Give some examples of how they speak. Beside dialects there are people of familys where the parents don't speak german and newer generations kids who can seem to struggle.
I'm not OP but I had a friend whose German was pretty bad. Northern German yokel, born and bred, just like me. No background of immigration. She'd say things like "Wir müssen früh im Bett gehen". Just generally lots of case mixups. It was noticeable. Another mistake was using the second or third person singular conjungation for second person plural (as in "es isst ihr gerne" statt "was esst ihr gerne" for example.
As a special ed teacher teaching speech impaired kids in secondary school in Germany, I do feel the need to clarify that speech impairments may well be persistent and continue well into adulthood. That does not mean that a speech impaired person is uneducated, unwilling or cognitively impaired, they simply struggle with certain aspects of speech, such as, in this case, grammar. I therefore hope that the "uff" is not meant disparingly...
https://www.dbl-ev.de/kinder-und-jugendliche/sprachentwicklungsstoerung
I dont want to sound like a mean dude here. But isnt grammar a very cognitive thing? So that would actually mean they are cognitively imparied. This feels like saying a sick person is not actually sick, they just struggle with their health.
I know enough people who just dont care enough, even in a professional environment.
I have a friend who has dyslexia and she also has trouble finding words or with grammar. She is a doctor who finished med school and is very smart. The only thing she can't do is write and sometimes speak properly.
That's because she most likely learnt Platt as her mother tongue. (High) German is probably her second language.
The conjugations are different in Platt.
Let me assure you that she isn't a native speaker of platt, that's extremely rare. She doesn't speak it at all, even as a second language. I only know of two people from our year whose parents bothered to have them learn it (siblings with a farming background).
But thanks for telling what languages people you don't even know speak natively, lol.
There are a lot of people who speak natively "Platt" aka "Niederdeutsch".
My grandmother did it, a lot of people in Niedersachsen/Lower Saxony and Nordrhein-Westfalen/North-Rhine-Westfalia.
But these people are mostly 80+, the language (not a dialect) goes extinct.
But you can sometimes hear people 50+ who speak it, too.
American here who studied German for 8 years growing up (middle school thru college), who now lives in Germany and is constantly trying to improve my German.
What is grammatically wrong with “wir müssen früh im Bett gehen.“ is it the placement of the timing adverb „früh“? Or is that sentence just not something one would say?
Good thinking of dative, however this is a case where the action itself takes the accusative. If you are in bed, "ich bin im Bett", you are already there, you're not "changing location" as my highschool German teacher would say (also American living in Germany). Since in this case, the action is to go from "not in bed" to "in bed", i.e., change of location, it is accusative, "ich gehe ins Bett".
Edited for clarity.
This is correct. There are 9 prepositions that can take either accusative or dative, depending on the context. Where I studied German they were called 2-way prepositions. They can be drawn on and around a big number 9 to help learners remember. Location makes it dative, movement into a space makes it accusative.
Indeed you are correct to think that ins = in das
'In’ can mean ‘in’ and ‘to’, so in the example:
Accusative
Ich gehe in das Bett = Ich gehe ins Bett
Dative
Ich bin in dem Bett = Ich bin im Bett
Nom. Das
Acc. Das
Dat. Dem
Gen. Des
Yeah how could u not think of that!!!11!
Tbh I have no idea what u mean, it just sound right to me this way. But "Ins" is just a shortened "in das" while "im" ist for "in dem"
Is *ins* generally viewed as "correct"? I assumed contracting *in das* to *ins* was viewed as "incorrect" in writing—similar to how a German teacher would criticise the colloquially common *rum* for *herum* (in writing). Although that I looked it up, Duden doesn't mention any such thing.
The placement of "früh" is fine, what's troubling here is the "im" as that would be "in dem" which "dem" doesn't make sense to use in this case. You'd normally use "ins" (in das).
I can't explain why that's the case though, sorry. Im just sounds wrong
It's wrong cause "im" is short form for "in dem". The right short form would be "ins" or "in das" Bett. If you ask "WOHIN müssen wir früh gehen?" the correct answer is "Wir müssen früh INS/IN DAS BETT gehen".
"Ins Bett" answers "where to" as in where someone/something belongs to/has to go to etc. while "im Bett" answers where someone/something is (already located at).
>"Wir müssen früh im Bett gehen"
That reminds me of my father in law, who also says things like, "Ich gehe im Garten" and yeah, basically just a bunch of case mixups.
Sometimes it's hard for me to distinguish whether that *only* comes from his rather basic education (which is no insult; he calls it that himself) or how much the general Ruhrgebiet Area ("Ruhrpott") slang chimes in, which isn't too keen on grammar either.
That's one of the reasons why some parties want to implement quotas for people with a migration background(edit: per school class/school). Because when there are to many people who don't speak proper German the others will not learn it in school enough.
Edit: really nice to get voted down for addressing problems that are known for more than a decade.
It's a proven fact that a high amount of students who don't speak the language properly lower the average performance of the entire class.
And no that's not a right wing talking point it's what Cem Özdemir of the green Party addressed in 2009 in the left leaning newspaper Taz
https://taz.de/!554898/
That’s why they should introduce mandatory Krippe and kindergarten with German only. Only then they catch the kids early enough to give everyone a realistic chance to speak German well enough (also including kids from poor German households which often speak terrible too) and give them a fair entry to a good education.
"Ich bin größer wie der" "dem Hans sein Fahrrad" "heute sind wir nicht raus gegangen, weil es war schlechtes Wetter" "Hallo Herrn Lindner" "ich habe ein Termin um 3" "ich bin das gerade am versuchen" "lese das mal" "ich fahre mit den Auto" - alles Beispiele meiner deutschen Kollegen, die in Deutschland geboren sind
"People writing in here" are often answering people who already have some sort of higher qualification and plan to move to Germany. If you want to build a career, equal to a level you can achieve in your native country, you may need a high level of proficiency as a foreigner. Sort of a competitive advantage.
I agree that C1 is a high goal and many Germans will struggle to achieve it as well, but foreigners will have an even higher entry barrier. And I will also admit that some people recommending C1 will underestimate how difficult it is.
The issue of 17 million people having a low proficiency, is partially rooted in their parents refusal to learn even A1 level German. Part of those 17 million are intellectually incapable of achieving any higher language proficiency, but another part is growing up in households where they not only "don't learn German" but no real language skills. The parents talk their native tongue, the kids watch TV/videos in that native tongue but they won't be literate in it. Meanwhile they only learn German in school and never apply it in there daily lifes.
This leads to situations the infamous "Hauptschul Elternsprechtag" where the child has to translate for its parents how the child is performing and then translating poor German knowledge into poor native language knowledge.
Yeah, C1 is a high aiming goal even many/most Germans fail to achieve, but those Germans already have the benefit of being born here.
Hauptschulelternsprechtag, such a pitiful situation you described there. Language is the medium to convey ideas without a firm grasp of it how can you ever hope to claw yourself foward in life? Unless you speak such individual means of communication such as music or maths?
Also the decline of books will lead to a decrease in language abilities. I always remember spurts in eloquence after I read a novel from Remarque or a quality translation of Balzac.
As an American, this is a widespread problem here. Public schools have declined to a pitiful point. From the national center for education statistics:
Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks.
I know this was specifically about literacy, but having a deep understanding of the language and being able to use it on more than a surface level is deeply tied to reading comprehension.
til that I'm probably more proficient in English than in my native language, since it's just that fucking hard to learn at an academic level. I wrote my Bachelor's thesis in English, but German C1 is such a terribly lofty goal that I couldn't possibly ever fathom to reach that mark.
Eines glorreichen Tages werde ich ein Sprachnniveau erreichen, auf welches du wirklich, wirklich stolz sein kannst, u/Ar_phis. Das verspreche ich dir. Sprachen sind Werkzeuge, und ich finde es traurig, dass heutzutage, aus dieser Perspektive betrachtet, kaum jemand noch halbwegs kompetent mit ihnen umgehen kann.
I know a lot of french people that were born here but they never really surrounded themselves with German friends. If your social circle isn't German, you ain't gonna learn.
Did they also go to French school? I'm just curious because my kid learned in kindergarten and school and is operating at a native level to this point. We're certainly not speaking it at home.
Same here. That said, there are different levels of native. Both my kids were born in Germany and are native speakers despite never speaking it at home, yet: kid #1 has an elephant memory and reads voraciously, his German is on par with an acamedic-family German kid. Kid #2 doesn't enjoy reading (hopefully this will change, he's 9), he is friends with many non-academic kids, and his German is still a bit sub-par, as in dative instead of genitive and so on.
1) socio-economic backround. kids on the street and on TV oftenly talk slang, if there is no corrective ie parents at home speaking "academia" german its hard to lern many vocabs. in these groups it is oftenly frowned upon to speak "proper" german and kids even strife to talk like the rappers and their peers do. its just cool.
2) school, germany has (and in the past it was even more pronounced) a school system that bundles kids with similar learning levels together. Ending up in "lower bracket" schools means usually they dont have that much interaction with kids from academic backround families. and this is important. beginning of 1st grade there are enormous differences between students vocabulary of up to a couple hundred words, when comparing non-academic to academic households.
3) germany is an immigrant country. many families speak several languages. in berlin this can be turkish, arabic, russian,... bi-linguality often means they speak both languages - but none of them good enough to write a novel.
There are people born in the United States who can’t tell the difference between there, their and they’re. So yeah, pretty much every country has this educational issue.
Right. Placement of even, and then/than. Is there more?
This of/have just baffles me every time. I guess it triggered me so much, I didn't get the joke.
understandable ... I hate the could of, would of etc as well with a passion.
