Comfort Speaking German (Part 1)
I'm not especially extroverted. I don't like talking to strangers and I tend to get very uncomfortable and embarrassed when I'm in public and I can't figure something out and I have to... *shudder* ask someone for help.
However, I've noticed something since living in Germany: when I go back to the US, I feel much more empowered to have those kinds of interactions than I used to. I'm a native English speaker and so, when I find myself in places where the default/official/presumed language is English, I feel like, hell yeah, I got this. I can ask for directions or recommendations or even make small talk, if I'm so inclined!
Lots of people speak English in Berlin and I could go off on a tangent about English as the language of tourism and how prevalent monolingualism is among native English speakers, but that's not the point I'm trying to make today. Yes, lots of people in Berlin speak English (and it's actually a pretty difficult place to learn German, as a result), but lots of people in Berlin will also give you a hard time for not speaking German. Just like the US has "this is America, speak English" assholes, Germany has "this is Germany, speak German" assholes. The difference is that the Germans will use English when they tell you that you need to learn German.
Okay, I ended up on a bit of a tangent just then, despite my best efforts... The point is that yes, English speakers can get by fine in Berlin and in lots of places around the world, but it can be embarrassing, uncomfortable, and tiring to navigate those interactions - at least for me, an anxious introvert.
On our road trip, E and I spent several days in countries where French was the default language - France, obviously, but also Belgium and Luxembourg. Dutch is also an official language in Belgium, but "bonjour" seemed to be the preferred opener most places we went in Brussels. E and I don't speak French so we did a lot of "bonjour/bonsoir, parlez-vous anglais?" or "pardon, je ne parle pas français." We might throw in a "deux croissants s'il vous plait," if we felt ambitious, but then we would undoubtedly be stumped when asked any follow-up questions.
Everyone, especially in Paris, was astonishingly nice to us, despite our horrible French accents. This was also my experience when I visited Paris a decade ago with my mother. I think putting in a little bit of effort to start the interaction in French and looking appropriately apologetic that you can't complete the interaction in French goes a long way towards endearing people to you.
But I've digressed again, and I'm out of time to work on this newsletter today, so, you'll just have to check back tomorrow for part 2 where I actually make it to the topic that this newsletter was meant to be about: comfort speaking German.
There was no new newsletter yesterday because it was a holiday here in Germany (Easter Monday) and I decided to take the day off. Just fyi, in case you were wondering why my thoughts didn't appear in your inbox yesterday.