There is no doubt that one of the hardest obstacles to overcome when you decide to move to Germany is the language…assuming you don’t speak German already. Those who speak other languages like Spanish, Italian or French may find the sentence structure similar, but very few of the words sound anything like you hear in the more guttural German language.
The first sentence I learned in German was, “Finger weg du geiler Sack!” This essentially translates to, “Paws off you horny pig” — which was important for a 20-year-old American girl in a short Dindl at her first Oktoberfest. 🙂
My first real interactions with German were during an intensive course which occupied 8 hours of my day for 5 days. I learned a lot of the basics in that course…and I’m certain that if we’d already been living in Germany then (or even thinking of moving here), I would have retained a lot more. But it was actually just a way to occupy my time while my husband was at work all day doing an internship and I was visiting him over the summer. So when we returned back home and I hardly used what I’d just learned.
Nearly a year later, we were actually making plans to move overseas and I was thrust into the abyss.
When you live in an international city like Frankfurt, you’ll actually find that you can get along for a long while without really learning any German at all. I know people who have lived here for over 10 years and hardly speak German at all. But that’s definitely not the path I would suggest anyone takes if you’re serious about immersing yourself in the culture.
One of the first things I made sure to learn was how to order food and what was what in the grocery store. A girl’s gotta eat, ya know? And from there, it just became a matter of actually getting over the fear of totally screwing up my sentences and sounding like a fool. So it’s always nice to try out your German around other foreigners so you know you really don’t sound that horrible while you’re trying to get your thoughts out.
German is not one of the hardest languages to conquer and words are WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get). So if you learn a few basics of the way letters are joined together and those strange umlauts (with the little dots over the letters like ö and ü), you can sound things out really easily…and even spell things out yourself pretty well. Oh, and there’s always the fun words that are compound words strung together.
Have you ever learned a foreign language? What’s your tip for anyone who’s giving it a try? What languages have you always wanted to learn?
This post is part of the German Roundtable of expat bloggers. Hop around to the other links below and read more inside scoops on language in Germany.
I love your first phrase. A kiwi friend of mine in a similar situation mentions something about castration and a rusty chainsaw as her first German phrase. Similar idea, but bloody appropriate for the kiwi sense of humor.
German is totally a WYSIWYG language. Although the compound words can get a bit overwhelming. It all just takes a type of logic that other languages do not necessarily have.
This may sound a bit strange but one of the first things I learned in Japan was to shout, “Kaji-da, Kaji-da” (Fire Fire) at the top of my lungs in any emergency situation. Houses in Japan are very close together and made from extremely flammable materials. Fire is something that all Japanese fear as there have been some disastrous, fires in Japan. Years ago, 1657, a huge fire in Tokyo killed about 100,000 people.
If you are being robbed and scream “robber Robber” people may be reluctant to help you. The robber might be armed. Scream fire! fire! and you will draw a mob of helpers in mere seconds. 🙂
Love your first German sentence. I haven’t heard that, but then I’m not 20 and I still haven’t bought a dirndl :). I have a gluten allergy which is a pain, but it was a really good way of learning food vocab when shopping to ensure that I wasn’t buying something with gluten in it. For some reason I’ve found the food vocab easy to learn – maybe because I’m motivated by it 🙂
Spanish was my nemesis. I had two years of it in high school, and two more years in college, and still found it to be difficult. I made C’s in class and have used it in traveling Texas border towns. Thank God I did not live in Mexico at all times as i would starved or been shot,for sure. You have been very brave and intelligent to conquer German as you have. Well done, Texas lady.
I took two years of German (semi-private lessons – there were 8 of us) in junior high and spent most of my time in tears. I just couldn’t get it. I only learned how to say, “I don’t know” – and please don’t ask me how to spell that! 😉
When we were living/traveling all over the world, we were never in one place long enough to really get a grasp on the language, but goodness knows that I tried to learn the general greetings at a minimum and food names were a must. Indonesian (bahasa Indonesia) was probably the hardest that I attempted (and TOTALLY butchered when I tried speaking it), though many of the African languages left me tongue-tied as well.
Peter, of course, grew up in South America and learned Spanish from quite a young age (a great advantage), so he’s quite comfortable with it, and that was a tremendous help when we were living in Mozambique and trying to understand their version of Portuguese.
As for me, I’m just a language dunce. I don’t hear the tonal differences, I can’t remeber sentence structure, and I thanked God all the time that English was my first language because I can’t imagine learning it (we have lots of crazy rules and borrowed words ourselves!). 🙂 Yes, in most places we could totally get by with English, but it was amazing the little doors that were opened when I at least TRIED to speak some of the local dialect. They always seem to like that I tried. 🙂
Ha! And I’ve just been banging on about how German sentence structure is so totally DIFFERENT to the romance languages! I love how different we all are 🙂 You are right though, once you’ve got the hang of things the structure does mean that it’s very straightforward, and if I had a cent for every time my mother-in-law asked me a word in English that turned out to be almost identical in German I’d be a very rich lady indeed! A very rich lady who was living in the Maldives and not having to speak any more German for a bit 😉
Haha! I love that your first attempt at German was necessitated by grabby men at the Oktoberfest I’m with you though, I have a much easier time learning a language in areas where you really need it: food. My Italian still totally sucks after years of hals-assed attempts at learning it, but put me in an Italian restaurant and I’ll be totally fine 🙂
The first time I visited Germany we had flown over for about 4 days from Miami, just to go to O-fest. So even though I wasn’t really sure I what I was saying, it’s a phrase that came in handy.
Italian or Spanish is next on my list of languages to learn — just a question of where we’re living when I start trying to learn it. 🙂
LOL! You’re learning the more colourful phrases, I see. I suppose phrases like “Was guckst du?” (What are you lookin’ at?) or “Weißt du?! (Ya know?!) But since you’re living in Frankfurt, just finish your sentences with the word “gelle?” (yes, with your voice raised like a question or you have doubt whether you said the right thing).
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I recommend Rosette Stone, to get the proper accent (not that High German is a big help in Frankfurt), but if you are having a problem understanding their dialect, just ask them if they can repeat it in German – yes, German. Tell them you don’t understand “Frankfurterisch”.
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My trick for vocabulary was the Bildzeitung. I bought one everyday and marked every word I didn’t understand with a high-lighter. Then I looked them up in the dictionary. Okay the Bildzeitung is 8th grade reading level, but you can learn about all the words the Bildzeitung uses in about 3 months.
Ah Hessisch. It’s quite something. Funny enough, I could actually understand Bayerisch before German (I find it to be a nice balance of German & English mixed together) but Hessisch is something altogether different. Most of the time I just stand looking confused as my neighbors ramble on.
The idea with Bild is a good one — and at the same time you’ll have the pulse of what mainstream Germany feels is important…boobs & promis. 😉
OK – learning German is very easy. Just put all the words in and leave the verb to the end. My theory is that this is how Germans keep you on your toes. You get all the details and THEN find out what actually happened. Something like this: (for lack of a better example)”The giant hairy monster which resembled Godzilla more than anything I´d ever seen before, when looking at the small innocent girl licking the lollipop with greed and hunger in his eyes, said hi.”
lol. Great example. See, if any of my language teachers had said something like that to us in class, I might have remembered it. 🙂
I think Germans do it like that just to pinpoint the native English speakers — cause they know we’ll screw that up every time! lol