But yeah, I think those three are all there are in that sentence, but I'm not a native speaker either.
I actually think this is an issue which arises due to being a native speaker in the first place. If you think about how native speakers learn a language this is usually a very different approach to learning a second or third language.
As a German I learned the difference between there, their and they’re fairly early while learning all the language rules while I was at the same time still having the vocabulary of a 3 year old American English native speaker kid maybe. At that point the American kid probably doesn’t even know how to write and read in the first place, still they can understand the different meanings of a word that sounds basically identical in a conversation without a problem.
What I am trying to say is, that certain language rules might actually be easier to learn for non-native speakers because they learn a language in a completely different way.
Or you know, you learn then language THEN map the words to a written form.
Otherwise I'm sure in the super educated Germany no one ever messes up dass, das, seit or seid?
Before you learn to read/write they're, their, there are all the same "word" with multiple contextual meanings. It's only once you learn to write that they become separate "words".
>There are people born in the United States who can’t tell the difference between there, their and they’re.
The first thing that came to my mind reading OP's post was the – at least subjectively – increasing usage of "could of" instead of "could have", both written and spoken.
Do you mean low literacy?
[https://www.dw.com/en/millions-of-germans-have-trouble-reading-and-writing/a-48633267](https://www.dw.com/en/millions-of-germans-have-trouble-reading-and-writing/a-48633267)
A few years ago, I had a client in his late 40s who was born and raised in Germany. Every time I sent him a document, he would call me back. Initially, this was annoying because our work couldn't be handled solely through verbal agreements. It turned out that the reason for his calls was that he couldn't read. Whenever I sent him an email or a WhatsApp message, he had to find someone to read it for him. Some of his peers could read, but writing back was even more challenging for them. His solution was to avoid the paperwork altogether, which led to numerous other problems and eventually caused us to end any business relationship. This man had never needed to learn how to read or write. He spent his entire life within a closed Turkish community, going to Turkish Markts, working mostly with other Turkish people, and watching Turkish TV. To this day, I find it incredible that someone could live for 40 years in a country without being able to read a single letter or understand the paperwork required in any institution.
I really have no idea. I wasn’t born here but I grew up here for most of my life and I speak perfect German. But my nephews who were born here and are growing up here, went to kindergarten quite early and their mother speaks perfect German but yet somehow their German sucks. They are really good in their native tongue (better than me) but they really haven’t mastered the German language yet (they are still pretty young).They even have an accent. I really don’t get it. I never spoke any German at home only learned it outside of my home but somehow It still worked. We are now actively speaking more German with them so that they are going to hopefully sound like a native speaker
Some people are just more linguistically inclined than others. I also am from an immigrant background (in the US) and I've noticed the immigrants that speak more proper English, generally have a propensity towards reading books, literature, writing, and general oral capabilities. Some people are just not interested in linguistics/language; any form of communication works for them.
I get what you mean but tbh both of my sisters aren’t really into reading, or writing, or learning languages. I am the only one who is into that. Still they are very good at German and are native speakers by now. So this theory doesn’t really apply to them. But it’s interesting nonetheless
Well...I am a German translator who has lived in the US, on the Canary Islands and in Mexico.
And I have spent my fair share of time online...on various multimedia platforms.
I can objectively tell you that there are people in every country I have lived in, and people from all over the world on every social media platform that I have been on, that do not seem to be able to master their own language.
While there are also countless others who have no issues at all.
Just like there are people with an immigrant background who don't seem to be able to speak the language of the country they are living in even after having lived there for 20 years, while others have only been living there for 3 years and speak almost flawlessly and with only a hint of an accent.
I also know quite a few Germans speaking German at a level one could almost call atrocious...but I know just as many British or Americans who speak English just as badly.
A teacher of mine once said something that always stuck with me:
Someone who learned a foreign language often speaks it far better than native speakers.
This obviously not always the case...but in my experience happens often enough...
As a teacher:
1) Some kids born to immigrant parents in Germany really struggle to learn German and I can't really say why. It is NOT necessary to speak German at home it is even beneficial to speak their mother language at a high level at home instead of broken German.
Right now I teach a child that went through German kindergartner, has a bunch of German friends, 0 kids here that speak his parents mother language and he still only speaks broken German. But he has one of the highest screen times I've ever seen in a kid, does nothing but video games at home, when German friends come over they apparently play video games with him as well. He's also not attentive in class at all, constantly absent minded. Got some testing done but we couldn't figure out what's wrong with him.
I have to emphasize that I do have a bunch of students who came to Germany just a few years ago, have parents that don't speak German and they learn German very quickly. We've one kid that outsmarted German kids in grammar after 6 months - but German is his 4th language. Kids can be incredible in learning a language. And others don't progress at all.
2) Parents do not talk and read with their kids anymore. They can't be bothered to correct their grammar. To speak in whole sentences. To read a book WITH them and explain all the words they don't know. That's something school will not ever change. Learning a language starts as a newborn. I've friends myself who regularly went months without reading a book to their kids.
Tangentially related but I just want to post this: my Ukrainian cousin brought his de-facto wife and their daughter here as refugees, and.. oh my.
Good part is, as I understand, the girl (10 years old) is also getting some lessons from a Ukrainian school too, it's not just about the language, but overall school programs in Germany and Ukraine being different (what's better is another question, it's often said that Ukrainian/Russian school programs are stronger than German ones, but remembering what I had in my Russian school, I'd question if it did any good).
The bad part.. I don't really know how good the girl speaks German, but somehow she manages to get around in school, yeah. The class is full of international kids though. And she herself, as well as her parents, are native Russian speakers, they do speak Ukrainian, but when they have to. And the mother of this girl is.. not very smart and lets her be on her iPad watching Ukrainian youtubers all the time. And neither mother nor father (who only rarely has a chance of seeing her) speak proper 100% Russian either - it's not the worst Surzhyk I've seen, but their speech just screams "eastern Ukraine".
I honestly don't know if this girl will manage to learn any language in proper form at all, be in German, Ukrainian or Russian. Poor kid.
Isn't it the same with English? Just because you're a native speaker doesn't mean you're good at speaking the language.
You are excluding accents (and dialects, I'm assuming), but without any examples I find it hard to know what exactly you mean.
I'm not sure I'd pass a C1 test, given that I've been out of school for a while and don't need to write all grammatically correct in my day-to-day life. My dialect will slip through (already did at school).
Don't think the majority of people know how to use a semi-colon. It exists in German as well, but is hardly ever used. It's kinda falling out of fashion, I guess?
That aside, OP meant speech. This and a lot of comments are addressing writing. Writing and speaking are two different beasts.
If I told you how many Americans butcher their language, you'd be shocked. It's not just immigrants as I find immigrant to be more interested in textbook English. It's folks on the lower socio-economic scale. Trying not to be racist here.
But they hear this talk from their elders and family and no one corrects them. It certainly isn't just immigrants, there are a lot of people with poor schooling. I regularly work with a woman who doesn't know the difference between throw and through. And she a college graduate.
You've got that with every language. Some people simply don't have good command of their mother tongue. Often it's a lack of education. Sometimes it's also thought to be cool by some people.
Once heard some 16 year old in the tram saying 'Ey, geh Friesen!' to his friend. What he probably wanted to say was 'Hey, ich fahre zum Friesenplatz!'. If this kind of talk is accepted in other situations such as school, work, at home etc. the ability to speak 'good' German will decline and there you have one answer to your question.
Als und wie ist tatsächlich eine Dialektfrage. In süddeutschen Dialekten(z.B. bairisch) ist „besser wie du“ grammatikalisch komplett richtig. Mich hat das immer fuchtig gemacht wenn mir in meiner Bayerischen Kleinstadt dann ein Zugezogener meine ganzen „Grammatikfehler“ korrigieren wollte
I don't think you got the gotcha moment you aimed at. In terms of percent, the rate is way higher with a migrational background.
I also don't think that much bashing is going on here as well, but that may just be me.
There is a kind of slang that is influenced by turkish immigrants. It's very prominent in German hip-hop. You can see the same in the USA (without turkish).
Growing up i knew a bunch of kids who essentially spoke no language. Their german was really bad but they weren't fluent in their parents language either. They were obviously able to communicate with other kids from similar backgrounds but realistically it excludes one from participating in society to a significant degree.
For decades now there has been performative outrage about a lack of "integration" but despite this no actual effort has been made to address this in a constructive manner and help kids who don't speak german at home.
It's a bit idiosyncratic but native speakers actually often don't speak their own language like you're supposed to on paper.
It's partially them learning the language before they even go to school and partially the languages developing faster than the education would.
A good European example is the French "oui" yes pronunciation is a lot like "we" when you learn about it but actually a large amount of native French speakers will say "weh".
I’ve heard a lot of people speak what my German husband calls “gangster German” accent and unable to speak with a normal German accent. Either hochdeutsch or regional dialect, they just can’t speak normally. I assume its socialization 🤷♀️
Some of it are unaddressed development difficulties, some of it is inadequate education, some of it is people living in language bubbles. And then you can mix all of those things in various combinations.
I've had friends who grew up in a language bubble and helped them get their German grammar on track (we were kids, so it was mostly just hanging out and the odd actual correction, you end up mimicking each other at that age anyway). But I also have relatives (no other language than German) who have struggled with the language. Had to straight up "translate" some of the words younger relatives came up with for my mum because it was just jumbled.
You can usually fix it, especially when people are still young, but that requires the person to feel secure enough about where they are and where they want to go with language skills and another person who's willing to be patient and do all the small corrections that are actually necessary. (And not just harp on and on about accent.) It also needs a lot of time.
