Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
nie.
please be advised that speaking german properly is super fucking hard compared to learning many other languages, and you don't need german in germany for the most part.
when I'm in germany I speak my shitty, broken german and they respond to me in english
That's when you double down and tell them in German that you don't speak English. That'll confuse 'em.
I, a white man, would love to learn to speak German with an Indian accent just to really fuck with 'em
That's the spirit.
I'd try Turkish tho
Fuck it i'll just speak spanish or french then.
I once asked a German guy in Germany if he spoke German. On accident. When I was trying to ask him if he spoke English.
Did he reply in German that he didn't? :-)
https://youtu.be/8cwWgxbqah0?si=cYdE2u1U28vcAWgT
They probably speak English with you because your German is not sufficiently efficient.
My favorite phrase to use in all foreign countries is "Please forgive me, I am American." It gets a laugh out of almost everyone even when terribly butchered in any language and most people will then attempt English for you.
Except Parisians, who do not care. I think they would prefer I point and grunt to trying either English or my awful French.
Thank you for differentiating between french and parisians.
Ja, wir neigen dazu, das zu tun.
ICH WEISS
Failed successfully
Compared to other languages... If those other languages are Romantic, North Germanic, Dutch, Afrikaans, or Frisian. A majority of other languages are typically considered more difficult for people who only speak English.
That being said, I found Russian way easier than German at first, but that quickly stops being the case... German shares a lot of semantic/syntactic similarities with English so you can reasonably assume that a lot of German constructions will easily translate to English, for Russian though it's more unfamiliar and you have to put more effort into thinking Russian-y. The main thing that made German way harder at first is German declensions... ugh... Russian has a complex declension system but it's extremely regular, while German declensions are pretty irregular and the declension of articles is especially bad because their forms overlap a lot. Adjective declension is similarly bad. German word order also fucked with me a lot but it's decently rigid so you get it quickly.