[HN Gopher] On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and...
___________________________________________________________________
On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global
Englisch
Author : lermontov
Score : 291 points
Date : 2023-04-27 05:08 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (europeanreviewofbooks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (europeanreviewofbooks.com)
| jacooper wrote:
| > intensiv means << intense >> not << intensive >>
|
| Huh, Leo.org doesn't seem to agree, I have seen it multiple times
| used like intensively.
|
| https://dict.leo.org/german-english/intensiv
|
| > a photo shoot is, rather alarmingly, a Shooting.
|
| That's hilarious lol
|
| > an online German 32-year-old and I will both, for better or
| worse, understand what is meant by << emu lesbian finally
| milkshake ducked >>
|
| I am international native and I'm not sure I want google that.
| MandieD wrote:
| Observation of Berlin from the weekend I spent there last month:
| literally the only place I was better off speaking German rather
| than English was a Turkish cafe. Everywhere else? Too many people
| understood English far better than they did German, especially
| anywhere to do with tech. Some of the tech people I talked to
| were running into being otherwise eligible for a permanent
| residence permit, but not being able to manage the moderate
| language requirements.
|
| Contrast with Nuremberg and Erlangen, two relatively
| international cities in northern Bavaria: you _can_ get around ok
| in English for anything tourist-related, but you really need to
| learn some German for day to day life. The B1 level that a
| permanent residence permit requires is about the right minimum
| level around here.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| The problem is that in most places people want to display their
| ability to speak English to show their sophistication. Let's
| hope that some day speaking another language besides English is
| a sign of status.
| zeta_ wrote:
| The language requirements for a PR are lower if you have a blue
| card
| ricardobayes wrote:
| B1 is actually pretty strict, Spain only requires an A2 even
| for citizenship (after ten years of being a resident). In a
| parallel universe, imagine needing to learn B1 Turkish as a
| German to become a turkish resident. Pretty daunting.
| wink wrote:
| The funny thing about that is most people who never did a
| real language test have no idea what these categories even
| mean. I only learned languages in high school and I never
| moved to another country. A coworker of mine once tried to
| explain it to me, but his German and English was pretty much
| flawless so that didn't help telling me where he (may have)
| struggled in the past.
| treis wrote:
| For anyone else curious:
|
| B1
|
| Can understand the main points of clear standard input on
| familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school,
| leisure, etc.
|
| Can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst
| travelling in an area where the language is spoken.
|
| Can produce simple connected text on topics which are
| familiar or of personal interest.
|
| Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes &
| ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for
| opinions and plans.
|
| A2:
|
| Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions
| related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very
| basic personal and family information, shopping, local
| geography, employment).
|
| Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a
| simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and
| routine matters.
|
| Can describe in simple terms aspects of his/her background,
| immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate
| need.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I wish I could admit to being able to tell a significant
| difference between those two lists.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| From what I gather C2 - Borderline Native
|
| B2 - A fluent, but not overly practiced level, An example
| that comes to mind, First Generation migrant that is
| usually surrounded by people that speak it's native
| language, they can clearly communicate, but might slip on
| word order or particularly complex information
|
| A2 - Think about the level of someone that paid attention
| in 2nd language classes, simple sentences, describing
| yourself and your immediate enviroment
| [deleted]
| TomK32 wrote:
| Be stubborn and stick to your German even if it is bad, a
| bilingual conversation is just as fun. It took me as a German a
| long time to not automatically switch to English when I talk
| with someone who has little German knowledge.
| seqizz wrote:
| As someone who still can't speak "good enough" after 6 years
| in Germany, thank you! Everyone switches to English all the
| time :)
| akie wrote:
| Gern geschehen!
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| This gets harder when you struggle to meet other people who
| actually speak German.
| philippgerard wrote:
| A permanent residency (PR) in Berlin does not require German
| language skills anymore. Maybe this is official or just
| established practice but regardless, there'a no reason not to
| have your PR if you qualify otherwise.
| vr46 wrote:
| I was at the local immigration office only a few weeks ago
| and German language skills are still very much required for
| PR. One doesn't need it for the family reunion visa and work
| permit, but does for PR.
|
| There is talk of dropping this requirement, but I'll believe
| it when I see it.
| friendlyHornet wrote:
| > There is talk of dropping this requirement, but I'll
| believe it when I see it.
|
| I really hope it doesn't get dropped; it is unreasonable to
| live permanently in a country without speaking the local
| language
|
| There are other types of residencies available if someone
| is an expat and doesn't plan on staying permanently
|
| And it's not like they're asking for a high fluency; with
| B1, you can barely hold a simple coherent conversation
| AdamN wrote:
| Germany doesn't really have permanent residency - it's
| more like 'indefinite' residency that is revoked when you
| leave the country for too long.
|
| So basically what you're saying is that after a few years
| you need B1 to stay. It's not unreasonable but of course
| will have an impact on the economy and society just like
| any other large decision.
|
| I live in Berlin and am A2, with my North Star being B2
| German and am a US Citizen with no intention to switch to
| German citizenship. I'd like to not get kicked out
| though.
|
| The real caveat though is that many of the people in
| Berlin who don't speak B1+ German are EU citizens and do
| not need a visa to live here.
| rocketbop wrote:
| > Germany doesn't really have permanent residency - it's
| more like 'indefinite' residency that is revoked when you
| leave the country for too long.
|
| That's the same as the US green card, and Australian
| permanent residency, and I assume most others.
| bolanyo wrote:
| > it is unreasonable to live permanently in a country
| without speaking the local language
|
| But what if there are countries where the 'local
| language' eventually becomes like Irish in Ireland?
|
| Everyone who goes to school in the Republic of Ireland
| will learn some Irish at school. Almost every Irish
| person will know some Irish expressions, Irish songs, and
| be aware of Irish-language culture and literature as well
| as English-language Irish culture. If two native Irish
| people were in a hostage situation, held by English
| speakers who didn't know any Irish, and had to
| communicate without being understood, most would probably
| manage to do so.
|
| And yet, you could live anywhere in Ireland your whole
| life and never be in a situation where you needed
| anything other than English to make yourself understood.
| No official purpose, and no business interaction would
| ever _require_ Irish, even in the most rural and remote
| areas.
|
| If you cared deeply about the Irish language, wouldn't it
| make more sense to support and honor Irish poetry, song,
| literature and theatre, rather than trying to coerce or
| force immigrants into learning a (reputedly difficult)
| language with around 1 million speakers, and less than
| 100,000 daily active users?
|
| Some (not historically Anglophone) countries are getting
| close to being like this, in particular the Netherlands
| and Sweden. The metropolitan areas of those countries are
| much further down that path. If local culture is still
| preserved, taught and celebrated, is a really a problem?
| Ligma123 wrote:
| >If local culture is still preserved, taught and
| celebrated, is a really a problem?
|
| Yes because it won't be really preserved if you don't
| have speakers who use it as their main language since
| nothing new will be created, just relics of the past that
| will slowly be lost.
|
| Most people other than highly-cosmopolitan minorities
| don't think they should lose their language, which is so
| deeply tied with how we even process our understanding of
| the world, by mapping concepts to words, with their
| culture and identity, just to make it easier for
| foreigners who can't be bothered to learn the local
| language.
|
| The problem is that the minority is way more vocal and
| has more influencing power.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Wish Spain adopted that view a bit more. Let alone
| English, some of local officials just refuse to speak
| Castellano and tell you to come back when you have
| learned the local dialect/language (lol). Most official
| forms are primarily in the local language - sometimes
| official websites too without option to translate to the
| official language of the country. Most kids in local
| schools learn Castellano Spanish as a foreign language -
| imagine the disadvantage it brings. Local universities
| require a local dialect language exam as part of their
| entrance, even to foreigners. Most classes are held in
| the local language. I get and support regional pride but
| it should be done with a common sense approach.
| rocketbop wrote:
| > If two native Irish people were in a hostage situation,
| held by English speakers who didn't know any Irish, and
| had to communicate without being understood, most would
| probably manage to do so.
|
| Perhaps, so long as what they needed to communicate was
| that either they wanted permission to go to the bathroom,
| or that they liked something in the room (most likely a
| girl, cake, or window).
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| Ah yes, the only Irish sentence you can guarantee
| everyone in the country knows.
|
| An bhfuil cead agam dul go dti an leithreas?
| defrost wrote:
| mar na beidh ar leitheidi aris ann
| anditherobot wrote:
| Will English supplant Dutch and German in a few
| generations?
|
| In a way they are related, is it why people from those
| countries pick it up so easily?
|
| Like kids growing up in metropolitan areas immersed in
| English only environments
| MandieD wrote:
| It might feel that way if your main experience of Germany
| is Berlin, but is not a risk for any of the rest of the
| country, including Munich with its fairly strong English-
| speaking expat community - Germans speak German to each
| other, and will politely ask you, the non-German, if it's
| ok to continue the meeting in German, but expect you to
| at least attempt to learn it.
|
| I've not spent enough time in the Netherlands to speak to
| Dutch's future, but a big difference I can see is
| television and movies, even on streaming services:
| popular US shows are dubbed into German and it takes a
| bit of doing to get some of them with the original
| English soundtracks; Dutch has long been a target for
| subbing.
| bolanyo wrote:
| I think that the links between these languages do make it
| easy for people from the Netherlands, Germany and
| Scandinavia to learn English. These countries, to give
| them credit, have also seen the importance of good
| language education, in particular English learning, for a
| long time.
|
| There is also an effect which people from other countries
| have described which makes it harder for foreigners to
| learn the local language. If you approach almost anyone
| in the Netherlands and speak to them in semi-competent
| Dutch, they will often respond in fluent and nearly
| accentless English. This includes older people, people
| with only high-school education, people in official
| positions. So not only do you not need to learn, you are
| discouraged from practicing by the local population's
| competence and hospitality.
| vr46 wrote:
| Well, that is how it is in the whole of the EU: you can
| go and live anywhere you like without speaking the local
| language.
|
| Sorry!