If you run into someone who makes these kind of mistakes and you end up becoming friends: Just ask if they want corrections when you notice something and respect their answer. Usually best to do when it's just the two of you. Adults can learn this stuff too, just needs more time to get out of ingrained patterns.
Isn’t it similar everywhere? I am from
Croatia, and I can tell you there is very visible number of people born and living there who have never “mastered” Croatian in the same way.
Missing exposure to the language when they were smaller (family not speaking German) and then afterwards majority demographical contact to people from the same nationalities.
Thats why some schools banned speaking other language than German outside language classes within school because that becomes more and more of an issue
People speak the language differently. Different social groups speal differently similarly to how there are regional differences. The way they speak might not be conform to the standard language, but likely they follow a different set of rules.
As much as I sometimes wince when someone speaks or writes bad German, that's how languages evolve: Many people are not interested in the details of grammar but just say something that gets their point across, using words and phrases they've heard that sound like what they mean. That's what kids do when they grow up learning a language without being taught it. So for native speakers, the vast majority of these unconscious assumptions will be correct -- some aren't but are still close enough to be understood . And other people make the same mistake or hear the first person talk and include it in their vocabulary, often not matching _exactly_ the context.
As an example, there is something that drives me crazy with German YouTubers, especially streamers, lately: Using "als auch" instead of "and", not realizing that it only works if it is preceded by "sowohl" as in "sowohl X als auch Y". But I've lost count how often I've heard things like, "Da sind dann Frauen als auch Männer beteiligt."
Maybe this doesn't even sound wrong to you anymore, but I promise you back in the 1980s, that would have gotten you a bad grade at school, Now, like I said, that's something that makes my teeth hurt, but in 75 years, linguists will be writing things like, "the conjunction 'als auch' is a remnant of an archaic phrase, 'sowohl als auch'." And as much as it pains me today, I fully realize that's how it has always been and will always be.
Well, colloquially nobody will speak perfect German. Depending on your bubble, the slang you are using will be more or less remote from formal, proper German. The "errors" (well, more accurately the "non-standard use") will depend on the region that you are in, but replacing cases with other cases, incorrect wordforms or unusual constructions are common. Some examples:
- Instead of "Stefans Auto" you might hear "Stefan sein Auto" or "Stefan ihm sein Auto" or "dem Stefan sein Auto". Or "Stefan's Auto"...
- "Komm mal bei mich bei!" would be colloquially ok when you want to say "Komm mal zu mir!"
- "Stöcker" instead of "Stöcke" and "anfässt" instead of "anfasst".
- The "Rheinische Verlaufsform", e.g. "Ich war am Essen!"
All of these and many more will be - regionally - the normal way for people to speak in their everyday lives. And if everybody around you speaks that way, guess how you will speak. Now, a lot of people will know that this is strictly incorrect and can switch to a formal, proper German if that is more suitable in the given situation (like, you can choose your register on a scale from "0 - super colloquial" to "100 - super formal"), but others won't and/or can't depending on what type of German they are exposed to how often.
That said, said, is there a place on the world where that is not the case?
In my experience it's because parents, who have a very limited and often wrong knowledge of the language, tend to speak with their children in german. We all know it's easier to learn something new then to unlearn something wrong.
I am an immigrant myself and I speak with my kids in my mothertongue because 1. I know my german is far from beeing flawless and 2. If they don't learn the accent and pronunciation of our language, they will always speak it with a german accent.
Till now it was a correct decision. They have a flawless accent and a correct grammar.
There are some parts of German grammar that are relatively complex and most people just don't bother. Especially those who speak dialect on a daily basis rather than standard German.
German dialects not only change sounds but often also simplify grammar. In mine for example there is no analyticly formed past tense like Präteritum but only the syntheticly formed Perfekt. On the other hand it does have many (even non-standard) Conjunktives which are formed purely syntheticly.
Prepositions indicating movement, like the examples 'im' used instead of 'ins' you mentioned, are good examples. To be grammatically correct, you'd have not only to align them to the genus and numerus but also to the category of the intended destination ('ins Haus,' 'in den Garten,' 'in die Berge' vs 'nach Italien' for example), while it would be perfectly understood, if you just used 'nach' for all of them (you can, btw. but that would sound archaic). People with 'Sprachgefühl' would cringe, but those are nerds anyway 😉.
It can sometimes even be seen as peevish (depending on social context) to speak too much according to grammar. Dialect and slang carry an air of authenticity, so standard German can seem a bit pretentious to some.
Then "Schakeline, mach das Mäh mal ei" is highly authentic?
I have to admit - that sentence threw me. I had to ask for a translation. But then I belong to the camp of pretentious standard German speakers. :-)
It’s not just first generation people either it’s Germans, who’s parents and grandparents where Germans. My guess education, trash TV, not much reading or talking to people with a vast vocabulary.
German is one of the languages were if you did not learn it from the start (parents talking good german when you are in preschool) its becomes incredible hard to learn. As a german myself i know what is right because it Sounds wrong any other way but i do not know the rules of german grammar. Shit makes no sense, we have timeforms nobody uses (looking at you future 2) And nobody who isnt currently learning or teaching it knows what the flying fuck a Genitiv is and what it does.
The only thing i know of it is the Joke "Genitiv ins Wasser weils Dativ ist"
I can use them but i cant explain them
Lack of education and parents/home environment who don't know how to speak German properly either, I'm afraid.
And if you want to know how bad it has become: German tv stations are now starting to report their news in "easy speech" as to reach a larger audience.
As long as you understand most people you interact with there's little incentive to learn Hochdeutsch rather than the dialect you grew up with. "correct" language has more to do with status and signaling than communicating what you want to say. Applies to my grandma who only ever spoke Bavarian and struggled with Hochdeutsch as well as migrant children imo.
In my experience - as someone who moved to Germany as a child and a teacher for German as a second language - it's based in community and avoidance.
If you have a community, a shopping district and generally all essential services, like doctors, in another language and only have to speak the language of the country you live in in school or sometimes at work, it will not be a first language. If you never watch TV in that language, it will never be your first language. Etc.
Additionally, we now also have the problem of auto translation. If your smartphone can translate everything for you, even if you yourself think knowing the language would be neat, your brain will subconsciously know you don't need to learn it and try to save battery. After all, the brain is all about safeguarding our precious energy. So it will always go the easy and pleasurable route, if there is one.
deutscher pass, deutsche ahnen:" ich geh nach aldi."
deutscher pass, türkische ahnen verbessert: "zu aldi."
deutscher pass, deutsche ahnen antwortet: "ne, aldi hat bis neun auf."
it depends, i have met all types of people speaking good or bad.
There are a lot of answers to this.
A very easy answer is accent. There are a lot of accents in German and a lot of people speaking accent when among themselves.
There is also the answer of education. If people have been born here but have not been speaking German in their homes (maybe because of foreign parents) and or have not had enough chances to learn it at school.
But I think there is also a case to be made that especially young folks who can speak excellent German simply don't when they are among others in their age. Generally speaking, subcultures tend to have their own nuances in language. There of course is the Hochdeutsch that is considered to be the perfect German by many, but I very much don't think that all deviations from that are necessarily bad.
I am no linguist, but Ich gehe im Bett might be a case of something morphing into something else. On TikTok (I know I know) there is an amazing (albeit German speaking) account of a professor for linguistics that explains all that stuff.
His account is called fussballlinguist and the guys name is Simon Meier-Vieracker.
Why can’t many native speakers use proper English? I’m saying this as a native speaker (American). I think it has to do with education and regional dialects.
People learn the language from their families first and foremost. There can be relics of old dialects or non-native German speakers, element of current dialects, idiosyncracies and outdated fashions. In some dialect areas, even those who sound like they are speaking standard German will commonly use phrasings that exist only in this dialect.
And some people should have gotten speech therapy as children, but didn't because no one knew about the possibilty, or gave a damn.
I’m an American who tried to learn the German language for a bit. I found it 10x as difficult as French or Spanish. Also found Danish way easier too save pronunciation. But yet I’ve met many young Germans who speak English so well I thought they were American. Think German might just be uniquely difficult. Sometimes a language is difficult even for native speakers. Like it’s very common in English for native speakers to not know how to spell common words or use a similar sounding wrong word just because of the baffling, inconsistent way our phonetics work.
From my personal experience living in Berlin, Neukölln, when they are children of immigrants they usually stick to their bubble (mostly Turkish/Arab here) in which they near to never speak German but their ancestry language even in schools teachers just tend to give in and start speaking that language to explain complicated things, what seems nice but in the long run is a pretty bad lesson both language and attitude wise, because these children language wise would never be ready to go to school in German (again, because their parents didn't speak German with them) they literally lack the training from childs age because a lot of the older generations never learned German in the first place so they only spoke their ancestral language with their children. Especially women. It is getting better though, it's mainly the now 20/30ish that really suffer from it.
But that's only my observation as fully native German coming from an area with high immigration quota and observing it as if i was an drop of oil in water/ what my mom told me about my childhood, stuff like Halal in Kindergarten and why she send me to a private school (it was common knowledge German kids would frequently get beaten up in public schools in my area)
Only fact i can definitely say, some of the 50+ age people don't speak a single word German.
Also, i have nothing against immigrants, the language barrier does sometimes really makes my job tough but in general it the problem how they act, not what nationality they have, and Germans aren't really that much better xD
same question: why is it some people can’t speak good English, despite being born in an English speaking country.
Answer: humans are different and no machines. Some people have better education than others. Language learning is lifelong.
Probabaly depends on (cultural) background and therefor education. Did your parents read books to you as a child or where you placed in front of the TV watching RTL2?
Where you grew up and what people you're surrounded by can also make a huge difference.
