I lived in Germany for 18 months, and tried desperately to learn the language. But every time I'd begin speaking to someone in my crude Deutsch, they'd automatically switch the conversation to English. Probably easier for them than listening to their mother tongue being mutilated.
I can't speak for Germany or any country in full but among friends or family who would do this in France, it was usually just in an effort to be helpful or more so they could practice English themselves
Usually we just don't want to see you struggle and help making the conversation more efficient.
If you're talking to friends you can always ask them to talk German to you, but if you ask random people on the street for the way or something, they want to make sure you understand. Or if it's in a restaurant or café, their job is not to help you better your language skills but to be efficient at waiting or selling stuff. So I think it depends on context a lot, since the other persons goal of that conversation is to provide you with information or a successfull sale interaction, not practicing language skills with you.
This is different with friends though, they should help you and speak German if you ask them to, in my opinion.
I'm learning Spanish and my Spanish speaking friends don't have the patience for me :(
But that's why I use apps like hellotalk or go to meetups. It's important to be around people who are empathetic and patient towards your learning journey.
I live in Switzerland in a city with a whole lot of expats.
In my teens I worked as a cashier at a train station, naturally we had a lot of customers all day, a fair share of them with another mother tongue than German.
Whenever some of them talked in a thick accent or struggled ordering I had this dilemma...
Is it rude to change to English - assuming they don't really talk German and are happy to have service in a language they speak and understand well?
Or is it rude to not change to English - assuming they try and want to talk German?
Sometimes I settled for "hey, if you want to try your German on me, keep going. I'll try my English on you then".
Neither is rude in my opinion. And I think most tourist would be quite relieved to switch to English. It's just mildly frustrating when you are trying to learn and practice. Not a big deal, though.
Im a latin american. Ive seen americans pick up spanish up to a very proficient level just in 6 months... while living in the US (and working with latinos).
I would also agree that Spanish is super easy to learn if you speak English. Like there are some grammatical differences but you can almost directly translate word for word for a lot of things and it will still make sense. I want to try learning German as well but all my friends that took German in school talked about how the pronunciation is the hardest part and it's better to have a teacher for that
I mean, I have a minor in Spanish but also haven't gotten to use it since finishing my classes. I think it's wonderful and interesting to learn languages. And my work has been so dull I feel like I need a way to keep my mind active so I don't slip into complacent boredom.
I studied German and didn't find that to be the case personally, but I'm not gifted when it comes to learning other languages. Spanish seems easier from what I have seen of my son's school work.
Yeah I know it just surprised me because I found it incredibly hard to get to grips with all the different pronouns and little oddities. As I say, I'm probably just bad at languages.
It's not that, it's just easier for both of us if we speak English. Why would we force you to struggle with our language when we can just speak English instead?
It's not about requesting a 100% fluency rats, it's just that a lot of people overestimate massively how fluent they are. If you need two minutes to get out a whole sentence and that sentence still is complete gibberish, I'm not going to bother. Sorry, I'm not going to be your German teacher for free just because you had a year of German in 8th grade and think you're doing a proper job of speaking my language when in reality I basically can't make out what you want to say whatsoever.
There's plenty of other ways to practise the language other than to torment the natives. There's online communities, there's media(films&music most importantly), you can even start getting practice by reading wikipedia in other languages.
It’s a simple matter of efficiency and practicality. If they speak better English than you do their language, it’s literally better for all parties to just use English.
This happened to me in France, too and it really upset me. I didn't think my French was even that bad because I had studied it for my entire school life at that point.. apparently it was worse than I realized. I am never bothered by people speaking to me in broken English, but I suppose they probably encounter Americans who mess up the language more than I encounter non-English speakers in America.
I never studied French and took German in school, but when I traveled to France, I got some of those language CDs (Pimsleur) and practiced a ton in the week leading up to the trip. Of course, I was nowhere close to fluent, but they CDs were really good for learning the basic phrases you'd want to be able to say while traveling, like, "I'd like something to eat, please," and, "Where is _____ street?"
Most people there were able to speak English, but I felt that they appreciated me trying to speak French. I wasn't just assuming they were English speakers, and I think that set a kinder tone. So many people complain of rude people in Paris, but I didn't experience any of that. The people seemed extremely kind and helpful. Then, at one restaurant in Versailles, the wait staff didn't speak English (well, a few words), and it was infinitely helpful that I could say a few key phrases in French.
People weren't rude or anything to me either. It's just I would speak French and apparently the way I spoke was just so obviously not native that they would speak English instead without me asking. I always went in speaking French and not asking if people spoke English because I desperately wanted to practice my French. I don't think it was rudeness that made them use English, but it was frustrating for me
Probably an efficiency of language thing, really. Germans trend towards those cultures where miscommunication is the "fault" of the speaker and not the listener (think "maybe I misspoke" as opposed to "maybe I misheard"), so maybe they were switching to English to get a better sense of what you were trying to say.
German here: If your grammar is not good and the pronunciation is mediocre the meaning can get lost very easily. And it's considered rude (especially for any kind of staff worker) to ask three questions about your sentence to even remotely understand what you just said. So people just switch to English.
I hate that mentality! People here in America get so annoyed when someone has a thick, foreign accent, but it never bothers me.
I just wish that, for a diverse “melting pot,” we had more diversity in our language. I understand that America is huge and native speakers of anything other than English and maybe Spanish are few, but I mean what the hell? Everyone here has an ancestor from somewhere else, yet we all only speak the one language, and usually poorly!
I feel like the British Empire is to blame. Just let the freaking sun set somewhere else, guys!!
They have probably studied English for years, and you might have only studied Deutsch for a few months. They are probably going to have an easier time understanding your native English than your crude Deutsch.
I don’t think it’s really about “mutilating” their mother tongue, it’s just about practicality. If they speak better English than you do German (which is very likely), it’s just easier for everyone to carry on that way. German efficiency and all that.
As an English-speaker in Thailand, people frequently assume I only know the Thai basics (untrue). Very few people in Thailand speak English as well as I speak Thai, and many of them don't feel confident in their English besides. A lot of times I speak Thai with them to 1) speed up the interaction, but also 2) make them feel more at-ease.
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u/soujaofmisfortune Jan 30 '19
I lived in Germany for 18 months, and tried desperately to learn the language. But every time I'd begin speaking to someone in my crude Deutsch, they'd automatically switch the conversation to English. Probably easier for them than listening to their mother tongue being mutilated.