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Where are you from? Post brexit I was just handed perm
| residence with no language test and one short form...
|
| I do speak German, and have a German native child though.
| vr46 wrote:
| London. It depends when one applied. If you were already
| there and it was by 30/6/21 then you would have been
| handled normally under the Withdrawal Agreement, if
| after, you are able to rejoin on a family reunion visa by
| dint of having a German child - with no language
| requirement - but that still isn't permanent residency.
| All that said, there appears to - still - be some lack of
| clarify between various government departments on this
| front. Not sure why, because the UK is now a third-
| country and that should be the end of that.
| caporaltito wrote:
| > A permanent residency (PR) in Berlin does not require
| German language skills anymore.
|
| Of course it does
| snassar wrote:
| Where do you have this information from? The State of Berlin
| says otherwise
| https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/121864/en/ :
|
| ------ Sufficient knowledge of German You must have an
| adequate command of the German language (level B 1 of the
| Common European Framework of Reference for Languages).
|
| If you were in possession of either a residence permit or a
| residence authorisation on 31/12/2004, you only have to
| demonstrate basic knowledge of the German language (level A
| 1) to be granted a permanent settlement permit. ------
|
| In practice the staff giving interviewing you have leeway to
| assess your German level on the spot, but applying without
| demonstrated adequate German levels could lead to wasting
| ones time.
| AdamN wrote:
| That's for non-EU citizens. There are 360MM non-German EU
| citizens - some of which are living in Berlin visa-free.
| netsharc wrote:
| Some? Wouldn't they all be visa free?
|
| Yeah, that page is for non-EU-ians, because if you're
| from the EU, due to freedom of movement, you can live and
| work in any other EU country, and you don't even need to
| apply for a "permanent resident permit".
| PeterisP wrote:
| Well, most of these 360MM non-German EU citizens don't
| live in Berlin or Germany at all, only some of them do.
| bolanyo wrote:
| There has never been any language requirement for EU
| citizens to live in Germany or anywhere else, ever since
| freedom of movement was established.
| MandieD wrote:
| Immigration is even more of a local matter than I thought it
| was! I was used to each town having its own immigration
| office, and the slightly different levels of service and
| organization, but thought that the B1 exam or degree from a
| German-speaking university was a national requirement for a
| Niederlassungserlaubnis.
| [deleted]
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| One thing that is specific to Berlin is that increasingly bars
| and cafes are staffed by foreigners. This is a quirk of the
| German employment system, a scarcity of staff, and the wide
| availability of expats in need of gigs. Instead of hiring
| permanent staff and paying them a salary, it's less risky to
| have temporary workers. However, you can't do that endlessly
| with the same people in the German system. You would have to
| employ them after a while. However, there's a never ending
| stream of students and other expats flowing through Berlin
| willing to do that kind of job. So, lots of bars and cafes
| employ those instead. Also, there are a fair amount of expats
| that stay in Berlin that open their own businesses.
| systemtest wrote:
| If you stay and open a restaurant in Berlin, presumably for
| the long term, wouldn't that make you an immigrant? There is
| a Syrian bakery in my street and people don't call him an
| expat.
| andrepd wrote:
| Expats are rich, immigrants are poor.
| treis wrote:
| Its both:
|
| Leave Country A for Country B = expat
|
| Move to Country B from Country A = immigrant
|
| The words mean exactly the same. It's just which
| perspective you want to highlight. Whether you left a place
| or moved to a place.
| tuatoru wrote:
| If you have brown skin, you're an economic migrant.
|
| If you have pink skin, you're an ex-pat.
| gumby wrote:
| I have a parent from each of those categories and can
| confirm from this natural A/B test that that's how they
| are treated.
| PeterisP wrote:
| IDK, I would use "immigrant" when someone moves to
| another country with the intent to stay there, and
| "expat" when someone moves to another country for work or
| study (so, longer than just tourism) but while they
| _might_ choose to stay /immigrate, for now that's just
| temporary, say, for a year or two.
| Xixi wrote:
| I might have been traumatized by US visa process, but in
| my mind "immigrant" has a very specific meaning: moving
| to a country with the intent of settling there
| permanently. And the US is very strict on that meaning:
| when I went to the US my work visa was explicitly non-
| immigrant, and calling myself an immigrant at the US
| embassy when applying for the visa, or while crossing the
| US border would have resulted in the denial of my visa,
| or the denial of my entry in the US. At least that's what
| the attorney drilled into my head...
|
| Expat literally means "living outside of your homeland".
| So by definition an immigrant is an expat, but an expat
| is not necessarily an immigrant. Sometimes expat is used
| in a stricter sense (also called "true expat") to refer
| to people sent abroad by their employer on usually very
| very favorable packages (the "expat packages"):
| everything paid (rent in prime neighborhoods, private
| schools for kids, plane tickets to visit home, etc.), on
| top of an indemnity for living abroad, on top of the
| regular salary paid home.
|
| In my case I was an expat in the United States (only went
| there to work, no intention to stay), but then I
| immigrated to Japan (now a permanent resident, no
| intention to leave). It would have been wrong to call me
| an immigrant in the US, but I am both an expat and an
| immigrant in Japan.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > when I went to the US my work visa was explicitly non-
| immigrant, and calling myself an immigrant at the US
| embassy when applying for the visa, or while crossing the
| US border would have resulted in the denial of my visa,
| or the denial of my entry in the US. At least that's what
| the attorney drilled into my head...
|
| H1B is dual-intent. You are allowed to have an immigrant
| intent when applying for H1B, so no, nobody would refuse
| it on that ground.
| bigdollopenergy wrote:
| They never specified H1B.
|
| They were probably on a treaty visa, Like E2 (which i
| have, it's not just for business owners/investors,
| employees can get this too) or T2 (The NAFTA equivalent).
| These visas allow you to live and work in the US for a
| very long time (extendable indefinitely for 2 years a pop
| in my case), but they have no dual-intent attached to
| them. They are a dead-end and if you want to stay in the
| US you need to start from square one with an H1B/Marriage
| or convince your employer to start a standalone green
| card sponsorship, which costs like $50k and 2+ years of
| processing, where the only benefit to the employer is
| that you can now get a different job.
|
| It's actually kind of a problem, there's a lot of people
| on these visas who've lived and worked here for 20+ years
| with no viable route to permanent residency.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| H1B is as much of a dead-end as E2/T2 is. There is no way
| to convert them to a green card. You can do an AOS from
| any visa.
|
| This is the reason why I would not even consider moving
| to the US on a non-immigrant visa. It's either green card
| or I'm happy in the EU.
|
| > It's actually kind of a problem, there's a lot of
| people on these visas who've lived and worked here for
| 20+ years with no viable route to permanent residency.
|
| That's because the INA was written in the 50s and has
| barely changed since, and is unlikely to change because
| that would require bipartisanship.
| ghaff wrote:
| It probably depends on the specifics. In Asia, I've known a
| fair number of Europeans who have lived there for a
| significant period of time and I would still think of them
| as expats.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I thought the "joke" was that expats are white,
| immigrants are not?
| te_chris wrote:
| Definitely true on the whole, but perhaps identity is not
| the most productive lens to look through.
|
| As a white expat/immigrant to the UK, I think it's more
| about whether you've committed to never returning. It's a
| very different mindset I find, between those who've moved
| and are staying put, vs those with the idea of leaving in
| the back of their minds. The privilege of the expat is
| being able to hedge for a very long time.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Still "immigrants" get _accused_ of hedging their bets
| while still not afforded the "expat" moniker.
|
| _" Immigrants won't commit to their new country"_
|
| _" They move their wealth abroad"_ etc.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think that's fair. With respect to Westerners living in
| Asia there is also definitely a language/culture thing
| with stereotypical expats mostly hanging out with other
| expats and going to expat bars, restaurants, etc.
| Lacerda69 wrote:
| That is only correct for a very small number of hip cafes and
| restaurants in certain districts tbh.
|
| You can employ germans indefinitely without "proper" contract
| as well through something called "Minijob" and the majority
| of cafes and restaurant skirt the law and let you work
| without paying taxes "illegally". Most of the ppl working
| there are students or in between careers. Only a fraction of
| the staff will be employed permanently with "real" contracts.
|
| source: worked in the industry there for 6+ years
| AdamN wrote:
| My wife tried to check into a fancy hotel (nothing hip) in
| Berlin and the receptionist only spoke English (and
| presumably some other language). It's not just hipster
| restaurants.
|
| Even when the person does speak German, they're often not a
| native speaker and speak better English.
| gpvos wrote:
| Same for Amsterdam and other expat-heavy places.
| netsharc wrote:
| In any case, if you're a EUian, you can live and work in
| Germany (or any other EU country) just like a native of the
| country (some restrictions may apply/may have applied, e.g.
| with the UK (when it was part of the EU) restricting the
| number of Romanians and other "freshly joined the EU"
| citizens who could live there). There's even no need to have
| a high-paying contract like software dev or brain surgeon,
| you can be a dishwasher.
|
| Maybe it's not just EU, but EFTA as well, I was in Iceland
| and there were a lot of Eastern Europeans working in the
| retail stores.
| dfawcus wrote:
| There are a number of overlapping things.
|
| Within the EU, the "four freedoms" apply, of which on
| "freedom of movement" is the thing mainly at play.
|
| The EFTA states have a similar distinct thing between them.
|
| How all EFTA states (bar Switzerland - i.e. Iceland,
| Norway, Lichtenstein) are also in the EEA Agreement, and
| the EU "four freedoms" also apply there.
|
| Switzerland has a raft of linked treaties with the EU,
| which sort of replicate the EEA agreement, and includes the
| "four freedoms".
| m_fayer wrote:
| When I moved to Berlin 15 years ago, this was not the case.
| Many bars and cafes were staffed by German-speaking people in
| their 30s - underpaid artistic or intellectual types or
| professional partiers making an extra buck. This had a
| particular charm - they were often cranky and unconcerned,
| but they kept the same job for a long time and you could get
| to know them and feel like a "regular." This kept me
| returning to the same places time and again.
|
| These days, and especially post-covid, the faces are
| shockingly young, obviously inexperienced with the skilled or
| social sides of their job, and seem to never last more than a
| month or two. The charm is completely gone.
| Aromasin wrote:
| I don't think it's much different anywhere else; certainly
| not in the UK or Ireland at least. My father works in the
| pub trade. Hospitality work used to _just about_ be well
| paid enough that one could make good money out of it in
| while also having the flexibility to pursue other careers -
| hence why it attracted so many struggling musicians
| /actors/artist types. In the last decade, because the wages
| have dropped so low compared to living expenses, we've
| moved to a model where hospitality work is often done by
| people in their late teens to mid-twenties, who are living
| with their parents or in university digs so don't "need"
| the money to the same degree, just the flexibility. They're
| doing it for pocket money.
|
| People later on on life with kids or other responsibilities
| simply can't make ends meet and independent cafe/bar/pub
| owners can't raise wages without going bust, as the running
| costs have sky-rocketed at a much higher rate than they can
| acceptably increases prices. People complain about the cost
| of a pint going up PS1, but really the cost per keg is such
| that it should be PS2 more; however, if they charged that
| price then customers go elsewhere to places they can
| afford. Wetherspoons or Greene King come to mind. These
| sort of commercial enterprises can afford to buy a pub
| outright - so no lease fees - and can reduce their bottom
| line through economies of scale to a point where
| independents can't compete. Of course, these corporations
| don't increase wages because God forbid their billionaire
| owners and shareholders don't get their cut of the pie.
| wheels wrote:
| I've been in Berlin for 17 years, and in my early days in
| Berlin, a room in a shared apartment could be found for as
| little as EUR75/month (e.g. 6 bedroom apartment), and
| studio apartments could be found for EUR250/month. Hell, I
| paid EUR450/month for my 2 bedroom (3. Zimmer in German
| parlance) in Alt-Treptow (800 meters from Schlesicher Str.,
| where I worked).
|
| That opened up a lot of quirky social possibilities because
| the floor for survival was so low in Berlin. If an artist
| could throw together EUR400/month, they could survive on
| that. Now that's what a room in a shared apartment costs.
|
| Even when I started a tech company, I got my cost of living
| down to EUR800/month, in the above apartment, which I
| shared with my co-founder.
| ido wrote:
| My theory is that this is completely due to the raising
| cost of housing - it's no longer easy (possible?) do make
| due in Berlin on that kind of job long-term.
| vintermann wrote:
| Yes, I was shocked the first time in Oslo when I went to a
| cafe and understood that the staff didn't understand a word
| of Norwegian. This is probably a capital thing. There's an
| expat-run cafe near where I live (not in Oslo) that employs a
| lot of US and Australian young people for shorter periods,
| and if they don't understand Norwegian, they surely do a lot
| better job of hiding it and guessing what you're asking for.