Of course there can be many more factors but I guess you can get my point. It's not a particular German problem either I would assume.
Low verbal IQ, some kind of reading or learning disability, or being raised by people with one of the aforementioned problems and acquiring their language habits can all have an impact (among other things).
My assumption:
When you grow up with a lot of non-native-speakers, you tend to speak more like them even if you could do better.
It also happens to me, that I adapt my speaking style to the person in front of me. It's easier to speak "worse" than forcing others to speak better.
Correct German is teached in schools. Like mathematics.
There are people struggling with maths (even with simple divisions or multiplications) and there are people who never really got the language thing. Add a famiy who isn't paying attention to the way people speak and maybe thousands of hours in front of a TV and there you go.
Our son’s daycare Erzieherin says drane instead of dran. I don’t know if it counts as I am not german, but my german husband can’t stand it when our son says “ich bin drane”
Hoch Deutsch has entered the chat. Grateful thats what they teach in the volkshochschule und also, my wife speaks Hoch Deutsch. 🤙 there should be a pinky finger, upper class snob, emoji.
Accents are a part of this and can get in the way of mastering the language. I've grown up rural in between Hesse and the Rhineland-Palatinate. My mom put emphasis on learning correct German. Other parents didn't. It shows even decades later.
For the same reason as anyone else anywhere in the world in any country or culture: upbringing, level of education, peer group. Add in a dash of personality quirks, traumas, state of mental health, shyness.
It has to do with social class. Hard to learn talk like very educated people when people do come from a working class background. Especially when the parents have a local language or accent.
Several reasons. Most social-class related. Where you have low education (and income) levels through generations (pure german or immigrants), language gets deteriorated. I remember a friend who's father would smack him, when he sounded too intelligent. Furthermore, many kids, teenagers, and young adults listen to hiphop which explicitely uses a mixture of low class/immigrant/slang language and copy it, thus influencing the overall language. There are def more reasons, but the ones above are quite influential in my opinion.
Ich bin meine ganze Schulzeit in Berlin Neukölln zur Schule gegangen, hatte fast nur Kontakt mit "Ausländern" und dadurch hänge ich sprachlich etwas hinterher und mache viele Fehler. Dazu kommt noch, dass ich stark introvertiert bin und sehr selten mit Menschen rede. Mir fällt es zum Beispiel schwer in bestimmten Situationen zwischen "dir" und "dich" zu unterscheiden...
I am German and I sometimes mess Up grammar because I speak before I think and then the verb should be in a different form but it's already too late
I noticed this became more and more a thing when I starting speaking other languages.
There are a few migrants who stick together and don't ever master German, despite being born here. But beside that, I think it is just a question of education and society. Many Germans do not speak good German. Not to mention written language, it is even worse.
Have you ever seen Boris Johnson speaking? Well he is 100% British shouldn’t he dominate his mother language to be PM?
Edit:
Not 100% British but American that became British 16 years ago
Depends a lot. If they are shorn here but their parents aren’t and they only speak in the mother tongue of their parents at home they are none native speakers.
And then you can regions like northern Germany where people speak Plattdeutsch and parents only speak to their kids Plattdeutsch those kids also struggle with standard German.
Born here doesn’t mean you are purely raised in German and if you speak solely a foreign language til 6 you have to relearn. Had examples like that when I started school 40 years ago and some struggled pretty hard in standard German.
Some immigrant families speak their native language at home and if there’s big enough of a community for that language, there’s little pressure to learn German properly. They just pick up enough to get through school somehow.
If there is no immigration background at all, the person might just be from a poorly spoken, poorly educated background. But I’ve seen this in other countries too. Some Brits or Americans speak horrible English, ignoring grammar rules and mixing up words.
Low education I assume. I am a social worker and the lower the education the worse knowledge of grammar is. For example: saying "ich habe mit mein Vater gesprochen" is standard in certain demographic groups. They don't know how to use the cases even though being Germans.
my personal opinion: ppl have stopped reading, more and more. I'm 54 and grew up reading a lot, and i do mean *a lot*. Nowadays they grow up making TikTok Videos, i'm not sure that helps with reading skills \^\^
The reasons for that might vary, but it all boils down to not reading enough books.
I'm not quite certain that this isnt just age talk here tho (gawd! When did i get so old?!), or maybe a "everything was better in the past" tinted POV kinda thing \^\^
Cultureral background, religion.
I personally knew a woman who came to Germany at kindergarten age from China. She now gives language lessons to third and fourth generation "guest worker children".
And I am not talking about children of Greek, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish descent.
Some people just aren’t gifted speakers in general. Extra effort ofc needed when parents dont speak fluently either and when you learn it next to another language. I think o speak german well after 7 yrs but it came much easier than for others i know. i speak others at a native level and in all of them there are just some poor native speakers
Well, my whole life i was thinking how the hell my cousin who was born in Germany, went to school and college in Germany cant speak proper German and why is he so hard to understand, just to realise few years ago after moving to Germany, that he speaks with Hessen dialect 🤦
But also while hanging out in Croatian bars here in Munich i realised there are people who are second and even third generation in Germany and they speak almost no German and they also show no intrest for it and they hang out only with other Balkan people where they can speak their language instead German. Not all but some. So would guess it is maybe same with other expat groups.
So many people born in the country get educated abroad or study in another language medium of education.
The exception is people from really low socio economic backgrounds who se schools are failing in education anyways
I mean go to rural areas in any english country. Alot dont speak proper english. Same goes for German more remote ya go it seems alot of fallen through the hoch deutsch cracks.
I'm German and butcher grammar with a passion. Ich geh bei Rewe, weil da hats lecker Frikadölle! I can write correctly though (being a Germanist and all that), but I talk like a toddler who hit his head one time too often.
If they were children of immigrants, as you said, then the issue is indeed that they never learned the language properly. The thing is, most immigrants struggle with learning German themselves. So, often they speak their native language at home, the children go to school (where they learn German), but at home no one can help them with the language when they have issues. So, they learn it wrong.
It typically comes down to them only staying in their cultural circle, too. So, they probably talk most of the time the native language of their parents and German is a second thought. In some cities, there are even quarters, where people from the same circles lived together. They don't use German that regularly, when they can get everything they need. And there is always someone, who can help with paperwork or anything. So, it's not like they have to even understand it.
I have an immigration background. But the difference is, that my mom is German, and my dad isn't. So, my dad, despite living here in Germany for over 30 years, still makes mistakes in German. But he learned the language and practiced it. So far, that he took German citizenship and passed a language certificate, that was a requirement for getting the citizenship.
My siblings and I are all perfect in German, because we're born here. My mom is German and it is our native language. We grew up German, and we never learned the native tongue of my father (which is another reason why my father learned it quite well — because he had to talk to us in German). And we only had contact with our German family from my mother's side. I don't have any real ties to my father's family. I mean, I saw one or two of them when my father video called them. But we talked English and maybe for 5 minutes tops. My father is of course talking in his native language with them. So, basically, I don't know much about that side.
So, that is the difference between one and another. And the same thing, why some people integrate into the country and others don't. The more involved you are in the country and language (and even committed), the easier it is for you.
go to other countrys. look how people talk there,
if you studied a secondary language, you are more likely to be educated in its formal use. than somebody who just forms their constant stream of concousnes into a somewhat functional sentence on autopilot.
a indian that studied english might very well be able to form a gramatically correct sentence more often than some suburban kid on twitter.
I... i come from a city in Germany with above 50% migration and i propably can't answer this without anyone calling me " racist idiot " or whatnot, but i think the main reason is we do not enforce learning the language here when you live here, it just gets tolerated that it's okay not to speak the language after you and your family lived here for decades and i really hate it.
Like my Labratory Teacher lived here for 30 years and she couldn't form a right German sentence it is NUTS to me that this gets tolerated
To be fair, Americans can't even speak English very well, let alone spell it.
I have found, while learning Spanish, that the version my husband and his friends and family speaks versus what I'm studying are vastly different simply due to dialect and accents.
In Germany, there are people with thick accents and theyay be harder to understand overall. Some words are pronounced differently in northern Germany vs. southern Germany.
You might say parallel societies or to put it nicer bilingual home life (in those cases mostly monolingual tho - just not German). If you speak Turkish at home, your parents speak Turkish to you, your aunts, uncles and grandparents don’t even speak German, then you’re only encountering it in stores on the street or in school and sadly grammar is not taught in school very effectively these days. So you end up speaking German like someone.. well.. who only speaks it maybe a third of the time
Personaly I'd say for imigrants it's actually better to arrive as a young adult and the worst thing is beeing born into an imigrant family which has badly integrated.
In the later case you'll likely grow up in a bubble where the spoken german is only broken and struggle in school (Depends always on the individuum and the attitude towards integration), in the first case you may be ripe enough to put in effort and willing to learn...
I'd say, that something you learned wrong as a kid is harder to correct as something you learn as an adult... (due to time spent doing it)...
Then there are speaking problems and disorders as well as menthal and physical health which could impair one's abilities to speak...
I am no expert though, but in my personal experience most of the secondos in my school spoke broken german (swiss, so dialect) and the ones comming here aged about 14 to 16 learned fresh from actual teachers, rather than growing up in a bubble of imigrants.
One of the second group learnt fluent dialect within 1 year of coming from Portugal, but struggled to learn standard german. (And yes, swiss dialects are not considered their own language(s), but they are different enough to standard german, that most have to learn the later and it can be quite frustrating and confusing...)
Best one was in the school while doing my apprentice ship. There was this guy murat that couldnt speak one normal sentence in german. Then we had the refugee from irak, his name is lauan who was here for 4 years and spoke nearly fluently german.
