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Germany
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I may be working there for 6 months - Do they speak much English over there and what's the best way of learning basic lingo, before I actually get there?
If it's anything like Holland- which is very close - it will be piss easy as they all speak English.
I'm so excited if I do get to go, excellent money, opprtunites and right near my fave city Amsterdam!
If it's anything like Holland- which is very close - it will be piss easy as they all speak English.
I'm so excited if I do get to go, excellent money, opprtunites and right near my fave city Amsterdam!
Post edited by JustV on
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Germany is a very big country, it isn't all near Amsterdam. In fact the best cities, Munich and Hamburg, are nowhere near.
I'd just get a phrase book for difficult stuff. i've always found german very simple to pick up.
it really does put shame to our education system when you go to places like germany and holland where they can carry out in depth conversations in english but we cant even do the simple stuff in most cases. oh well.
I can order a beer and a wiener schnitzel, I don't need owt else:D
I think chinese would be a good one these days, some schools are starting it, other than that i think german and french which are what most school children learn, but maybe start earlier.
i can actually order beers in most languages, well places ive been too.
Young people in pretty much any part of Germany will speak English, though obviously some a lot better than others. I always found they are extremely eager to befriend and help out English speakers (it will help that you're an attractive young laydee, of course ) as they're all really up for improving their language skills -- though that's not exactly great if you're trying to get some language proficiency yourself!
But yeah, you'll pick up the basics easily enough if you make a wee bit of an effort, and there are millions of different tape/book language courses. Different people are going to recommend different ones, so I'd say probably best just to have a look 'round Waterstones or similar and see which one takes your fancy... or ask the staff on that floor for a recommendation. The BBC's language site has a good basic range of reading, listening and writing activites too for you to test yourself.
How exciting
English for a long time has been considered the universal language. It's a throwback to the old Empire days. And the world's biggest economy speaks English as well, the markets are all English language based. Go to the EU however you'll see that all the major documents are in either English/French/German.
ETA:Why would we want to learn other people's language when we can communicate with them perfectly with our own?
The only problem I found was with the family I stayed with in Elmshorn, Schleswig-Holstein in North Germany where the family I stayed with were originally Polish and the father couldn't speak very good German, let alone English. Their son however was fluent in Polish, German, English, French and was learning Latin and Russian.
:yes:
Where abouts are you staying? I used to live in Germany near Holland :hyper:
english is part of basic school teachings in germany and you should be able to have no problems at all talking in english with anyone, let alone in business/hostels etc.
People in german who aren't used to speak much english pronounce the words in their german pronounciation which sounds hilarious and stupid but you'll get by.