| sgt wrote:
| As a social experiment, tell them you don't speak English.
| Only Norwegian. See if they manage a few words from their
| language course. They might actually appreciate being
| forced to take the leap.
| jamil7 wrote:
| It depends on where you are and what you're doing in the city.
| After a long enough time here, that lack of German starts to
| stunt or limit you to a degree. You'll end up in the same types
| of places with the same groups of people. Getting colleagues
| and friends to call places or answer letters or emails for you,
| or just stumbling along in broken German.
| AdamN wrote:
| I don't think anybody 'wants' to not know German in Berlin -
| it's just that they've decided it's not worth the effort at
| all or they are ok with their A2 level even though it's
| obviously not ideal. I know trilingual people in Berlin who
| just aren't going to learn German, a fourth language, beyond
| A2.
|
| I (native English speaker) personally aspire to getting to B2
| from my current A2 though.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| One example I vividly remember was somewhere in very rural
| Germany in the early 2000s. A new burger chain called McDonalds
| recently opened and they had the most bizarre slogans and scripts
| written, in English, but in German phonetic transcription, like
| in the parking lot it said "Happi Borzdai" or something like
| that.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| The part about feeling a certain _tristesse_ that your native
| language is a shared commodity rather than a cosy secret was very
| resonant. And a native English speaker who tries to speak the
| local language in, I would say, most any sizable European city
| will typically find that their attempt is politely shut down by
| their interlocutor in favour of English, because they will speak
| it vastly better than you speak their language.
| jamil7 wrote:
| This is a very real barrier, it takes some time to build enough
| confidence to push through and continue in the target language.
| robin_reala wrote:
| For me, with my newly acquired Swedish, it was a pretty
| specific barrier of four months' learning. After that, people
| would continue in Swedish whereas before they'd seemingly
| relish the chance to practise their English.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| I can attest to this. I've lived in German-speaking countries
| for twenty years and English is still my daily language.
| Germans just love speaking English, especially since they
| speak English better than most English-native speakers can
| operate in German.
|
| I speak German when I'm out and about and nobody knows me,
| and I don't mind if the frustrated stranger laughs at my
| weird and obnoxious dialect. Among friends though, they don't
| have the patience and just plow through the conversation in
| their excellent English.
|
| It can be very frustrating, but it helps to unleash the
| German with strangers. You will very definitely see a strata
| to the folks who will and will not, willingly, put up with
| your Deunglish...
| detaro wrote:
| > _Among friends though, they don 't have the patience and
| just plow through the conversation in their excellent
| English._
|
| That's kinda sad. I totally get the impulse to do so, and
| once I've started speaking English I might not even notice
| I'm doing it, but if I know someone is learning it is IMHO
| the decent thing to do to try let them practice if it
| doesn't matter to get to the point quickly.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Yes, I agree, it is frustrating, but on the other hand
| its also a matter of wanting to freely communicate and
| not wanting to have to keep correcting the other person.
| Most of the time, ze Germans think they are being kind
| and considerate by using their English. I see it from
| both sides, especially when the marbles start falling out
| of ones mouth .. and to be fair, once my German-speaking
| colleagues start with their Deunglish, I do switch to my
| Germlish in reflection.
|
| That said, my crappy German is often a great source of
| mirth for my colleagues and friends, and this leads to me
| teaching my German friends some of the best, most finest
| and refined bollocksy English I can muster .. "weil, ohne
| Rache kann Mann nicht leben .."
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| A big part of this is that there casual traveller will
| typically primarily interact with people who work in
| hospitality - hotels, restaurants, bars - for whom dealing
| with foreigners is a major part of the job and who will
| accordingly be heavily biased towards using English to _any_
| foreign customer.
|
| Saw a couple of good examples of this on holiday in Rome a
| few years back - one sensible, one bizarre: first a couple of
| Scandinavians on the table next to us in a restaurant,
| talking to their waiter in english, which made total sense.
| The bizarre one was a French group walking into another
| eatery and negotiating for a table of five with the maitre d
| using the English word "five", even though the word in French
| and Italian is basically the same!
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| It's not just German. Language groups around the world are
| struggling to fit English vocabularly into their language. My
| favorite English borrowing into Polish is probably koleslaw
| (pronounced something like COAL-eh-suave) for coleslaw, but there
| are so many that it's hard to choose. Poles in Chicago decline
| "Milwaukee" (the street) as if it were a Polish plural ("na
| Milwaukach"). I'm fairly OK in Polish but still find it
| impossible to pronounce "cheeseburger" the way they do in Poland.
| EdSchouten wrote:
| Which is funny, because coleslaw itself is borrowed from Dutch
| (koolsla).
| mietek wrote:
| The funniest thing about ,,koleslaw" is that the suffix makes
| it sound like a traditional Slavic first name: Boguslaw,
| Jaroslaw, Miroslaw, Stanislaw, Wladyslaw...
|
| https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imiona_slowianskie#Imiona_zloz...
| b800h wrote:
| We have a number of Indian-language radio stations in the UK,
| which are good to listen to because the music is often great.
| Part of the fun is spotting the odd anglicism creep in:
|
| <something in Hindi><something in Hindi>"that's not
| cricket!"<something in Hindi><something in Hindi>
| bhangrrathwy wrote:
| Is the music Hindi or Punjabi? (Or both, there is a spectrum of
| sorts between Hindi/urdu with Punjabi influence to "pure"
| Punjabi)
| b800h wrote:
| Depends on the station. I've heard a bunch of different
| stuff, but Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali and Gujarati stuff
| all crops up at least as far as I can tell. I'm also not
| terribly good at distinguishing them but can tell when I'm
| hearing Hindi or Urdu.
|
| Interesting that you mention the spectrum of Punjabi - I
| think I must have been taught some Punjabi-inflected Hindi
| which was very much like Hindi, and then had other people
| tell me they're completely different. Makes more sense now.
| avh02 wrote:
| i remember something similar in Dubai, while riding in a taxi
| hearing the driver listening to the commentary on a cricket
| game:
|
| very fast/excitedly: <something in Hindi><something in
| Hindi>"OUT OF THIS FIELD!!"<something in Hindi><something in
| Hindi>
|
| I think code switching is often a really cool/cute thing but
| also cringey sometimes.
| wink wrote:
| Been a while since I watched it but there was an interesting
| difference between tennis broadcasts on German TV and
| Austrian TV. The Germans were using German game-specific
| terms - e.g. "Aus" for out of field and the Austrians were
| using English terms.
| bhangrrathwy wrote:
| "Jargon" terms tend to not often have translations in other
| languages I think.
| downut wrote:
| I always enjoyed listening to Navajo Radio driving across the
| Res: <beautiful but impenetrable language> BASEBALL!
| <beautiful but impenetrable language> Hay bale auction on
| Sunday! <...>
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Probably every country has its own English.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I grew up in a bilingual home. I sometimes refer to what I speak
| and write as _Germish._
|
| I routinely have to look up "Is that one word or two?" because
| German runs words together so much more often than English and I
| capitalize too many things because German capitalizes _all_ nouns
| and English only capitalizes _proper nouns._
|
| A friend of mine once described my capitalization choices as
| "raising my voice," a place between "speaking normally" and the
| internet "yelling" of writing in all caps.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| >"I capitalize too many things because German capitalizes all
| nouns and English only capitalizes proper nouns."
|
| I've gotten into a particularly bad habit of capitalizing nouns
| haphazardly and I don't speak any German. I think it's from
| programming becuase it happens very often in my Code Comments.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| On Twitter, phrases for hashtags _should_ use capitalization
| of all words for reasons of accessibility.
|
| Screen readers can parse it that way and can't if you don't
| and it's easier for human eyes too, so it helps visually-
| impaired people who aren't yet actually blind.
| kergonath wrote:
| > On Twitter, phrases for hashtags should use
| capitalization of all words for reasons of accessibility
|
| Ah, the classic #susanalbumparty
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 0_o
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Tell your friend you are emulating 18th century English:
|
| > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
| created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
| certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
| and the pursuit of Happiness.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Note the founders were already declining to capitalize Truths
| or Men :)
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| More like 19th Century German.
|
| My German mother was taught to write by an Elderly Aunt
| before she started School, so her Handwriting looks like old
| German Script.
| FredPret wrote:
| The great strength of English is its uncanny ability to create
| new words and vacuum up material from other languages... and make
| it sound good.
|
| Other languages are left with the problem of Anglicisms where
| handy English words and phrases are imported but never sounds
| like natural parts of the language.
| microtheo wrote:
| That is a bit of an exaggeration. We use English word in German
| and French and barely notice anymore. Maybe the difference is
| that everybody speaks English, so we are more aware, that they
| are imported words...
| AdamN wrote:
| English is full of loanwords from French in particular.
| 'particular' being from Old French of course.
| schroeding wrote:
| The ultimate champions in "new word creation" are languages
| which allow the creation of new compound words, though, like
| e.g. German. That's the way you get those hyper-specific words
| in "the <name> language has a special word for the concept of
| <something very specific>" articles most of the time. :P
|
| "Neologismuskreierungsmeister" (new word creation champion)
| pieter_mj wrote:
| Dutch is really close in compound word creation.
| Hottentottententententoonstelling : Exposition of the tents
| of the Hottentot people.
|
| What I really like in English is how they verb nearly
| everything, especially nouns.
|
| Where I cringe at, is Dutch and German pronunciation of
| English. There are very few non native English people with
| perfect pronunciation. European commissionary Frans
| Timmermans (who had his education in Belgium) and vrt
| journalist Johny Vansevant, who both have perfect British
| English pronunciation (Received pronunciation). Kim Clijsters
| speaks near perfect General American (but she lives there and
| has an American husband). I like Greta Thunberg's command and
| richness of vocabulary and grammar despite the accent.
|
| I'm making a conscious effort to speak General American and
| follow a few youtube channels to get better all the time.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I'm not sure if compounds count, it's almost a spelling
| convention as much as it is truly new language
| schroeding wrote:
| I would say so, compound words are a defining feature of
| the German language, especially with the ability to make up
| words on the spot if required ("Gelegenheitsbildung"). Many
| of the words in the article are also compound words (e.g.
| "Spatkauf", "Rundfunk").
|
| It's not possible to say the same thing without using
| compound words without heavily modifying the sentence
| structure. It would be in English, if you translate it
| directly, but it isn't in German:
|
| "Sie sind die Neologismusbildungsmeister" vs "Sie sind die
| Meister _im_ Bilden _von_ Neologismen "
|
| If those compound words are only a spelling convention, the
| question would be, where do we draw the line. Does
| "Firefighter" count, or do only the words it is made of,
| "Fire" and "Fighter"? "Railroad"? "Notebook"? :D
| FredPret wrote:
| English is the same, just with spaces in between. Lumping
| ten nouns together for a mega compound noun can be useful
| but it isn't what I originally meant.
|
| I meant English is flexible in the way it absorbs and
| digests foreign words and makes them sound and feel like
| natural parts of English.
|
| It's uniquely good for engineering and science terms. For
| instance, if I try to translate a term like Random Access
| Memory to my native language, it just sounds dumb and
| doesn't tell you what it is.
| hoseja wrote:
| [flagged]
| brazzy wrote:
| achberlin.txt
| btilly wrote:
| Borrowed words and phrases can lead to weird things that we don't
| even notice.
|
| For example the author of the essay casually calls English the
| lingua franca without pausing to realize that he's using an
| Italian phrase for "French language", and means English by it!
|
| This borrowing, adapting and linguistic evolution has been going
| on for a very long time.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| Well, English _is_ the lingua franca du jour, after all!
| jamiek88 wrote:
| That's because the English are very industrious, not like the
| French who don't even have a word for entrepreneur!
| lesquivemeau wrote:
| /s i suppose
| feintruled wrote:
| Reminds me of the gag, "English is the best language as it
| always has a _mot juste_ for everything "
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| English has lots and lots and lots of vocabulary. Of
| course, a lot of that vocabulary still has tags on it
| saying "PROPERTY OF SPANISH" or "IF FOUND, RETURN TO
| FRANCE".