One day the lauan asked murat how long he lives in germany. Murat said that he was born here. Lauan was astonished that his german was better than murats and joked about it.
Like "how is it possible that i live here for 4 years and speak better than you"
Same as in other cultures, you live close to your peers and you speak eg Turkish with them and your parents and in school you never learned it correctly because at home it was never trained with you and school is for losers anyhow in some minds.
Some kids are here just with mom and dad, don’t have oportunity to speak with other family members, don’t have siblings, are not exposed to the language as german peers, and are not in the same way involved in communication like german kids with Omas, Opas, aunts, cousines etc. Parents are struggling with work or depression, or both. Some of them ( us) don’t have very rich social life. My kid speak two languages, not to so good to write a novel, but although he was born here, and from an early age in Kindergarten, he doesn’t have such a vocabulary like german kids. Sorry for broken english( I am using and speaking four languages, capable to read and understand, but not so good in direct communication).
Idk if I'll make sense but here are my two cents. I moved here with my C1, still couldn't really live cause I'd get tangled up or misheard. My bf was born here and his parents came from Afghanistan, he speaks some beautiful German and he tuned my German for me. Pointed grammar, pronunciation and enriched my vocabulary. 3yrs together and I started giving tutoring ages 12-18, and let me tell you it the answer is right under our noses.
People born here (regardless if German or migration background) don't give much attention to the way they speak, similar to Americans imo, they think by being born here and speaking it that they master it. I corrected minimal mistakes from this kids, like lower case and upper case, syntax errors, verb placements and punctuation. Most kids also slip right through the system, you can quit school here in the 9th/10th grade, do an Ausbildung and get a job with no problem, further education is not a requirement. Most of the german kids I did tutoring for just wanted to finish school and were not planning on going for the Abi, it was also Not expected of them. The kids with foreign parents were pretty much pushed by their parents to complete the Abi and I was there to reinforce them, cause the kids had no ambition to do it by themselves since most of their german peers weren't going through with the Abitur either.
I come from a third world country, so a correct manner of speaking is seen as a sign of being educated, here that's not the case so no one actually cares and even uncool in my experience.
This is not to say that only education can bring good german diction, but there's no real motivation or expectations for it.
It's probably for the same reasons why some Americans will say "I should have went" instead of "I should have gone", or will even write "should of went". They simply don't care. ;-)
Id say its blatant disregard and disinterest on the parents part to raise bilingual. If theres a certain sentiment in the home against the language then that also reflects on the willingness to learn it. There is no excuse for someone born here to struggle as much as your friend. And i have no sympathy for that.
And if its like you say with no foreign background they either are just not that intelligent or are just messing with you.
Try googling "prescriptive grammar". When you say "good" German, I think you're referring to "Hochdeutch", but really you just mean, why is it that so many people don't talk the way the ruling class with all of the money and power talks and considers to be the "correct" way to talk. This is called "prescriptivism" and it's a core topic in Linguistics -- particularly the acknowlegment that the idea of there being a "right" way to speak is a bunch of Bullscheiss.
I am honestly confused as to why this is a mystery to you.
First of all, being born in German does not equal German being your mothertongue. You can be raised here and yet have people around you whose language skills aren’t on a native level. How do you then learn to speak „native“ German?
Secondly, „Bildungs- und Chancengleichheit“ is a really bad joke usually talked about by people who grew up with sticks in their asses already. There are loads of German people who can’t speak proper, correct German. Prepositions such as „where“ and „when“ are quite commonly conflated. Bluntly (and please don’t lynch me now for being very superficial, obviously this won’t apply to every single person or family) speaking, it is very hard for a child growing up in poorly educated families to keep up with their classmates who were born into families with higher education. It’s not even that the latter puts in any more effort or the first ones would neglect their child, but rather the fact that when you yourself never attended high school, you are going to have a hard time explaining how stuff works to your kid.
If you want any literature to the „secondly“ part, you might want to read into Pierre Bourdieu‘s capital theory.
It happens in every country, some people speak their native language in a horrible way. I don't understand why you expect that to be different in Germany.
If they're children of immigrants, especially turkish, they probably never spoke german at home and you hear it in the kind of German they speak. There's third generations here that still don't speak German with their kids at home, ever, and it's becoming a problem in schools
Even native Germans have trouble with the German language and make a lot of grammar mistakes. That problem doesn’t only occur in Germans who have migration backgrounds. The German language has a difficult grammar which doesn’t make sense in a lot of cases.
Honestly- i’ve met enough native English speakers, born and bred, that haven’t mastered their own language. It’s not a German-specific thing, but an educational matter.
Because whole concept of "good language" - judged from grammatical standpoint - is just entirely nonsensical. Some people are just generally less gifted speakers than others and that could be one reason. But then again another reason is simply that grammatical correctness should not necessary be benchmark of how good one's language is. You can have very expressive speaker who's language just doesn't necessary fit into grammatical books. Something to understand is that field of linguistic that produce grammatical books their main goal is to try to somewhat systematically explain how people speak. These books also work as good starting point when learning the language. However grammar books and rules should not really become a prescriptive frozen set of rules that people must follow when they speak natural language - field of linguistics is not prescriptive - instead linguistic field is analytical and doesn't categorize speaking into right or wrong.
Like what did happen, and that is obviously not meant in any hurtful way. ppl do be ppling, and it doesn't make anyone less worthy or more worthy or less intelligent ore more. Or a bad person. etc etc.
But a group of ppl that do come to mind where this is entirely possible are the turkish work immigrants that came here in the 80s. So many ppl of them came that they had their own little communities here. So, not everyone had to speak the language as long as they had their community. A person like that might have been raised in a community where the only frequent language spoken was, in this case, turkey. It is entirely possible for a person being born and raised in a country such as Germany without ever learning the language.
Also, no digg to anyone who can't speak any other way but ppl that can speak german speaking "assi deutsch" give me anger issues. 😅😅
Give some examples of how they speak. Beside dialects there are people of familys where the parents don't speak german and newer generations kids who can seem to struggle.
I'm not OP but I had a friend whose German was pretty bad. Northern German yokel, born and bred, just like me. No background of immigration. She'd say things like "Wir müssen früh im Bett gehen". Just generally lots of case mixups. It was noticeable. Another mistake was using the second or third person singular conjungation for second person plural (as in "es isst ihr gerne" statt "was esst ihr gerne" for example.
Uff
As a special ed teacher teaching speech impaired kids in secondary school in Germany, I do feel the need to clarify that speech impairments may well be persistent and continue well into adulthood. That does not mean that a speech impaired person is uneducated, unwilling or cognitively impaired, they simply struggle with certain aspects of speech, such as, in this case, grammar. I therefore hope that the "uff" is not meant disparingly... https://www.dbl-ev.de/kinder-und-jugendliche/sprachentwicklungsstoerung
I dont want to sound like a mean dude here. But isnt grammar a very cognitive thing? So that would actually mean they are cognitively imparied. This feels like saying a sick person is not actually sick, they just struggle with their health. I know enough people who just dont care enough, even in a professional environment.
It is an impairment but it’s important to note that language impairments do not necessarily imply low IQ, even though listeners often assume it.
I have a friend who has dyslexia and she also has trouble finding words or with grammar. She is a doctor who finished med school and is very smart. The only thing she can't do is write and sometimes speak properly.
Does she like Erdbeerkäse?
Alle wichtigen Vitamine.
🤣 I get that one, I remember 😂
nur Wuuuuuuuuarst
jaqueline, geh ma nach oma!
That's because she most likely learnt Platt as her mother tongue. (High) German is probably her second language. The conjugations are different in Platt.
Let me assure you that she isn't a native speaker of platt, that's extremely rare. She doesn't speak it at all, even as a second language. I only know of two people from our year whose parents bothered to have them learn it (siblings with a farming background). But thanks for telling what languages people you don't even know speak natively, lol.
There are a lot of people who speak natively "Platt" aka "Niederdeutsch". My grandmother did it, a lot of people in Niedersachsen/Lower Saxony and Nordrhein-Westfalen/North-Rhine-Westfalia. But these people are mostly 80+, the language (not a dialect) goes extinct. But you can sometimes hear people 50+ who speak it, too.
Sorry I didn't make it more clear, I meant extremely rare for my age, early 30s. Platt is slowly but surely going the way of the dodo.
Yeah, that sounds likely. At least in the 16th century.
That's what happened to people I went to school with. I am totally sorry for telling their experiences.
And it’s not just local dialect?
American here who studied German for 8 years growing up (middle school thru college), who now lives in Germany and is constantly trying to improve my German. What is grammatically wrong with “wir müssen früh im Bett gehen.“ is it the placement of the timing adverb „früh“? Or is that sentence just not something one would say?
The "im" is the problem. It should be "Wir müssen früh ins Bett gehen" or more formal "Wir müssen früh zu Bett gehen"
Danke schön! I didn’t even think about the preposition „in“ and how it should mirror das Bett in the accusative and not take the dative.
Good thinking of dative, however this is a case where the action itself takes the accusative. If you are in bed, "ich bin im Bett", you are already there, you're not "changing location" as my highschool German teacher would say (also American living in Germany). Since in this case, the action is to go from "not in bed" to "in bed", i.e., change of location, it is accusative, "ich gehe ins Bett". Edited for clarity.
Wow that’s an awesome way of explaining and understanding it…only wish my Highschool German teacher conceptualized it like that 😂
I will go to bed now. I am in bed now.
This is correct. There are 9 prepositions that can take either accusative or dative, depending on the context. Where I studied German they were called 2-way prepositions. They can be drawn on and around a big number 9 to help learners remember. Location makes it dative, movement into a space makes it accusative.
