please be advised that speaking german properly is super fucking hard compared to learning many other languages, and you don't need german in germany for the most part.
when I'm in germany I speak my shitty, broken german and they respond to me in english
My favorite phrase to use in all foreign countries is "Please forgive me, I am American." It gets a laugh out of almost everyone even when terribly butchered in any language and most people will then attempt English for you.
Except Parisians, who do not care. I think they would prefer I point and grunt to trying either English or my awful French.
Compared to other languages... If those other languages are Romantic, North Germanic, Dutch, Afrikaans, or Frisian. A majority of other languages are typically considered more difficult for people who only speak English.
That being said, I found Russian way easier than German at first, but that quickly stops being the case... German shares a lot of semantic/syntactic similarities with English so you can reasonably assume that a lot of German constructions will easily translate to English, for Russian though it's more unfamiliar and you have to put more effort into thinking Russian-y. The main thing that made German way harder at first is German declensions... ugh... Russian has a complex declension system but it's extremely regular, while German declensions are pretty irregular and the declension of articles is especially bad because their forms overlap a lot. Adjective declension is similarly bad. German word order also fucked with me a lot but it's decently rigid so you get it quickly.
The noodles are just my signature. So just ignore the noodels. They have nothing todo with the meme directly. I just place them on the head of whoever in the meme is me.
I was thinking about it for a while. The posts encouraged me. The prospect of possibly wanting to leave the US in the next year or two depending on things also makes me want to learn a second language.
I'd be interested in learning, because German is the biggest contributor to modern English along with French. Of course the split happened long, long ago, but still...
It would have to be a couple years though, after I (knock on wood) am done getting to about B2/C1 on French.
German is the biggest contributor to modern English
Common misconception. English and German are West Germanic languages with a common ancestor, whose ancestor in turn is common among Norwegian, Gothic, Saxon, etc etc. The only influence German has now is the odd loanword, like Weltschmerz and Schadenfreude. English loaned a lot of words from French a thousand years ago because Norman was the substrate language in England a thousand years ago and is still a sort of prestige language. Dutch is much the same but you never hear anyone say that.
I was learning it (super slowly, thanks ADHD) anyway, but it was when I finally read a 3-sentence long post and could read 90% of it without really thinking about it that I felt I was progressing at all
So of course I haven't practiced in weeks now, fuuck
I find it hard to imagine learning a language that I don't foresee myself using at least once a week IRL
I've tried learning French and German but honestly I very rarely encounter speakers of those languages and can count on one hand the number that didn't also speak English.
I've been learning Spanish though for nearly a year to great success.
Du muss nicht unbedingt sprechen um eine Sprache zu benutzen. Du kannst auch z.b. Medien anschauen auf der Sprache, oder lesen. Das letzte Mal, dass ich jemanden zum Englisch sprechen hatte war auf einer Hochzeit, ist also auch eigentlich sehr selten.
This is why I struggle with the languages I want to learn. No use for them in the fay to day though I am sure I could find more German speakers than Scottish Gaelic
Yeah. Once I overheard someone chatting behind me while in a train. I knew it was in German because I've learnt some long time before. It was the cutest (presumably romantic) conversation I've ever even though I didn't understand much. Before that I've always thought French sounded the nicest, but that conversation shattered my belief.
A while later, I went to Germany to visit friend. While at a museum I read out loud some descriptions on items there. He told me I spoke like in films, even like Hitler. Hearing him talking with family, it was very casual and there was no sudden change of intonation like in movies. I somehow realized stereotype in movies ruined my perspective on the language.
I know some German (B1), but it's been a few years since I had classes and those posts help me brush up my German (though they are a bit advanced for my level).
Trouble with ich_iel is that they usually translate English words literally into German. Even names or English words that exist in German. The worse the translation the better.
I lived in Germany from '83 to '94, but I never did learn to speak much of it since I went to American schools. Apparently most Germans speak decent English now? That would have been nice back in the day!
English is on the curriculum of all schools as a mandatory subject, but learning it in school =/= speaking proficiency. That usually comes with a ton of practice, and not all that many of us are exposed to English on a daily basis, even less so in lower income strata.
I've just read that a lot lately, that most people speak English relatively proficiently there. Back in the 80s and 90s it was somewhat rare. Possibly the internet helped a bit.
I've been learning German for a few years (very slowly) now with Duolingo. I see a lot of Spanish posts too (especially on masto) and have been enjoying how the fediverse encourages me to work on my languages.
I do the same thing with my Pixel, but I assume it's all Android phones. I just hold down the power button on my phone for a second then click Translate. It works pretty well for most of the German memes.
Lemmy tags all posts with the language they are written in. Most clients filter any posts not of your selected languages by default. Hence, there is a good chance you never notice German posts.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that setting. Since that specific setting says, "If you deselect Undetermined, you will not see most content," I just assumed most people didn't select a language when they post. Since I still have "Undetermined" selected, I'd assumed I'd still see some foreign language posts.
I use catodon.social and it's got a ton of German speaking people, and while Catodon is very very well designed it doesn't have a translation option yet.
Maybe I am missing a joke but that sounds very little like high german and more like a heavy accented or dialect version like swiss-german or austrian-german.
Maybe because 4 years aren't much? It's nice to be fluent in foreign languages, and known to be good for your brain (delaying / preventing Alzheimer's for example)