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| Which I bet the French just _love_.
| mgraupner wrote:
| Definition of lingua franca: "bridge language, common language,
| trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
|
| And it does not mean French, but Frankisch tongue. And by the
| definition this phrase means "language systematically used to
| make communication possible between groups of people who do not
| share a native language" - which is English nowadays, at least
| in the Western Hemisphere.
| piaste wrote:
| > an Italian phrase for "French language"
|
| Nitpicking: 'lingua franca' actually referred to an Italian-
| based Mediterranean pidgin. It was called 'franca' because
| Byzantine and Muslim peoples would call all Western European
| peoples 'Franks'.
| marban wrote:
| I honestly can't be friends with people who use beamer and public
| viewing in one sentence.
| hulitu wrote:
| Beamer is used in almost all Europe.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| The term ,,beamer" is an interesting one. Elder east Germans
| use the specific GDR term ,,polylux" instead to name an
| projector. Since Berlin was divided not long ago. You will find
| both terms still circulating.
| looperhacks wrote:
| Note that "beamer" is usually used for a video projector. A
| polylux (which, for me, is "obviously" the better term, even
| though I was born after the unification :D) is only for
| overhead projectors that display slides. So beamer and
| polylux are two different things
| larodi wrote:
| (joke warning) The omnipresent English in Europe is the Mohammad
| English, a very simplified and useful version - spoken by most
| middle-eastern emigrant, and some Balkan residents. Next to it is
| the very distinct (by its accent) French-English.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Not funny. Prejudiced. The trope of "Mohammad in Germany" is
| sinister and should not be propagated in that realm.
| trallnag wrote:
| Next time he will send you a trigger warning beforehand.
| kergonath wrote:
| This more or less matches my experience in Paris. I would add
| loud Americans, uneasy Brits, and charming Aussies, but they
| are not as prominent on the streets or in cafes. It is also
| very common to hear English with an Indian or Pakistani
| accent in Paris. And of course the broken and horrible
| Frenglish some people seem to be so proud of for some reason.
| larodi wrote:
| Why is it prejudiced? This name is very common so if you
| actually have some levant friends there is very good chance
| they have this name. And with the influx of people from
| Pakistan and Levant this is a fact - they didn't study
| English to know it well, but to survive in a hurry. Is sad
| and practical... should you want to label it. Like it or not.
| Perhaps you should also call prejudice that Ivan and Marsha
| is associated with slavic (if not Russian)...
| rzzzt wrote:
| What was the issue with "spontaneously"? (Maybe I'm secretly a
| Berliner.)
| Vogtinator wrote:
| "spontaneously" is "plotzlich".
| [deleted]
| jamil7 wrote:
| I always felt plozlich was more urgent, like "suddenly"?
| [deleted]
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| It's a false friend for a German. The German adverb ,,spontan"
| does not mean ,,spontaneously". The former means ,,at short
| notice" while the latter ,,without direction".
| kanbara wrote:
| eventuell and aktuell are two great ones ask any tech worker
| shat eventual consistency is in german and then get very
| frazzled
| brazzy wrote:
| Whoa, that's indeed a good one.
|
| I think the best option would be to turn it into an
| adjective:
|
| irgendwannkonsistent.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| "Sometime" consistent and "eventually" consistent, not
| the same things and still confusing.
|
| Maybe better: "letzendlichkonsistent"
|
| (Disclaimer: expat English native speaker, living in
| Austria, enjoying this thread immensely..)
| AdamN wrote:
| My Austrian co-worker hates talking tech in German - it
| just doesn't roll of the tongue and he's more comfortable
| in English with that domain.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Same. I live in Vienna, and converse with my technical
| colleagues in English most of the time - although they do
| expect me to keep up with their crazy dialects over the
| coffee machine, an activity I find often quite fun,
| oida...
| rzzzt wrote:
| If you like comics, "Asterix speaks Viennese" might help:
| https://www.diepresse.com/5450586/asterix-auf-wienerisch-
| wap...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Haha lovely!
| mgraupner wrote:
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/spon.
| ..
|
| "spontaneously" translates to "spontan".
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Yeah weird, the description "in a way that is natural,
| often sudden, and not planned or forced" is exactly the
| meaning in German too. Maybe "spontaneous" has different
| semantics between US and UK English?
| rzzzt wrote:
| This is what I was confused about as well. In the example
| the meetup itself could be held as non-spontaneous
| (telepaths spare the price of the phone call), but
| deciding on the place will still be done on a whim, off
| the cuff, impromptu, not before, impulsively.
| Spontaneously? :)
|
| (On an unrelated note, let me share my favorite Anglicism
| that I've heard in a movie: "gekidnapped")
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| You are overthinking this.
|
| Words usually have multiple meanings, common ones and
| less common ones. "False friend" words usually swapped
| their common and rare semantics when entering a different
| language. In this case, the common meaning for
| "spontaneously" is "without direction" but not "on short
| notice". But it's the other way around in German. There
| actually is the German term "spontane Ordnung" ("order
| from chaos") using the English connotation in this case.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| FWIW I usually use "spontan" like "ungeplant"
| (unplanned). Maybe there's even differences for native
| speakers in different parts of Germany (wouldn't surprise
| me, especially between East and West).
| mgraupner wrote:
| May I ask if you're a native German or English speaker?
|
| There is an example in another thread here which has the
| following example: We spontaneously decided to get
| married. I would translate that into: Wir haben uns
| spontan (dazu) entschieden zu heiraten.
|
| What is the difference in these two? Same words, same
| meaning to me as a native German speaker. As I see it,
| spontaneously can have a subtle other meaning than
| spontan, but can also be the same.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| I am a German native speaker.
|
| But we can resolve this confusion around "spontaneously"
| by going to its actual origin: The English word
| "spontaneous" is a loan word and originates from the
| Latin "spontaneus" which itself derives from the Latin
| noun "spons" (feminine) primarily meaning "free will". It
| also has a secondary connotation meaning "impulse". [1]
|
| So the common English usage is closer to how the Romans
| used the word. That does make sense: The Romans conquered
| the British isles but failed to win against the
| Barbarians that lived east of the river Rhine. The
| Germans only much later incorporated Latin vocabulary and
| did so mostly only in elite circles. That's possibly why
| "spontan" means "acting out of impulse".
|
| [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spons#Latin
| layer8 wrote:
| "Spontaneously" conflicts with "intentionally" in English.
| A spontaneous act is incompatible with having made a
| conscious decision about acting in that way. When something
| happens spontaneously, it happens by itself, without any
| intentionality.
| [deleted]
| iNic wrote:
| Spontaneously means for something to happen surprisingly or
| without an apparent cause.
| garvield wrote:
| Swedish "simplified" this problem by having the same word
| (spontan) mean both 1) Happens without apparent cause 2)
| Happens at short notice
|
| Context is your only clue to which meaning is intended...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Does it really tho? Can't come up with an example of the
| second meaning right now.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| I wonder why the author couldn't have used Fussganger with enough
| English context to explain the word, feels like the kind of thing
| I'd appreciate were I an expat reading the English language
| paper- "The Fussganger commuting on foot, to work or shop or
| visit friends" something like that.
| camillomiller wrote:
| Very nice overview of our Berlin patois.
|
| As an Italian living in Berlin, my favorite (which makes my
| Aussie partner roll her eyes) is saying something like "you are
| invited" when you pay for someone else's coffee or meal. It's a
| literal translation of "du bist eingeladen". My partner taught me
| "I shout you", but I also have the feeling that's pretty Aussie
| or Brit. Any non-native friend understands "I invite you", but
| would probably never get "I shout you".
| gattilorenz wrote:
| "I'm treating you" should he a proper translation of "offro io"
| jaclaz wrote:
| I always used (maybe wrongly) "it's on me" for "offro io".
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| "My shout" is typically how I would use it - something like
| "should we split the bill, oder?" "Nah, my shout"
| boffinAudio wrote:
| As an Aussie living in a German-speaking country, this just
| makes me hard cringe.
|
| Aussie vernacular (or even, Brit) simply shouldn't be
| propagated beyond the pubs.
|
| Lade deinen Freunden ein - nicht auf Sie Schreien, oida!
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > My partner taught me "I shout you"
|
| Yeah, as an American, I learned this from reading an Aussie web
| serial. In the states you'd say...uhh, "my treat" or "I'll
| cover you" maybe?
| ivanche wrote:
| Why would anyone use "downloaden" when there already is
| "herunterladen" is beyond me.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| ,,Downloaden" is still common because of its web context. But
| it is used interchangeably with ,,runterladen", especially if
| you use it as a separable verb.
| looperhacks wrote:
| The worst thing is someone trying to put it in past tense: For
| "herunterladen" it's easy: "herunter-ge-laden". For "download",
| the obvious choice is "downloaded", but instead some people
| prefer the weird hodge-podge of "down-ge-loaded"
| aix1 wrote:
| > For "download", the obvious choice is "downloaded", but
| instead some people prefer the weird hodge-podge of "down-ge-
| loaded"
|
| Duden lists both "downgeloadet " and "gedownloadet" (note the
| final "t"). It observes that in printed press texts,
| "downgeloadet" occurs more frequently, whereas in online
| texts "gedownloadet" predominates.
|
| I ran a full-text search of my entire Duden library for the
| word "downloaded" and it does not occur at all.
|
| <duden>
|
| downloaden: Das Verb downloaden >>herunterladen<< wird sowohl
| als trennbares Partikelverb wie auch als nicht trennbares
| Prafixverb verwendet. Insbesondere beim Partizip II finden
| sich beide Formen: Wir tragen stylische Jacken, haben Musik
| downgeloadet und den Ausflug gecancelt (Freie Presse). Hallo,
| mein Sohn hat ein Spiel illegal uber Torrent gedownloadet
| (finanzfrage.net). In gedruckten Pressetexten kommt
| downgeloadet haufiger vor, in Onlinetexten hingegen
| gedownloadet. Beim Infinitiv mit zu wird in Pressetexten
| meist die Form downzuloaden verwendet. Die finite Verwendung
| (z. B. ich loade down / ich downloade) kommt fast gar nicht
| vor, hier wird auf das Verb herunterladen ausgewichen: Er
| ladt sich spezielle Software aus den USA herunter (c't).
| Amerikanismen und Anglizismen (1.3), Partikelverb (2.4).
|
| </duden>
| seszett wrote:
| I wouldn't call it weird, I think it's common in most
| languages to use local conjugation rules even for foreign
| words.