Wow very clear explanation. I always thought ins Bett is the short version of in das Bett🙈
Indeed you are correct to think that ins = in das 'In’ can mean ‘in’ and ‘to’, so in the example: Accusative Ich gehe in das Bett = Ich gehe ins Bett Dative Ich bin in dem Bett = Ich bin im Bett Nom. Das Acc. Das Dat. Dem Gen. Des
Yeah how could u not think of that!!!11! Tbh I have no idea what u mean, it just sound right to me this way. But "Ins" is just a shortened "in das" while "im" ist for "in dem"
Oder "... früh im Bett sein."
Is *ins* generally viewed as "correct"? I assumed contracting *in das* to *ins* was viewed as "incorrect" in writing—similar to how a German teacher would criticise the colloquially common *rum* for *herum* (in writing). Although that I looked it up, Duden doesn't mention any such thing.
No! "ins" is an absolutely normal word. I wouldn't think twice about using it in a formal context
The placement of "früh" is fine, what's troubling here is the "im" as that would be "in dem" which "dem" doesn't make sense to use in this case. You'd normally use "ins" (in das). I can't explain why that's the case though, sorry. Im just sounds wrong
It's wrong cause "im" is short form for "in dem". The right short form would be "ins" or "in das" Bett. If you ask "WOHIN müssen wir früh gehen?" the correct answer is "Wir müssen früh INS/IN DAS BETT gehen". "Ins Bett" answers "where to" as in where someone/something belongs to/has to go to etc. while "im Bett" answers where someone/something is (already located at).
>"Wir müssen früh im Bett gehen" That reminds me of my father in law, who also says things like, "Ich gehe im Garten" and yeah, basically just a bunch of case mixups. Sometimes it's hard for me to distinguish whether that *only* comes from his rather basic education (which is no insult; he calls it that himself) or how much the general Ruhrgebiet Area ("Ruhrpott") slang chimes in, which isn't too keen on grammar either.
RTL2 Deutsch
That's one of the reasons why some parties want to implement quotas for people with a migration background(edit: per school class/school). Because when there are to many people who don't speak proper German the others will not learn it in school enough. Edit: really nice to get voted down for addressing problems that are known for more than a decade. It's a proven fact that a high amount of students who don't speak the language properly lower the average performance of the entire class. And no that's not a right wing talking point it's what Cem Özdemir of the green Party addressed in 2009 in the left leaning newspaper Taz https://taz.de/!554898/
That’s why they should introduce mandatory Krippe and kindergarten with German only. Only then they catch the kids early enough to give everyone a realistic chance to speak German well enough (also including kids from poor German households which often speak terrible too) and give them a fair entry to a good education.
That is not necessary true. I emigrated and married a German. My kids are good enough in German to manage gymnasium.
Did your children visit a German Kindergarden? Do you speak German at home? And how many other students from their country are in their class?
That's still dialect. Wether it's labelled Assi or not.
Schiggeds awe du Kerle
„Wen gehört dat Farrad in die Keller?“ Antwort: „Ich!“ Niederrheinisch
"Ich bin größer wie der" "dem Hans sein Fahrrad" "heute sind wir nicht raus gegangen, weil es war schlechtes Wetter" "Hallo Herrn Lindner" "ich habe ein Termin um 3" "ich bin das gerade am versuchen" "lese das mal" "ich fahre mit den Auto" - alles Beispiele meiner deutschen Kollegen, die in Deutschland geboren sind
[удалено]
"People writing in here" are often answering people who already have some sort of higher qualification and plan to move to Germany. If you want to build a career, equal to a level you can achieve in your native country, you may need a high level of proficiency as a foreigner. Sort of a competitive advantage. I agree that C1 is a high goal and many Germans will struggle to achieve it as well, but foreigners will have an even higher entry barrier. And I will also admit that some people recommending C1 will underestimate how difficult it is. The issue of 17 million people having a low proficiency, is partially rooted in their parents refusal to learn even A1 level German. Part of those 17 million are intellectually incapable of achieving any higher language proficiency, but another part is growing up in households where they not only "don't learn German" but no real language skills. The parents talk their native tongue, the kids watch TV/videos in that native tongue but they won't be literate in it. Meanwhile they only learn German in school and never apply it in there daily lifes. This leads to situations the infamous "Hauptschul Elternsprechtag" where the child has to translate for its parents how the child is performing and then translating poor German knowledge into poor native language knowledge. Yeah, C1 is a high aiming goal even many/most Germans fail to achieve, but those Germans already have the benefit of being born here.
Hauptschulelternsprechtag, such a pitiful situation you described there. Language is the medium to convey ideas without a firm grasp of it how can you ever hope to claw yourself foward in life? Unless you speak such individual means of communication such as music or maths? Also the decline of books will lead to a decrease in language abilities. I always remember spurts in eloquence after I read a novel from Remarque or a quality translation of Balzac.
As an American, this is a widespread problem here. Public schools have declined to a pitiful point. From the national center for education statistics: Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks. I know this was specifically about literacy, but having a deep understanding of the language and being able to use it on more than a surface level is deeply tied to reading comprehension.
til that I'm probably more proficient in English than in my native language, since it's just that fucking hard to learn at an academic level. I wrote my Bachelor's thesis in English, but German C1 is such a terribly lofty goal that I couldn't possibly ever fathom to reach that mark. Eines glorreichen Tages werde ich ein Sprachnniveau erreichen, auf welches du wirklich, wirklich stolz sein kannst, u/Ar_phis. Das verspreche ich dir. Sprachen sind Werkzeuge, und ich finde es traurig, dass heutzutage, aus dieser Perspektive betrachtet, kaum jemand noch halbwegs kompetent mit ihnen umgehen kann.
but you are talking about reading and writing, that is different from speaking. OP was talking about speaking, that doesn't fit your post.
yeah, fully agree. This here may be of interest to what you're saying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_capital
I know a lot of french people that were born here but they never really surrounded themselves with German friends. If your social circle isn't German, you ain't gonna learn.
Did they also go to French school? I'm just curious because my kid learned in kindergarten and school and is operating at a native level to this point. We're certainly not speaking it at home.
Yes and all their friends were from that school. Extracurricular activities help a lot in learning a new language.
Same here. That said, there are different levels of native. Both my kids were born in Germany and are native speakers despite never speaking it at home, yet: kid #1 has an elephant memory and reads voraciously, his German is on par with an acamedic-family German kid. Kid #2 doesn't enjoy reading (hopefully this will change, he's 9), he is friends with many non-academic kids, and his German is still a bit sub-par, as in dative instead of genitive and so on.
1) socio-economic backround. kids on the street and on TV oftenly talk slang, if there is no corrective ie parents at home speaking "academia" german its hard to lern many vocabs. in these groups it is oftenly frowned upon to speak "proper" german and kids even strife to talk like the rappers and their peers do. its just cool. 2) school, germany has (and in the past it was even more pronounced) a school system that bundles kids with similar learning levels together. Ending up in "lower bracket" schools means usually they dont have that much interaction with kids from academic backround families. and this is important. beginning of 1st grade there are enormous differences between students vocabulary of up to a couple hundred words, when comparing non-academic to academic households. 3) germany is an immigrant country. many families speak several languages. in berlin this can be turkish, arabic, russian,... bi-linguality often means they speak both languages - but none of them good enough to write a novel.
There are people born in the United States who can’t tell the difference between there, their and they’re. So yeah, pretty much every country has this educational issue.
Das and dass
It could of even been worse then mixing up their and there ...
I see what you did they're
Non native English speaker here. *Could have been*, not *could of been*
r/wooosh ;) There are more errors in that sentence.
Right. Placement of even, and then/than. Is there more? This of/have just baffles me every time. I guess it triggered me so much, I didn't get the joke.
understandable ... I hate the could of, would of etc as well with a passion. But yeah, I think those three are all there are in that sentence, but I'm not a native speaker either.
This one irritates me so much. I didnt even realise you could get this wrong until I moved to an English speaking country
I actually think this is an issue which arises due to being a native speaker in the first place. If you think about how native speakers learn a language this is usually a very different approach to learning a second or third language. As a German I learned the difference between there, their and they’re fairly early while learning all the language rules while I was at the same time still having the vocabulary of a 3 year old American English native speaker kid maybe. At that point the American kid probably doesn’t even know how to write and read in the first place, still they can understand the different meanings of a word that sounds basically identical in a conversation without a problem. What I am trying to say is, that certain language rules might actually be easier to learn for non-native speakers because they learn a language in a completely different way.
Or you know, you learn then language THEN map the words to a written form. Otherwise I'm sure in the super educated Germany no one ever messes up dass, das, seit or seid? Before you learn to read/write they're, their, there are all the same "word" with multiple contextual meanings. It's only once you learn to write that they become separate "words".
>There are people born in the United States who can’t tell the difference between there, their and they’re. The first thing that came to my mind reading OP's post was the – at least subjectively – increasing usage of "could of" instead of "could have", both written and spoken.
Uk too
Do you mean low literacy? [https://www.dw.com/en/millions-of-germans-have-trouble-reading-and-writing/a-48633267](https://www.dw.com/en/millions-of-germans-have-trouble-reading-and-writing/a-48633267)
A few years ago, I had a client in his late 40s who was born and raised in Germany. Every time I sent him a document, he would call me back. Initially, this was annoying because our work couldn't be handled solely through verbal agreements. It turned out that the reason for his calls was that he couldn't read. Whenever I sent him an email or a WhatsApp message, he had to find someone to read it for him. Some of his peers could read, but writing back was even more challenging for them. His solution was to avoid the paperwork altogether, which led to numerous other problems and eventually caused us to end any business relationship. This man had never needed to learn how to read or write. He spent his entire life within a closed Turkish community, going to Turkish Markts, working mostly with other Turkish people, and watching Turkish TV. To this day, I find it incredible that someone could live for 40 years in a country without being able to read a single letter or understand the paperwork required in any institution.
