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Whenever I visit Germany or the Nordic countries i’m always surprised at that the way everybody just assumes i speak the language. It’s kind of nice, but a little weird too. My mom’s family immigrated to the US in the 1880’s but only switched to speaking English at home because of WWII. For obvious reasons of not being down with the politics of Germany at the time. After the war, they didn’t go back to speaking German, except for songs and keeping cultural traditions.

It’s really interesting to be in a place where your ancestors come from. A few years ago I went to the tiny village of Plath, a couple hours north of Berlin. As far as we know that’s where my family came from. It’s a very small place, a couple hundred houses, a church, a bunch of farms, and no shops or restaurants of any kind. Honestly it didn’t look like any buildings had been built in the last 150 years.

Now when I’m in Germany, like I find myself today, I just feel kind of weird and incompetent when i have to explain that i don’t speak german to everybody I interact with. A few times today, getting through the airport in Munich, they’ve just ignored my protestations that I don’t speak German and went ahead trying to tell me something in German anyway. Maybe they think i’m acting the way German’s claim they don’t speak good english but then proceed to be entirely fluent. Germany isn’t very helpful a language to speak in New Zealand, I’m going to try Te Reo first, but maybe someday i’ll spend more time with focus in a german speaking country and try and learn.

mar 7mo ago

If you don't make an effort learn the language you automatically put yourself as a second class citizen. If you move to a new country you should make an effort to learn the language.

Frankly, moving to a country that is different than your native language is shitty, learning a language is a never ending process. I feel sorry for most struggling with the language, but most times it's their fault for not wanting to learn. It's especially bad if you have to work in that country. If you go there to retire then learning the language is not important. Just don't get in the way of the working class.

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Discussion

rabble 7mo ago

nostr:npub1c7k2hu076gq62vv9unw9urrt4c4utkce6uatlpq9xhestk8s2xqql8qh4c yeah I agree. Learning a new language isn’t easy and I have no particular affinity for languages, but I put it a fair amount of effort to become fluent in Spanish and glad for it. In terms of German, I’ve only visited for at most a week at a time, not nearly enough to learn the language.

My current situation living in Aotearoa New Zealand the de facto language is English but the official language is Te Reo Māori. In effect what happens is people speak a dialect of English with significant lexical substrate influence from Te Reo Māori. When I first arrived I had to google everything 10th word to understand any kind of official communication from the government or schools.

While I support people learning the language where they live but most of the criticism of immigrants not leaning the language well enough feels xenophobic.