|
| In French, even though "telecharger/telecharge" is most
| common and "download" is not really used, I would definitely
| say "je l'ai downloade" (and I would expect Quebecers to say
| mostly that). I have observed a tendency to avoid any
| conjugation ("je l'ai download") in younger tech workers but
| I don't know how representative my young colleagues are. It
| always sounds weird to me and sometimes leads to
| misunderstandings, in this case for example it's not obvious
| if the person is saying they "are downloading them" or they
| "have downloaded it".
|
| In Dutch there is no other word than "download" and it gets
| conjugated like other Dutch words,
| "downloaden/downloadde/gedownload". And I always feel like
| saying "gedownloaded", I probably do it half of the time. I
| thought it was because my Dutch is far from good, but maybe
| it's just a natural thing if it happens for native German
| speakers as well.
| kergonath wrote:
| > In French, even though "telecharger/telecharge" is most
| common and "download" is not really used, I would
| definitely say "je l'ai downloade"
|
| I think the OP's problem comes from "down" being used like
| a standard German prefix, which does sound really awkward.
| Foreign verbs in French are (almost?) always used like
| first-group regular verbs, the only alteration is the
| suffix. It feels less out of place.
| hnbad wrote:
| It gets worse. I don't know who started it (personally I
| blame Apple talking about its app store) but increasingly I
| see "laden" being used instead of "herunterladen". When used
| with "auf", it's usually about installing an app: "lade dir
| die App auf's Handy". But frequently it's used without any
| preposition to mean "download": "lade den Gratis-Background".
|
| I'd much prefer "downgeloaded" over this nonsense using
| "actual" German words incorrectly.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| So, this is how the German transition to Swedish grammar
| begins! Not the with a bang but with a _lade den
| gratisbakgrund_.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Downgeloaded is hilarious!
| allendoerfer wrote:
| > the obvious choice is "downloaded", but instead some people
| prefer the weird hodge-podge of "down-ge-loaded"
|
| You are using an English word in a German sentence, while
| they are (almost correctly, downgeloadet) applying the rules
| for words lended from foreign languages. So unless you are
| doing it for some particular effect, their sentence sounds
| funny, but is grammatically correct, yours only shows, that
| you know how to correctly speak English.
|
| Best examples of the same thing are the plurals of nouns
| ending in y: In a German sentence, the correct plural of
| _Story_ (capital S) is actually _Storys_.
|
| This _looks_ wrong to most Germans, too. So now you basically
| have to guess, whether you can impress your reader more with
| your advanced and wrong-looking German grammar knowledge, or
| whether you should play it safe and not risk to look like
| your English is rusty.
|
| Another great one are Deppenleerzeichen in English or
| English-German compounds, which basically no one gets right,
| even though the rule has no exceptions. Author of the article
| slipped one of those in, too.
| sneak wrote:
| Surely you mean downgeloadet? It's a weak verb. :D
|
| I know because ich habe gegooglet.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| I think it looks weird even in present tense: "Ich loade den
| neuen Gamingstreamvod down".
| jacooper wrote:
| Nobody uses it as as a separable verb
| hybridtupel wrote:
| Though there is herunterladen as a verb, there is no noun for
| download(s). "Herunterlad(s)" doesn't quite cut it. So because
| the term Download is already used as a noun why noy use
| downloaden as the verb.
| layer8 wrote:
| Two syllables less.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _The other day my friend S., an American Berliner, said that he
| had noticed his English-language social circle starting to use
| the word << spontaneously >> wrong. When Germans say they'll
| organise a social event spontan, they mean they'll work out the
| details at short notice. To socialise spontaneously, in English,
| means something rather different. But S. and I and our Neukolln
| friends have started using it in the sense of spontan. << OK cool
| text me Sunday and we'll choose a place spontaneously. >> This
| error is becoming part of our little language, our ultra-local
| dialect, just among us._
|
| On behalf of the entire Netherlands also using this wrong in the
| same way: what _does_ the Anglosphere consider correct usage of
| spontaneously then?
| dfawcus wrote:
| "on the spur of the moment"
| camillomiller wrote:
| For native speakers struggling with spontan, just translate it
| as "let's play it by ear"
| bregma wrote:
| For native English speakers, the German "spontan" translates
| as "improvised" rather than "spontaneous".
| ulfw wrote:
| Spontaneously in English usage is something done without pre-
| planning. Spur of the moment. As in "we spontaneously decided
| to drive to LA"
|
| In this German context it's more like "we will figure it out".
| As in, we plan to meet up yes, but whatever we will do we'll
| figure it out at that time. As in "we'll meet at 3, hang and
| figure out what we'll do. Maybe we'll go somewhere"
| lasfter wrote:
| Without any prior forethought. Immediately, on a whim.
|
| E.g., "We were in Vegas and saw an Elvis chapel, so we
| spontaneously decided to get married!"
|
| They were in Vegas without any plans of marriage, saw a venue,
| and decided immediately to marry.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| That seems like exactly the meaning that "spontan" has in
| Germany. It's like you plan to be in Vegas but there you
| spontaneously decide to get married. In German, you would say
| "Wir sind nach Vegas in den Urlaub geflogen und haben dort
| spontan geheiratet", so pretty much identical.
| zamnos wrote:
| That's different than vanderZwan's quoted description of
| what spontan means in the GP comment.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| Yeah. The article is confused.
|
| In its example deciding spontaneously is fine since you're
| not deciding what to decide but you're deciding that you
| will decide and then later you'll suddenly decide what to
| decide. The decision to decide was planned but the
| substance of the decision is yet to be decided.
| kergonath wrote:
| Something spontaneous is something that happens on its own.
| If you can say that you will do something, then it is not
| spontaneous. You cannot decide to do something spontaneous
| next week because then you've planned it. _Improvised_ may
| be better suited in that case, from what I understand. It's
| similar in French: "il y aura un rassemblement spontane"
| (there will be a spontaneous gathering) is nonsense. Even
| if it is understandable, it would label you as a foreigner
| or uneducated.
|
| Similar words generally have different scopes in different
| languages, or have more meanings in a language than in
| another. So you have to go further than the first meaning
| in a dictionary to make sure that a word is right in a
| given context.
|
| For the sake of the argument, if we assume that a word with
| one meaning in English has the same meaning in German plus
| another one, then using it with the second meaning in
| English is wrong. Native speakers are very sensitive to
| words being slightly wrong or use in slightly wrong places.
| It happens _all the time_ with foreign languages, and I am
| sure a native English speaker could point out one example
| in this very post.
| camillomiller wrote:
| "spontan" means in fact both spontaneously and, when used
| in a planning context, "let's play it by ear". So you
| plan to have lunch but keep it "spontan", meaning for
| example that you expect each other to plan closer to the
| date, maybe even the same date. It's a very Berlin thing
| I have to say. At the same time, spontan is even mocked
| to be a way to kindly part ways. You don't really want to
| have another date? Then at the end you don't make plans
| and say "lassen wir uns mal spontan treffen", meaning you
| won't probably ever meet again.
| [deleted]
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Definition: _a result of a sudden impulse and without
| premeditation_
|
| Spontaneously would be "Let's go do x right now at y place."
| not "Let's pencil this half-baked plan into our calendars and
| finalize some details at that time."
|
| In English, we have the abbreviation _TBD_ (to be determined)
| if you want to note that some details haven 't yet been
| finalized.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| We also have "to be determined" as an expression in Dutch,
| but in this particular context that would imply "to be
| determined later than now _but before we meet_ " to Dutch
| (and presumably German) ears.
|
| Other comments insist that something is only spontaneous if
| it was done without forethought. If we decide to not think
| about where to go until we meet, then have we given "where to
| go" any forethought? My gut feeling says we haven't in a
| meaningful sense. In a meta-sense perhaps, because the
| decision is to think about it when we meet.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| Y'all overthinking this. As I have written somewhere below:
|
| Words usually have multiple meanings, common ones and less
| common ones. "False friend" words usually swapped their common
| and rare semantics when entering a different language. In this
| case, the common meaning for "spontaneously" is "without
| direction" but not "on short notice". But it's the other way
| around in German. There actually is the German term "spontane
| Ordnung" ("order from chaos") using the English connotation in
| this case.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| The Germans even plan being spontaneous ;)
| iamsaitam wrote:
| This is the crux of the matter!
| yorwba wrote:
| Actually, as a native Berliner I'd never use _spontan_ when
| making plans. I guess this usage might be the result of
| talking about the future the way you 'd like to reminisce
| about it once it's become the past. "We spontaneously decided
| to sit down at a cafe to have some jelly doughnuts." sounds
| more interesting than "We couldn't be arsed to decide
| beforehand where to eat", IDK?
|
| But it's still understandable, same as when people call jelly
| doughnuts something other than _Pfannkuchen_ , so no big
| deal.
| wrp wrote:
| About 30 years ago, I met a vivacious German-Brazilian woman
| at a party who complained at length about how miserable it
| was visiting her relatives in Germany. This precise issue was
| her main complaint.
| derriz wrote:
| To my ear, to do something "spontaneously" means to do
| something without having planned it. So to make plans with
| someone to do something "spontaneously" sounds oxymoronish.
| MayeulC wrote:
| IDK, it sounds OK to me: you make plans for meeting, you'll
| decide what to do on the spot, "improvising".
|
| Meeting is definitly not done spontaneously. Neither is
| choosing the activity. The choice, however, may be
| spontaneous.
| [deleted]
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Spontaneity implies impulse, without forethought. You just
| wouldn't say something was something spontaneous if it was
| at all planned. Having a plan to do X, but working out the
| exact details later is not spontaneous unless there's a
| radical departure from the plan.
|
| Situation 1: On your way home from work you run into an old
| friend and decide to go to the nearest bar. In retrospect
| you would call that outing spontaneous - it was the result
| of unplanned, unexpected circumstances.
|
| Situation 2: You plan to meet a friend for a drink but
| haven't decided a location. The two of you meet up and
| decide to go to a particular bar, and then walk to that
| bar. There's nothing about this that is spontaneous,
| because each step involved some amount of forethought, even
| if there was an amount of "winging it" in meeting up before
| deciding where to get a drink.
|
| Situation 3: You plan to meet a friend for a drink, meet up
| and decide to go to a particular bar. On the way to the bar
| you spot a comedy club, and in the spur of the moment
| decide to go see a show instead of just grabbing a drink.
| This could be considered spontaneous because you had no
| pre-existing intention of going to see a comedy show, it
| just happened because of circumstance.
|
| In short, spontaneity sort of involves departure from the
| expected. If your _plan_ is to work out the details later,
| then it 's not spontaneous. It's only spontaneous if the
| event disrupts what you would have expected to happen.
| zvr wrote:
| You meet your friend at a pre-arranged time, walk down
| the street and spontaneously choose which bar to enter.
| kanbara wrote:
| good article, reminiscent of my own time in berlin never heard of
| berlinglisch, but lived through a lot of denglish i still find
| myself writing sentences like "that should do it, or?" and saying
| "alsoooo" and "na ja" way too much.
|
| never lived in neukolln so i missed out on the more hipster bits,
| and actually had to learn proper german eventually
| atoav wrote:
| Nice typography on the blog. I checked and the font family in
| question costs 820 CHW 9seems to be a swiss foundry)
| Biologist123 wrote:
| This is undoubtedly the best-written essay I've read this year.
| Fascinating too. Thanks to the poster and writer.
| fmeyer wrote:
| The author would be amused to learn that are dedicated
| dictionaries specific for "fremdworter": defining the word,
| indicating plura and informing gramatical gender so you can have
| the proper declensions and therefore correct gramatic for these
| borrowed words.