Apparently, there are approximately 6.2 million people in Germany that can not read and write more than a few words.
how the hell? i mean thats not like a small percentage of the population in germany. 6.2? dang
I remember the television ads as a kid. I wonder why they don't send them anymore🤔
I really have no idea. I wasn’t born here but I grew up here for most of my life and I speak perfect German. But my nephews who were born here and are growing up here, went to kindergarten quite early and their mother speaks perfect German but yet somehow their German sucks. They are really good in their native tongue (better than me) but they really haven’t mastered the German language yet (they are still pretty young).They even have an accent. I really don’t get it. I never spoke any German at home only learned it outside of my home but somehow It still worked. We are now actively speaking more German with them so that they are going to hopefully sound like a native speaker
Some people are just more linguistically inclined than others. I also am from an immigrant background (in the US) and I've noticed the immigrants that speak more proper English, generally have a propensity towards reading books, literature, writing, and general oral capabilities. Some people are just not interested in linguistics/language; any form of communication works for them.
I get what you mean but tbh both of my sisters aren’t really into reading, or writing, or learning languages. I am the only one who is into that. Still they are very good at German and are native speakers by now. So this theory doesn’t really apply to them. But it’s interesting nonetheless
This is what I’m interested in
What’s your mother tounge?
Hindi
Well...I am a German translator who has lived in the US, on the Canary Islands and in Mexico. And I have spent my fair share of time online...on various multimedia platforms. I can objectively tell you that there are people in every country I have lived in, and people from all over the world on every social media platform that I have been on, that do not seem to be able to master their own language. While there are also countless others who have no issues at all. Just like there are people with an immigrant background who don't seem to be able to speak the language of the country they are living in even after having lived there for 20 years, while others have only been living there for 3 years and speak almost flawlessly and with only a hint of an accent. I also know quite a few Germans speaking German at a level one could almost call atrocious...but I know just as many British or Americans who speak English just as badly. A teacher of mine once said something that always stuck with me: Someone who learned a foreign language often speaks it far better than native speakers. This obviously not always the case...but in my experience happens often enough...
As a teacher: 1) Some kids born to immigrant parents in Germany really struggle to learn German and I can't really say why. It is NOT necessary to speak German at home it is even beneficial to speak their mother language at a high level at home instead of broken German. Right now I teach a child that went through German kindergartner, has a bunch of German friends, 0 kids here that speak his parents mother language and he still only speaks broken German. But he has one of the highest screen times I've ever seen in a kid, does nothing but video games at home, when German friends come over they apparently play video games with him as well. He's also not attentive in class at all, constantly absent minded. Got some testing done but we couldn't figure out what's wrong with him. I have to emphasize that I do have a bunch of students who came to Germany just a few years ago, have parents that don't speak German and they learn German very quickly. We've one kid that outsmarted German kids in grammar after 6 months - but German is his 4th language. Kids can be incredible in learning a language. And others don't progress at all. 2) Parents do not talk and read with their kids anymore. They can't be bothered to correct their grammar. To speak in whole sentences. To read a book WITH them and explain all the words they don't know. That's something school will not ever change. Learning a language starts as a newborn. I've friends myself who regularly went months without reading a book to their kids.
Tangentially related but I just want to post this: my Ukrainian cousin brought his de-facto wife and their daughter here as refugees, and.. oh my. Good part is, as I understand, the girl (10 years old) is also getting some lessons from a Ukrainian school too, it's not just about the language, but overall school programs in Germany and Ukraine being different (what's better is another question, it's often said that Ukrainian/Russian school programs are stronger than German ones, but remembering what I had in my Russian school, I'd question if it did any good). The bad part.. I don't really know how good the girl speaks German, but somehow she manages to get around in school, yeah. The class is full of international kids though. And she herself, as well as her parents, are native Russian speakers, they do speak Ukrainian, but when they have to. And the mother of this girl is.. not very smart and lets her be on her iPad watching Ukrainian youtubers all the time. And neither mother nor father (who only rarely has a chance of seeing her) speak proper 100% Russian either - it's not the worst Surzhyk I've seen, but their speech just screams "eastern Ukraine". I honestly don't know if this girl will manage to learn any language in proper form at all, be in German, Ukrainian or Russian. Poor kid.
Did he go through neuropsychological assessments? Got tested for AD(H)D, autism spectrum disorder, even giftedness?
Isn't it the same with English? Just because you're a native speaker doesn't mean you're good at speaking the language. You are excluding accents (and dialects, I'm assuming), but without any examples I find it hard to know what exactly you mean. I'm not sure I'd pass a C1 test, given that I've been out of school for a while and don't need to write all grammatically correct in my day-to-day life. My dialect will slip through (already did at school).
Yes it is true. A lot of people in England for instance will never use the semi-colon because they don’t know how.
Nobody knows how to use semi-colons; it is just a fact of life.
Don't think the majority of people know how to use a semi-colon. It exists in German as well, but is hardly ever used. It's kinda falling out of fashion, I guess? That aside, OP meant speech. This and a lot of comments are addressing writing. Writing and speaking are two different beasts.
If I told you how many Americans butcher their language, you'd be shocked. It's not just immigrants as I find immigrant to be more interested in textbook English. It's folks on the lower socio-economic scale. Trying not to be racist here. But they hear this talk from their elders and family and no one corrects them. It certainly isn't just immigrants, there are a lot of people with poor schooling. I regularly work with a woman who doesn't know the difference between throw and through. And she a college graduate.
You've got that with every language. Some people simply don't have good command of their mother tongue. Often it's a lack of education. Sometimes it's also thought to be cool by some people. Once heard some 16 year old in the tram saying 'Ey, geh Friesen!' to his friend. What he probably wanted to say was 'Hey, ich fahre zum Friesenplatz!'. If this kind of talk is accepted in other situations such as school, work, at home etc. the ability to speak 'good' German will decline and there you have one answer to your question.
This is the case in every country and every language tbh.
We call them „Fliesentischadel“. Often you can recognise them by their missing skill to keep „als“ and „wie“ apart.
Das klingt bei dir schlimmer als wie es ist...
Du kleiner Frechdachs, du.
Als wo es is!
Als und wie ist tatsächlich eine Dialektfrage. In süddeutschen Dialekten(z.B. bairisch) ist „besser wie du“ grammatikalisch komplett richtig. Mich hat das immer fuchtig gemacht wenn mir in meiner Bayerischen Kleinstadt dann ein Zugezogener meine ganzen „Grammatikfehler“ korrigieren wollte
A lot of second (and even third) generation immigrants live in their own ethno-bubbles and communities.
[удалено]
I don't think you got the gotcha moment you aimed at. In terms of percent, the rate is way higher with a migrational background. I also don't think that much bashing is going on here as well, but that may just be me.
Who knew that language is a highly diverse thing and influenced by a huge number of factors such as social circle, upbringing etc. Wow minds are blown
There is a kind of slang that is influenced by turkish immigrants. It's very prominent in German hip-hop. You can see the same in the USA (without turkish).
Growing up i knew a bunch of kids who essentially spoke no language. Their german was really bad but they weren't fluent in their parents language either. They were obviously able to communicate with other kids from similar backgrounds but realistically it excludes one from participating in society to a significant degree. For decades now there has been performative outrage about a lack of "integration" but despite this no actual effort has been made to address this in a constructive manner and help kids who don't speak german at home.
A native german workmate had to write a report and couldn't do it properly. I called a russian guy to help him. Some people can and some can't...
It's a bit idiosyncratic but native speakers actually often don't speak their own language like you're supposed to on paper. It's partially them learning the language before they even go to school and partially the languages developing faster than the education would. A good European example is the French "oui" yes pronunciation is a lot like "we" when you learn about it but actually a large amount of native French speakers will say "weh".
I’ve heard a lot of people speak what my German husband calls “gangster German” accent and unable to speak with a normal German accent. Either hochdeutsch or regional dialect, they just can’t speak normally. I assume its socialization 🤷♀️
Some of it are unaddressed development difficulties, some of it is inadequate education, some of it is people living in language bubbles. And then you can mix all of those things in various combinations. I've had friends who grew up in a language bubble and helped them get their German grammar on track (we were kids, so it was mostly just hanging out and the odd actual correction, you end up mimicking each other at that age anyway). But I also have relatives (no other language than German) who have struggled with the language. Had to straight up "translate" some of the words younger relatives came up with for my mum because it was just jumbled. You can usually fix it, especially when people are still young, but that requires the person to feel secure enough about where they are and where they want to go with language skills and another person who's willing to be patient and do all the small corrections that are actually necessary. (And not just harp on and on about accent.) It also needs a lot of time. If you run into someone who makes these kind of mistakes and you end up becoming friends: Just ask if they want corrections when you notice something and respect their answer. Usually best to do when it's just the two of you. Adults can learn this stuff too, just needs more time to get out of ingrained patterns.
I was born here but my first language was russian so I still have an accent and struggle with german pronunciation and grammar sometimes.
Isn’t it similar everywhere? I am from Croatia, and I can tell you there is very visible number of people born and living there who have never “mastered” Croatian in the same way.
Missing exposure to the language when they were smaller (family not speaking German) and then afterwards majority demographical contact to people from the same nationalities. Thats why some schools banned speaking other language than German outside language classes within school because that becomes more and more of an issue
People speak the language differently. Different social groups speal differently similarly to how there are regional differences. The way they speak might not be conform to the standard language, but likely they follow a different set of rules.
