing everyone involved. So you probably weren't at a huge risk for drive-by Englishing in the first place, unlike those poor dupes who had the bad sense to be born in a place where English is the national language. 14 persons have voted this message useful | |
| LebensForm Senior Member Austria Joined 4844 days ago 212 posts - 264 votes Studies: German | Message 3 of 27 13 January 2012 at 10:42pm | IP Logged |
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Showing confidence in the language is my biggest issue I believe. I was told by a native speaker, that I know my stuff, I just am not confident enough. Meaning, I questioned myself a lot when speaking. I know the best way to develope more confidence is to practce more, but are there any other ways I can improve? When I plan to study abroad, this Fall, I want to have the same experiences as the above poster, where they didn't switch to English. But I need to become more oonfident to do so. I know for me, a lot of it is I am so self conscious of my American accent, and I try too hard to sound German, that I tend to overthink it. I overthink in general... I've reluctance because even though I am technically German, living in the US since I was 2 had me form an American accent, that I wish I could just ger rid of lol. I know you mentiioned that they won't switch to English unless you also have bad pronunciation, which I think I am okay on, but could someone give me an example of that? Maybe like saying verstehen, without the H sound between the s and t?? Would that be an example?? Afterall, my main reason for studying there is to improve my German, and I cannot do this well if I just end up speaking English most the time. Otherwise, I could just stay here. Hopefully I can inprove my confidence level!!
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5128 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 27 13 January 2012 at 11:14pm | IP Logged |
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East or West, I have not experienced the problem much, but of course I do not have an English accent. At one point I realized however, that I would myself slip into English because my German was so bad at the time. I solved this by getting a girl I barely knew from East Berlin to invite me to her home for a week, so that I got to practise lots of German. I felt a bit guilty, but I invited her and her husband and her kid to visit me for a week a couple of years later, and since they had not travelled much, I think they had a great time, and found that quite exotic. I do think people are more likely to switch to English in the West in general though. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 14 January 2012 at 7:34am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5560 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 27 14 January 2012 at 12:05am | IP Logged |
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LebensForm, if you don't feel confident, search for situations where you can feel relaxed. Tell people you want to practice German because it's your heritage language. Don't feel threatened when they correct you and go into too much detail or start arguing with each other whether something is correct or not. They probably don't expect you to know it afterwards, but many Germans (including my humble self) don't want to teach you something that's wrong.
And don't feel discouraged when people switch to English for a while, ask them to switch back to German once they're done saying what triggered the switch. It often seems easier to explain something in (even not so great) English than to express it in German when you're not sure how well the other person understands. It can also help to ask the other person to repeat the phrase in German and repeat it afterwards. Also, make sure to communicate what you understand: Nod, make uh-huh sounds, say 'ja' when you more or less agree to signal to the other person to go on because you understood; tilt your head, wrinkle your brows, say 'also ...' or 'hmmmm?' to indicate you don't agree or don't understand, and when the other person pauses, ask for an explanation or say why you don't agree - little things like that help enormously. I can't explain it too well and I don't know how much difference there is between when you typically use such interjections and body language and when we do, but you'll figure it out with a bit of trial and error. My current part time job is in the local university canteen. Some of the subjects are offered in English (science and economics, I assume), so our international students for those aren't required to learn German. During work I usually use German until asked to switch, which usually works. But sometimes people don't show when they don't understand me. That makes it very difficult to communicate and leads me to wonder if I shouldn't switch to English faster. (Three of my coworkers don't speak much German either, so our conversations usually are a nice mix of German and English.) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4495 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 6 of 27 19 January 2012 at 7:50pm | IP Logged |
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I only had to speak English two or three times here with people I met on the street, and usually these people approached me in English.
We are used to foreigners living in our country. There are lots of them from various countries, so assuming someone with less than perfect German skills would prefer English is not going to help very often :) The fact that I'd like to speak my TL in my TL's language myself leads me to believe that, if people used German with me, their goal would be to practice German. I don't need English practice anymore, and if I wanted, I could do it on Skype. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5879 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 7 of 27 26 January 2012 at 5:20pm | IP Logged |
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I've mentioned before it's a good idea to try speaking partners of different age groups. Obviously that's not so easy with a language exchange, but it's easy if you're traveling. If you really want to reduce your chances of hearing English seek out somebody who went to high school before 1980^^
The farther away from the cities you travel the more adventures you'll have in speaking. Leave the big cities and schools, get on the regional train and go have a coffee or patronize a shop in one of the smaller towns. I had a fun speaking experience at a restaurant/garden filled with Stammtische (long tables with everybody seated on long benches). After a few apple wines, no German wanted to speak English anymore and the more mistakes I made in German the more fun it was. The only downside was I had to entertain questions about American politics! ;) Edited by Sunja on 26 January 2012 at 5:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rykketid Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 4627 days ago 88 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: French | Message 8 of 27 18 July 2012 at 5:39pm | IP Logged |
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This is at least weird because... well, the Wall fell down more than 20 years ago...
and as far as I know many "Easterners", during the first years, moved to the West side of the city, fearing that the Wall could have been rebuilt... But I've also read that in order to balance this demographic disequilibrium, the government encouraged people to move to East Berlin through housing incentives so probably some "Westerners" move to the other side as well. So the population should be quite mixed up now, I guess... Personally I have been to Berlin too and stayed is a hotel near Alexanderplatz hence East Berlin. I never had any problem speaking English (I couldn't have done otherwise since my German is limited to polite expressions like danke, bitte etcetera etcetera) Only one time I had some problem with a guardian in the Museum Island that didn't want to speak in English and treated us very rudely. But I know that this is not exactly what you asked because you were talking about switching from German to English. Edited by Rykketid on 19 July 2012 at 2:20am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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