| thaliaarchi wrote:
| Do you have a favorite dictionary for Fremdworter?
| vintermann wrote:
| "All the lyrics of the stupidest possible songs" - I feel that
| one. When a store blares some incredibly vapid English pop lyrics
| I hardly even notice it, but when they do it in Norwegian, I flee
| the store to escape the vicarious embarrassment.
| Anthony1321 wrote:
| English is widely spoken and understood, even in tech-related
| environments, and that speaking German may not necessarily be an
| advantage in all situations.a moderate level of German
| proficiency is required for obtaining a permanent residence
| permit in Germany.
| AdamN wrote:
| There are 360MM people who aren't German, but are EU citizens
| and have the right to work in Germany without a permanent
| residence permit.
| Anthony1321 wrote:
| English is widely spoken and understood, even in tech-related
| environments, and that speaking German may not necessarily be an
| advantage in all situations. A moderate level of German
| proficiency is required for obtaining a permanent residence
| permit in Germany.
| nologic01 wrote:
| Global English is both a blessing and a curse. Never before could
| so many people communicate across linguistic divides (even if
| imperfectly). But the price is that never before was the rich
| collective cultural heritage under such threat.
|
| The two facets are deeply related. Like any lingua franca before,
| global English was invented to facilitate trade (economic
| exchange). The fact that it is English and not Basque or Suahili
| reflects the dominant economic power of the 20th century. But the
| peculiarity of the Anglo-saxon world that insists on
| financializing and commercializing everything (David Bowie
| securities anyone?) means that culture too became a tradeable
| cash crop. Pop culture became an exportable mass market product
| against which local traditions stood no chance.
|
| Thankfully it seems that the relative shallowness of commercially
| distributed culture (required if it is to reach global markets)
| limits its scope. Once local culture stops being seeing as an
| anachronistic relic but rather a source of wealth people embrace
| it again.
|
| So it may be possible to both have our cake and eat it. The story
| has not fully played out yet.
| derriz wrote:
| This is perhaps nitpicking but I wish non-native English
| speakers would not use the term "Anglo-Saxon" to describe
| anglophone or (better) English speaking countries. The term
| refers to the original north Germanic invaders of England and
| so has tribal (racial) connotations and is typically used in
| English to distinguish people on that basis. Many/most
| Americans (e.g. black or Native American) so not consider
| themselves "Anglo-Saxon" nor would most Irish people nor many
| non-white Australians, for example. Heck - lots of British
| passport holders would not identify as Anglo-Saxon. If you
| don't identify as Anglo-Saxon in an English speaking country,
| it's jarring to hear your native home country being referred to
| as "Anglo-Saxon". Just use "English speaking" which has no
| racial overtones and is both easier to understand and more
| precise.
| nirimda wrote:
| The bigger problem is that they've used "anglosaxon" to use
| what we would probably refer to as neoliberalism, acting as
| if a controversial policy setting is somehow cultural or
| racial. You can be a good anglosaxon who opposes
| neoliberalism. You can be a good English speaker and oppose
| neoliberalism - whether from the right or the left.
| nologic01 wrote:
| neoliberalism is a second-half of the 20th century
| phenomenon. The mass production and commercialization of
| culture significantly precedes that, it is more an advanced
| industrialization pattern (late 19th / early 20th), with
| the invention of photography, vinyl disks, movies etc.
| nirimda wrote:
| You look at the 19th century and instead of calling it
| neoliberalism, it was just called liberalism. It wasn't
| called neo- because they weren't trying to revive a
| discredited ideology, that's all. But it was still a
| contested position.
|
| Now you attribute the mass production and
| commercialisation of culture to a technical development:
| this is not completely correct (trinkets are as old as
| trade, but might not have always been so affordable), but
| it's much closer to the truth than some kind of false
| racial essentialism. There's nothing anglosaxon about it
| and there's nothing English-speaking about it.
| usrusr wrote:
| What happened to Anglo-American anyways? Substituting that
| term with the wildly incorrect but similar sounding Anglo-
| Saxon is quite literally a linguistic attack, unfortunately
| one that seems to occasionally get picked up by people
| meaning no harm because of how "more historic" is often
| conflated with "more sophisticated" even if it's the exact
| opposite when the assumed historic implications are wrong.
| nologic01 wrote:
| I stand corrected. Anglo-American would definitely be
| closer to the intended meaning. The term is only meant to
| be a rough placeholder for a set of norms and values anyway
| (and the corresponding economic systems and arrangements).
| It is neither geographically nor historically particularly
| sharp (has nothing indeed to do with race) and some non-
| English speaking parts of the world (e.g., the Netherlands)
| have been very much aligned.
| secondcoming wrote:
| > I wish non-native English speakers would not use the term
| "Anglo-Saxon"
|
| I quite like it and find it endearing. I'm definitely not of
| actual Anglo-Saxon stock but if non-English use that term
| then they're free to do so. Everyone knows what they mean.
| There are zero racial overtones associated with it.
| pge wrote:
| There are definitely racial overtones with the expression
| "Anglo-Saxon" as used in the US, at least in the last
| decade or so. This article is an example of some of the
| discourse around the term -
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/anglo-
| saxo...
| derriz wrote:
| Good for you. I mean that without sarcasm. I most certainly
| am not and don't consider myself Anglo-Saxon in any way
| although English is my mother tongue. I would consider
| referring to New Zealand (for example - not my home
| country) as "Anglo-Saxon" quite insulting to Maori.
|
| But I disagree with your last claim - there most certainly
| are racial overtones associated with it. Nobody would ever
| refer to Barack Obama, MLK, Katerina Mataira, Rishi Sunak
| as Anglo-Saxon simply because having white skin and being
| off English stock is understood as being implied.
| nunuvit wrote:
| [flagged]
| nunuvit wrote:
| As an American (with no Anglo-Saxon ancestry), I strongly
| disagree.
|
| We call them Germans, the Italians call them Teutons, the
| Spanish call them Alemanni. Those were all distinct peoples
| who came together along with others to call themselves Dutch.
| But we use Dutch to refer to different people, and Germanic
| to refer to an even wider group of people then all the
| aforementioned put together. I've never heard a non-joking
| complaint from any of them about that. Granted, they're
| saying Anglo-Saxon while speaking English, but it's their
| dialect of English.
|
| I also can't see why Englishspeaking is better than
| anglophone. Engl- comes from Angl-. -phone means -speaking.
| They're both English language words with identical meanings.
|
| You haven't mentioned Anglo by itself, but that's even more
| common. It means English, but disambiguates England and
| English people from their global influence. If English is
| fine, Anglo should be fine too. And if Anglo is fine, then
| Saxon and Jute and Frisian should probably be fine too. But
| it's not fine when you put them together?
|
| It's ridiculous to say that the actual self-given name of the
| predecessors of a language and culture has racial
| connotations.
| narcindin wrote:
| I use the term Anglosphere.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglosphere).
| type0 wrote:
| > Just use "English speaking" which has no racial overtones
|
| A lot of countries are English speaking. It's not racial,
| it's cultural overtones, but I agree that it sounds
| segregating to other.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| As a born-and-raised American who speaks English for a first
| language and is of mixed Semitic and Celtic descent, I
| endorse this.
| nologic01 wrote:
| This is from the English Wikipedia. [1] Nowhere in the
| article is there any hint that the term is perceived as
| problematic by native English speakers or that it has racial
| overtonens. If indeed there is a critical mass of people who
| feel offended by it, you know what you need to do :-)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_model
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The article about the actual people the anglo saxons does
| reinforce their point though.
|
| > The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a
| cultural identity. It developed from divergent groups in
| association with the people's adoption of Christianity and
| was integral to the founding of various kingdoms.
|
| > Catherine Hills summarised the views of many modern
| scholars in her observation that attitudes towards Anglo-
| Saxons, and hence the interpretation of their culture and
| history, have been "more contingent on contemporary
| political and religious theology as on any kind of
| evidence."
|
| > During the Victorian era, writers such as Robert Knox,
| James Anthony Froude, Charles Kingsley and Edward A.
| Freeman used the term Anglo-Saxon to justify colonialistic
| imperialism, claiming that Anglo-Saxon heritage was
| superior to those held by colonised peoples, which
| justified efforts to "civilise" them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons
| nunuvit wrote:
| [flagged]
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| As a native Urberliner I am both flattered and confused by the
| fact so many young Americans choose to live in my home town. I
| always wondered what makes it so attractive to you. I mean,
| winters are miserable, the city is ugly compared to many others
| in Germany, the people are rather not friendly to each other, the
| German language is difficult to learn, our history is
| troublesome, German immigration laws still difficult to surmount
| and Berlin is becoming very expensive to live in these days
| compared to 20 years ago.
|
| Edit: Perhaps I've got the typical love/hate relationship with my
| home town and don't see the forest for the trees we keep saying
| around here ;).
| Barrin92 wrote:
| it's the capital, large, already has a big international
| presence which tends to in turn attract more migrants and it
| has a great nightlife. The clubbing, music and arts scene in
| Berlin is vastly better than any other city in Germany in my
| experience. After that maybe Munich and Cologne? But given the
| size of our country there's surprisingly not that many cities
| that are fun.
| wink wrote:
| Depends on what you're looking for specifically but I'd rate
| Hamburg higher than both (I'm from Munich).
| pimeys wrote:
| I moved eleven years ago because I loved the party scene. Took
| me less than a month to find a huge apartment for under seven
| hundred a month from a nice neighborhood.
|
| Now I cannot move out anymore without doubling or tripling my
| rent. Also chose to study Rust instead of German, and been
| having so much work afterwards that I still haven't started my
| German studies. My husband speaks good German so that helps.
|
| The weather is awful, our landlord only listens to us if we sue
| him, the internet seems to always be bad and expensive without
| hope for any better, the parties are way too crowded and
| dealing with local bureaucracy is not a great experience.
|
| At least the rent is still cheap, if we don't move out. Lots of
| great art is happening every weekend. Nowadays you have some of
| the best restaurant scene going on in Berlin. The city is super
| relaxed about beer and weed, and the parks are great. It is
| easy to travel around the city with public transport, bike or
| quick rental cars. But now it is impossible to find apartments,
| all prices are going up and people are getting angrier every
| year.
|
| My feelings about Berlin are super mixed. But, at least one
| thing makes me a Berliner: I love to complain about the city.
| m_fayer wrote:
| I could have written this word for word. Maybe we should do a
| cranky-HNers-of-Berlin meetup.
|
| Some uneasy food for thought: we're not that far off from the
| brave lucky weirdos who moved to NYC in the 1970s and bought
| decrepit flats for a song, who now find themselves aged and
| bewildered among the billionaires, trying to afford
| groceries. Hopefully it won't progress quite that far, but
| NYC does show that capital isn't deterred by a little
| dysfunctional urban chaos.
| pimeys wrote:
| And more rich people from outside move in, everything
| changes into a more boring, but expensive new reality.
|
| At least Berliners revolt all the time and the government
| is so dysfunctional. Change in the city will take a few
| lifetimes. It might feel like a good idea to invest, but
| then you face the German and especially the Berlin
| bureaucracy and how slow it works. Everything takes forever
| to finish.
|
| I hope this will save Berlin from becoming the next New
| York. It still is so much more colorful than any other
| German city.
|
| P.S. the running joke amongst my friends is how CDU will
| finally make the ringbahn go on time...
| fransje26 wrote:
| > the internet seems to always be bad and expensive without
| hope for any better [ .. ] > dealing with local bureaucracy
| is not a great experience
|
| Living in Germany at more or less the furthest point possible
| from Berlin, I can still confirm those two points..
| [deleted]
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Uh, yeah Berlin is definitely a mixed bag. To me it's like a
| bigger Glasgow - a local epicenter for everything but has
| really unkempt and outright scary parts. It's sort of cheap
| but not really. Public transport is great but in every one
| seems to be someone smelly or just too weird. Maybe some kind
| of re-urbanization programme would help the city, so they
| would rethink some areas.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| I don't think the city needs, or wants, to be "helped".
| et-al wrote:
| - easy visa to obtain + fairly cosmopolitan city, but still
| cheaper than NYC//London/Paris
|
| - good location to visit other spots in Europe
|
| - probably already have a friend of a friend living there
|
| - the party scene
|
| Very few Americans intend on living in Berlin permanently,
| though. It's an extended study abroad session for them.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| The average stay IME is less than 18 months.
|
| If you stay a few years you will have made and lost touch
| with a good few friends from all over the world who will have
| come, partied hard for a year while working for Zalando or
| N26 or some shit, and fucked off.
| worklaptopacct wrote:
| As a new Berliner who immigrated here I can answer some of
| those:
|
| - Berlin has a reputation for its artsy party scene and lax
| enforcement of drug laws. People come here in their 20s to let
| themselves loose.
|
| - German universities are good quality and free for all
| (excluding the Semesterpauschale, but for my American or
| British friends this 300EUR is basically nothing in comparison
| - especially when you count in the public transport ticket that
| comes with your student card).
|
| - Immigration is hard, but you are entitled to permanent
| residency after you've contributed into the pension system for
| 5 years total within a continuous period of stay in Germany.
| People are willing to play the game with the Auslanderbehorde
| for some time if they know they will eventually become eligible
| for a permanent stay.
|
| - Free, good quality healthcare. Agreed that Berlin is not the
| representative example in Germany, but for many people coming
| from places where healthcare is unaffordable or outright
| dangerous (I'd never want to go to the hospital in my hometown
| again), this is a huge change for the better.
|
| - You can "get by" in Berlin with English only by now, although
| you'll be highly dependent on others. I know people who've been
| here for 5+ years and still struggle to order a beer. Not the
| best way of living, but definitely possible with so many other
| expats around.
|
| - Prices/earnings ratio is still better than in many places in
| the West.
|
| I chose the city myself because I already knew the language
| (mandatory second language after English at school in my home
| country), and I don't regret it. You can navigate around the
| coarse edges and live a good life in here.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| The healthcare is not "free" - health insurance is mandatory,
| and its quality varies massively depending on your insurer,
| the hospital/doctor you go to, etc.
| hnbad wrote:
| You're not kidding about lax enforcement of drug laws. In
| Kreuzberg I'd often see people obviously offering to sell
| drugs to passers-by as police cars would drive down the road
| practically next to them.
|
| On the other hand the police does occasionally decide to make
| a show out of its enforcement. I think it's more appropriate
| to call it "selective" than lax, at least by German
| standards.
| worklaptopacct wrote:
| It is a show, that's true. However at least in my circles
| drugs - or at least talking about them - are so normalized
| that I have to remember to censor myself whenever I meet my
| friends who don't live in Berlin.
| pimeys wrote:
| If you're a POC in the Kreuzberg parks, you will get
| searched by the police eventually. As a white kid going to
| clubs, it is very rare if you behave.
|
| Try to do the same in places like Munich. The police can
| stop your taxi, search your pockets and bag, and if finding
| some illegal substances you lose your driver's license and
| need to go to the court. This will (hopefully) change for
| weed this year...
| philippgerard wrote:
| You can get a PR faster (3y) if you're here on a blue card
| (which is likely true for all non-EU tech workers).
|
| Universities are not all free for non-EU citizens and some
| programs (generally English-speaking) Masters are (properly,
| not the 400EUR) paid for citizens and non-citizens alike.
| worklaptopacct wrote:
| Possibly, I'm a EU citizen myself. To be fair, in my home
| country courses taught in English had actual tuition even
| if it was a public university as well. Quite a few people
| who did not do well on their high school graduation exams
| would opt for those courses just for the prestige of
| studying at a public uni.
| kwanbix wrote:
| I now what you probably mean when you say "free", that you
| don't have to pay for it, but in reality, the universities
| are paid by everyone. Same for health care. I pay 400 euros
| per month. Of course, then I don't pay much else. But the
| cost is distributed, they are not "free". Maybe I am
| sensitive to the word, because in my home country, Argentina,
| populism has made people believe that everything has to be
| "free".
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| That's what the word "free" always means. Goods and
| services don't spontaneously materialize into existence.
| usrusr wrote:
| Yes, that's what "free" usually means. When people talk
| about free healthcare they usually don't mean that the only
| doctors should be hobbyists.
| worklaptopacct wrote:
| I mean, the money has to come from somewhere. Yes, in terms
| of government-provided services "free" tends to mean
| "socialized", but if I compare it to a market-driven
| healthcare system in the US where the majority of effort
| goes into creative billing to milk people's insurances, the
| overall lifetime cost of healthcare appears to be much
| lower. Especially that with German insurance, there's no
| copay for treatments, only for prescription drugs (and even
| then, it's between 5-10EUR per item, which can be further
| refunded if you are eligible).
|
| With universities, my argument for public funding is that
| it theoretically makes higher education accessible to
| people actually interested in the subjects, instead of
| people who can afford it and go for the prestige of it. I
| feel that elsewhere, big name universities serve more as a
| platform for networking rather than actual educational
| institutions; here, I do not even know which universities
| are more or less prestigious. A degree is a degree.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| In the UK we have the term "free at the point of service."
| The_Colonel wrote:
| That's a good point and we should differentiate. The taxes
| in Europe are very high for a reason.
| kergonath wrote:
| This is an accounting trick. Taxes do not cover the same
| services everywhere. Of course, taxes are higher in
| Sweden than in the US, but then you don't pay as much for
| your children's education or your parents' health care.
| So sure, the young and healthy people without children
| are better off in the US. Or the very wealthy who would
| nominally pay more taxes, though they have other tricks
| to use.
|
| On average it's much more nuanced, though. Comparing at
| one given level of service, public services are actually
| good value for money.
| worklaptopacct wrote:
| It's about mentality. Americans strive to attain the
| ideal of a "self-made man"; prizing work ethic and self-
| sufficiency. Germans (Europeans is too broad of a label)
| are okay with learning a trade and then doing their job
| consistently for the rest of their lives - that's why the
| employment conditions in Germany are tuned towards long-
| term, stable employment.
| mhh__ wrote:
| When I'm in Berlin (mainly talking to Americans) I get the
| impression that Berlin is especially great if you don't
| have need to have a job / pay tax
| kergonath wrote:
| I understand your perspective, but it is still mostly free
| for the people who need it (there are always fees and
| things so it is never _completely_ free, but it is still
| very cheap compared to the actual cost).
|
| In case of education, young student typically don't earn
| enough to pay income tax, if they have any salary or wages
| at all. To them, it's free. I now pay for them through my
| taxes and I am happy to because I was in their position and
| if uni wouldn't have been so cheap, I could not have
| attended. It's not free for the overall society, but it is
| free for those who use it.
|
| Same for healthcare. We all pay but when you need heavy
| surgery or long-term care that would cost tens hundreds of
| thousands of euros, it's close enough to free as to not
| make you bankrupt. Again, free-ish for those who need it.
| mmarq wrote:
| Berlin is still cheaper than other major European cities, is
| big enough to have lots of things to do, has a good nightlife,
| is very international (as in you can live there without knowing
| too much German) and, more recently, has developed a good tech
| scene.
|
| On friendliness, I found Berlin more welcoming than Hamburg and
| Munich. I felt people were friendlier in Koln (apart from the
| police that wanted to fine me for jaywalking), but it's much
| uglier than Berlin.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Bowie. It all goes back to Bowie. He's really the one who made
| Berlin so attractive to young Westerners.
|
| We think Berlin is a lovely city, with lots of tolerant people
| and a diverse set of cultures providing a rich and interesting
| outlook. Of course, the reality is, Berlin is as much of a
| shit-hole as any other major European city, but the fantasy of
| meeting an intelligent, inspired, enlightened 'newly free'
| young German thing in the streets of Berlin is just too
| enticing to a lot of us romantics.
|
| I live in Vienna. I love to visit Berlin just so that I can
| come home to Vienna and appreciate what I've got, even if the
| effect wears off after a week of interacting with Vienners ..
| type0 wrote:
| Do you find Berliners friendlier than Viennese?
| [deleted]
| ben_w wrote:
| I'm British by birth, I chose Berlin after Brexit because:
|
| 1. Friends here
|
| 2. Alternative countries were Luxembourg/Switzerland (more
| expensive); Canada (worse weather); Ireland (fear I might get
| blamed personally for the stupid done by British politicians,
| and the UK Gov was being loudly stupid about Ireland at the
| time); USA (weird culture, guns); Australia/New Zealand (too
| far from the old country to visit regularly); France (I find
| the language harder than German); Belgium (saw a police officer
| with a long barrelled gun at the train station and noped out of
| even visiting it during an Interrail exploration trip); or
| somewhere where I hadn't even started learning the language.
|
| That left Austria, which was an option, but Germany was bigger
| and I didn't want to risk having to move country for work
| before getting a permanent right to remain in the EU, which I
| think I need another 6-12 months for depending on what exactly
| counts.
|
| Alternative cities within Germany: many pretty options, but the
| tech scene is mostly here, and also the friends.
| wendyshu wrote:
| Why are you afraid of police with guns?
| skrebbel wrote:
| Come to Holland! It's basically Belgium with better
| frontyards and nicer cops.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Belgium wins on the beer and frites front though.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Belgian beer and frietjes are available in the
| Netherlands.
| fransje26 wrote:
| Belgium wins on the entire food front. By knockout.
| Maken wrote:
| But you can't compete with the rotten herring.
| ben_w wrote:
| I certainly considered the Netherlands... <<maar ik kan een
| beetje maar Nederlands spreken>> and I'm not even sure I'm
| supposed to use "maar" twice in that sentence or not.
|
| (Sadly I don't even get to use the wonderful <<Ik ben
| groot>>, because I'm only tall by non-Dutch standards).
| melvinmelih wrote:
| > <<maar ik kan een beetje maar Nederlands spreken>> and
| I'm not even sure I'm supposed to use "maar" twice in
| that sentence or not.
|
| "maar" can both mean "but" or "only" but you have to use
| it like this: <<maar ik kan maar een beetje Nederlands
| spreken>> literally translated as: <<but I only can speak
| a little Dutch>>. A native speaker would use it twice.
| ben_w wrote:
| Bedankt :)
| brnt wrote:
| > nicer cops
|
| Until you actually need them. They'll do everything they
| can to get out from doing any work. Especially if you are
| foreign.
| mettamage wrote:
| Not only when you're foreign. They have been useless so
| far in my life when I actually needed them
| brnt wrote:
| Same here. But the way they just this week talked a
| foreign friend out of filing a PV is absolutely shameful.
| They fully abuse they fact that she doesn't know her
| rights that well and isn't as likely to push as a Dutch
| person might. Disgusting.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Ah, but that is a common trope I think. Is there any
| state, where police is held in high regards (and shows
| competence?). My experience with police in germany was a
| time waste as well.
| allendoerfer wrote:
| Dear neighbor, with all due respect to Belgium, you are
| underselling your country.
| skrebbel wrote:
| And you yours!
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > Ireland (fear I might get blamed personally for the stupid
| done by British politicians, and the UK Gov was being loudly
| stupid about Ireland at the time
|
| Just to be clear, this basically would never happen with most
| people. Now, the North of Ireland (the part still in the UK)
| might be a little different, but most Irish (i.e. republic)
| people couldn't give two sh*ts about where you're from as
| long as you're good craic.
| dfawcus wrote:
| "as long as you're good craic."
|
| Now that is an interesting usage.
|
| I take it as using "crack" in an expansive sense of
| "company" rather than simply "news" or "gossip"?
|
| (Possibly something which may confuse non native speakers
| of English.)
| ben_w wrote:
| Comedian Dara O'Brien wanted to name one of his shows
| something like "Good craic", but was told he couldn't
| because the British would colossally misunderstand.
| dfawcus wrote:
| Misunderstand in what manner? The written form, the
| spoken form, or some minor meaning?
|
| The spoken "crack" has currency from around Yorkshire /
| Lancashire north, meaning "news" / "gossip" /
| "comversation", it'd not be confused.
|
| South of there is isn't so common. Many folks in the
| northern part recognise the Irishised spelling, but not
| all.
|
| Have a read of the first paragraph of this, which (as far
| as GB goes) is a fair summary:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craic
| ben_w wrote:
| Misunderstood as the homophone crack is type of cocaine.
|
| Either that or butt checks, which are also
| euphemistically someone's "crack", but the implication I
| took from it being disallowed was the former.
| ben_w wrote:
| I assume people are much the same everywhere -- 80%
| fantastic, 10% arseholes, 10% lizardman constant.
|
| But with headlines like this, and a somewhat-posh English
| accent, I didn't want to risk either of those 10s:
| https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/fury-at-torys-call-to-
| th...
|
| In retrospect it would've been fine, but I had to guess in
| advance the UK wasn't going to actually try that, and they
| kinda have a history there...
| secondcoming wrote:
| Mate, I wouldn't worry about it. In Ireland you'd be
| fine, no different from someone in Scotland ranting at
| you about the Tories.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Our largest immigrant group in Ireland is Brits.
|
| Nobody gives a fuck.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Australian here, living in Austria (lived in Germany for a
| few years too).
|
| You're missing out. Austria is so close to so many wonderful,
| foreign things. In Germany its very easy to introvert and
| never leave the village, mentally or physically - in Austria,
| its the same - but you can drive an hour in pretty much any
| direction and get the cold culture shock you need to make you
| appreciate what you've got.
|
| A stint to Italy or Czech Republic or Hungary or Slovakia or
| Croatia for an afternoon will shake your bones loose of their
| cultural chains.
|
| >Tech scene in Germany
|
| Don't underestimate the Ruhrpott. Many ex-pats in Germany do,
| but its a mistake. The tech scene in Essen/Bochum/Duesseldorf
| is pretty hot, too ..
| pjmlp wrote:
| If you travel to NRW, you will get the special forces police
| units using those kinds of guns on train stations, specially
| in days where critical football matches are taking place.
| aix1 wrote:
| > If you travel to NRW
|
| North Rhine-Westphalia? (Don't live in Germany, took me a
| while.)
| hnbad wrote:
| Yes. The official/technical abbreviation is apparently NW
| because German _Bundesland_ abbreviations are two
| letters, but colloquially (and even formally on most
| occasions) everyone calls it NRW.
|
| Incidentally when GP said the police "use" the guns at
| train stations, what they meant was "carry". The German
| "einsetzen" is more ambiguous about whether something is
| part of the loadout or actively used (I guess "deploy" is
| the closest equivalent). I'm fairly certain the guns
| aren't actually loaded (they're just too big to holster)
| but at times the _Bundespolizei_ (the federal police
| responsible for train stations and ports of travel) will
| indeed carry H &K machine pistols.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Those MP5's they (some German cops) carry are loaded.
|
| Negligent discharges happen every now and then. Usually
| only injuring other cops.
| usrusr wrote:
| That one. It's the only Bundesland commonly referred to
| by an acronym and I guess we are lucky that the English
| toponym still matches.
|
| The other three-letter candidate (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern)
| is more commonly just shortened to Mecklenburg which
| isn't an option for NRW because the non-Westphalia part
| is the more important by far but "north-Rhine" wouldn't
| really work as a standalone name.
|
| Acronyms for our various Saxonies would be rather awkward
| because both prefix-Saxonies would collide prominently
| with an acronym already taken by nazism.
| wink wrote:
| I'd say you see RLP in written form from time to time,
| but yeah, not "commonly". Also BaWu isn't an acronym but
| you're right, compared to other countries we're not
| really big on abbreviating the states it seems.
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| > Belgium (saw a police officer with a long barrelled gun at
| the train station and noped out of even visiting it during an
| Interrail exploration trip);
|
| Sounds like you visited not too long after the Paris and
| Brussels terrorist attacks. I've seen the same in London at
| times though.
| ben_w wrote:
| Just before the Brexit referendum vote, so yes.
| wink wrote:
| Same with the security conference in Munich and other
| days, so not sure that's a perfect reason for Germany per
| se, but good if you like it :P
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| > USA (weird culture, guns)
|
| I was at a book reading in a cafe in Berlin once and there
| was some sort of loud noise outside, firecrackers I believe.
| Some people flinched, some didn't. The reader said something
| to the effect of "watch the Americans in the room, when they
| duck, you duck too".
| Symbiote wrote:
| > Belgium (saw a police officer with a long barrelled gun at
| the train station and noped out of even visiting it during an
| Interrail exploration trip)
|
| You know St Pancras has the same?
|
| Although maybe you'd also exclude London on the same basis.
| bolanyo wrote:
| Police with guns are extremely rare everywhere in London,
| although yes, we do have some cosplayers in big stations
| and outside Parliament.
| ben_w wrote:
| It was bigger and scarier-looking than the ones I've seen
| anywhere in the UK, and if I'm now actually remembering
| those of St. Pancras rather than just imagining some, those
| were small compared to the ones in the airports.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Did you never consider Sweden or Spain? I see these two being
| popular with tech expats too.
| ben_w wrote:
| Language barrier in both cases. Since moving to Berlin I've
| picked up tourist-grade Spanish -- without looking at
| Google Translate, "Hola, una mesa para dos personas, por
| favor. Un hamburgar vegetario y un cafe. Gracias." -- but
| not enough to function outside a holiday.
|
| If I even know a single word of Swedish that's not a loan-
| word, I'll be surprised.
| robin_reala wrote:
| If you can speak English and German you're 80% of the way
| towards Swedish, honestly. "Hej! finns det plats for tva?
| En hamburgare och en kaffe, tack."
| dsego wrote:
| Was it possibly the Antwerp train station?
| ben_w wrote:
| I think it was Brussels; I really need to finish turning my
| notes from the trip into blog posts, given it was 2016...
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| That sounds like typical German pessimism. Rents are up but
| compared to some other major cities around the world? And why
| would the "troublesome" part of our long and rich history
| prevent people from moving here in 2023? Berlin is safe,
| cycleable, in the EU, the language not an order of magnitude
| harder than, say, French and people are speaking English
| anyway.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| > typical German pessimism
|
| Yes, it is. What shall I say. :)
|
| Typical Berlin phrase BTW: ,,Kann man nich meckan".
|
| That's about the highest praise you can expect from an
| Urberliner.
| ben_w wrote:
| > ,,Kann man nich meckan".
|
| > That's about the highest praise you can expect from an
| Urberliner.
|
| That's the other reason I picked DE over US: British _don
| 't_ say everything is awesome all the time ^_^
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| The highest culinary praise reserved for the finest of
| treats is famously "Kannste essn", lit. "you can eat that".
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| ,,Bleibt drinnen" is quite colloquial, too. ;)
| mejutoco wrote:
| I moved to Berlin about 10 years ago. In my opinion Berlin was
| attractive because:
|
| - Friends and people from all over the world
|
| - Culturally and historically interesting: clubs, events.
|
| - Capital of the biggest economy in Europe
|
| - Cheaper (not anymore). Also, clubs because of the particular
| history.
|
| - Slight barrier to entry. A bit of German is a higher barrier
| to entry, compared to English speaking options.
|
| Having said that, I find people friendlier in Koln, although
| this has improved in Berlin. Also the payment with card has
| improved in the last 10 years.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| As a long time expat living in Berlin, it's actually a nice
| place to live. The city actually has some charm compared to
| other cities in Germany and it's never boring here. I've spent
| some time in Munich as well and that caused me to seriously
| wonder what else there was to do after a few weeks. Not an
| issue in Berlin. And I've been here for fourteen years.
|
| German is completely optional here. I know that's not
| appreciated by the natives. But I don't actually deal with a
| lot of those. Almost everyone I know in Berlin is from outside
| Berlin. And that includes most Germans. A lot of those move to
| Berlin for many of the same reasons that foreigners do that. I
| do meet actual real Berliners once in a while and by and large
| they are actually quite friendly. But the fact is that they are
| a minority in this city.
| drBonkers wrote:
| I hear it has the best night life, second to Seoul.
| randomluck040 wrote:
| Depends on what you prefer I guess. Also I'm not sure if I'd
| relocate just for nightlife alone.
| zamnos wrote:
| Staying out from Thursday or Friday evening until Monday
| morning is not for everybody, but Berlin's a city where
| that's eminently possible.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I think one major plus compared to US is how easy it is to
| get around. The trains still run (at least weekend nights),
| and if you're partying on a day they do not they start up
| fairly early, so partying til first train is alright.
|
| The Uber rides in a city in America at night can get more
| expensive than the total drink bill I remember spending out
| in Berlin.
| et-al wrote:
| I have an acquaintance that moved there for the electronic
| music scene, DJ'd regularly at Berghain, and has an
| Essential Mix. She probably would not have been that
| successful had she stayed in SF.
| tobiasbischoff wrote:
| keep asking myself the same but web / tech employers are
| attracting all the talent there.
| CalRobert wrote:
| As a native English speaker this is somewhat comforting since it
| means I can get around easily, but my family is planning to move
| to the Netherlands this summer and one thing that strikes me is
| how hard it will be to learn Dutch when virtually everyone seems
| to speak excellent English. I was looking for a summer camp for
| my daughter and was a little dismayed to realize they were an
| English-only summer camp - to help Dutch kids learn English.
| Hopefully she'll become fluent anyway (she's only 5).
| AdamN wrote:
| I met a Dutch woman expat and she didn't even teach her son
| Dutch - just totally migrated to English. The husband is
| British and they live in Germany.
| anthk wrote:
| At least both languages are Germanic. Spanglish from low cultured
| Hispanics in the US makes my eyes hurt.
| sneak wrote:
| As an American living in Berlin since 2008, this weird hybrid
| language is now my brain's default mode, and I have to explicitly
| code switch to pure English or pure German whenever speaking to
| someone not bilingual in both.
|
| My non-german-speaking partners now all have learned a few dozen
| german words and expressions as a result.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-27 23:02 UTC)