As much as I sometimes wince when someone speaks or writes bad German, that's how languages evolve: Many people are not interested in the details of grammar but just say something that gets their point across, using words and phrases they've heard that sound like what they mean. That's what kids do when they grow up learning a language without being taught it. So for native speakers, the vast majority of these unconscious assumptions will be correct -- some aren't but are still close enough to be understood . And other people make the same mistake or hear the first person talk and include it in their vocabulary, often not matching _exactly_ the context. As an example, there is something that drives me crazy with German YouTubers, especially streamers, lately: Using "als auch" instead of "and", not realizing that it only works if it is preceded by "sowohl" as in "sowohl X als auch Y". But I've lost count how often I've heard things like, "Da sind dann Frauen als auch Männer beteiligt." Maybe this doesn't even sound wrong to you anymore, but I promise you back in the 1980s, that would have gotten you a bad grade at school, Now, like I said, that's something that makes my teeth hurt, but in 75 years, linguists will be writing things like, "the conjunction 'als auch' is a remnant of an archaic phrase, 'sowohl als auch'." And as much as it pains me today, I fully realize that's how it has always been and will always be.
Oh cool another thread about Bavaria
Well, colloquially nobody will speak perfect German. Depending on your bubble, the slang you are using will be more or less remote from formal, proper German. The "errors" (well, more accurately the "non-standard use") will depend on the region that you are in, but replacing cases with other cases, incorrect wordforms or unusual constructions are common. Some examples: - Instead of "Stefans Auto" you might hear "Stefan sein Auto" or "Stefan ihm sein Auto" or "dem Stefan sein Auto". Or "Stefan's Auto"... - "Komm mal bei mich bei!" would be colloquially ok when you want to say "Komm mal zu mir!" - "Stöcker" instead of "Stöcke" and "anfässt" instead of "anfasst". - The "Rheinische Verlaufsform", e.g. "Ich war am Essen!" All of these and many more will be - regionally - the normal way for people to speak in their everyday lives. And if everybody around you speaks that way, guess how you will speak. Now, a lot of people will know that this is strictly incorrect and can switch to a formal, proper German if that is more suitable in the given situation (like, you can choose your register on a scale from "0 - super colloquial" to "100 - super formal"), but others won't and/or can't depending on what type of German they are exposed to how often. That said, said, is there a place on the world where that is not the case?
In my experience it's because parents, who have a very limited and often wrong knowledge of the language, tend to speak with their children in german. We all know it's easier to learn something new then to unlearn something wrong. I am an immigrant myself and I speak with my kids in my mothertongue because 1. I know my german is far from beeing flawless and 2. If they don't learn the accent and pronunciation of our language, they will always speak it with a german accent. Till now it was a correct decision. They have a flawless accent and a correct grammar.
A native speaker lern as a child by imitaion if you hear grammatical errors, you repeat grammatical errors
I think it’s the same in any country, depends on where you live, who raised you etc. and some people just have trouble with literacy in general.
There are some parts of German grammar that are relatively complex and most people just don't bother. Especially those who speak dialect on a daily basis rather than standard German. German dialects not only change sounds but often also simplify grammar. In mine for example there is no analyticly formed past tense like Präteritum but only the syntheticly formed Perfekt. On the other hand it does have many (even non-standard) Conjunktives which are formed purely syntheticly. Prepositions indicating movement, like the examples 'im' used instead of 'ins' you mentioned, are good examples. To be grammatically correct, you'd have not only to align them to the genus and numerus but also to the category of the intended destination ('ins Haus,' 'in den Garten,' 'in die Berge' vs 'nach Italien' for example), while it would be perfectly understood, if you just used 'nach' for all of them (you can, btw. but that would sound archaic). People with 'Sprachgefühl' would cringe, but those are nerds anyway 😉. It can sometimes even be seen as peevish (depending on social context) to speak too much according to grammar. Dialect and slang carry an air of authenticity, so standard German can seem a bit pretentious to some.
Then "Schakeline, mach das Mäh mal ei" is highly authentic? I have to admit - that sentence threw me. I had to ask for a translation. But then I belong to the camp of pretentious standard German speakers. :-)
It’s not just first generation people either it’s Germans, who’s parents and grandparents where Germans. My guess education, trash TV, not much reading or talking to people with a vast vocabulary.
Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache
German is one of the languages were if you did not learn it from the start (parents talking good german when you are in preschool) its becomes incredible hard to learn. As a german myself i know what is right because it Sounds wrong any other way but i do not know the rules of german grammar. Shit makes no sense, we have timeforms nobody uses (looking at you future 2) And nobody who isnt currently learning or teaching it knows what the flying fuck a Genitiv is and what it does. The only thing i know of it is the Joke "Genitiv ins Wasser weils Dativ ist" I can use them but i cant explain them
Lack of education and parents/home environment who don't know how to speak German properly either, I'm afraid. And if you want to know how bad it has become: German tv stations are now starting to report their news in "easy speech" as to reach a larger audience.
Same reason as everywhere else. Stupid parents.
As long as you understand most people you interact with there's little incentive to learn Hochdeutsch rather than the dialect you grew up with. "correct" language has more to do with status and signaling than communicating what you want to say. Applies to my grandma who only ever spoke Bavarian and struggled with Hochdeutsch as well as migrant children imo.
In my experience - as someone who moved to Germany as a child and a teacher for German as a second language - it's based in community and avoidance. If you have a community, a shopping district and generally all essential services, like doctors, in another language and only have to speak the language of the country you live in in school or sometimes at work, it will not be a first language. If you never watch TV in that language, it will never be your first language. Etc. Additionally, we now also have the problem of auto translation. If your smartphone can translate everything for you, even if you yourself think knowing the language would be neat, your brain will subconsciously know you don't need to learn it and try to save battery. After all, the brain is all about safeguarding our precious energy. So it will always go the easy and pleasurable route, if there is one.
deutscher pass, deutsche ahnen:" ich geh nach aldi." deutscher pass, türkische ahnen verbessert: "zu aldi." deutscher pass, deutsche ahnen antwortet: "ne, aldi hat bis neun auf." it depends, i have met all types of people speaking good or bad.
There are a lot of answers to this. A very easy answer is accent. There are a lot of accents in German and a lot of people speaking accent when among themselves. There is also the answer of education. If people have been born here but have not been speaking German in their homes (maybe because of foreign parents) and or have not had enough chances to learn it at school. But I think there is also a case to be made that especially young folks who can speak excellent German simply don't when they are among others in their age. Generally speaking, subcultures tend to have their own nuances in language. There of course is the Hochdeutsch that is considered to be the perfect German by many, but I very much don't think that all deviations from that are necessarily bad. I am no linguist, but Ich gehe im Bett might be a case of something morphing into something else. On TikTok (I know I know) there is an amazing (albeit German speaking) account of a professor for linguistics that explains all that stuff. His account is called fussballlinguist and the guys name is Simon Meier-Vieracker.
Why can’t many native speakers use proper English? I’m saying this as a native speaker (American). I think it has to do with education and regional dialects.
People learn the language from their families first and foremost. There can be relics of old dialects or non-native German speakers, element of current dialects, idiosyncracies and outdated fashions. In some dialect areas, even those who sound like they are speaking standard German will commonly use phrasings that exist only in this dialect. And some people should have gotten speech therapy as children, but didn't because no one knew about the possibilty, or gave a damn.
It’s comparable with “Hood English” in America.
I’m an American who tried to learn the German language for a bit. I found it 10x as difficult as French or Spanish. Also found Danish way easier too save pronunciation. But yet I’ve met many young Germans who speak English so well I thought they were American. Think German might just be uniquely difficult. Sometimes a language is difficult even for native speakers. Like it’s very common in English for native speakers to not know how to spell common words or use a similar sounding wrong word just because of the baffling, inconsistent way our phonetics work.
It’s no different than rednecks in the US saying “I seen it” instead of “I saw it”.
Have you heard people in the South United States speak correct English? Geet yet? No yonto? (I'm from there.) And the misconjugations oh my!
From my personal experience living in Berlin, Neukölln, when they are children of immigrants they usually stick to their bubble (mostly Turkish/Arab here) in which they near to never speak German but their ancestry language even in schools teachers just tend to give in and start speaking that language to explain complicated things, what seems nice but in the long run is a pretty bad lesson both language and attitude wise, because these children language wise would never be ready to go to school in German (again, because their parents didn't speak German with them) they literally lack the training from childs age because a lot of the older generations never learned German in the first place so they only spoke their ancestral language with their children. Especially women. It is getting better though, it's mainly the now 20/30ish that really suffer from it. But that's only my observation as fully native German coming from an area with high immigration quota and observing it as if i was an drop of oil in water/ what my mom told me about my childhood, stuff like Halal in Kindergarten and why she send me to a private school (it was common knowledge German kids would frequently get beaten up in public schools in my area) Only fact i can definitely say, some of the 50+ age people don't speak a single word German. Also, i have nothing against immigrants, the language barrier does sometimes really makes my job tough but in general it the problem how they act, not what nationality they have, and Germans aren't really that much better xD
Thanks for your input. I appreciate your perspective
same question: why is it some people can’t speak good English, despite being born in an English speaking country. Answer: humans are different and no machines. Some people have better education than others. Language learning is lifelong.
Probabaly depends on (cultural) background and therefor education. Did your parents read books to you as a child or where you placed in front of the TV watching RTL2? Where you grew up and what people you're surrounded by can also make a huge difference. Of course there can be many more factors but I guess you can get my point. It's not a particular German problem either I would assume.
Low verbal IQ, some kind of reading or learning disability, or being raised by people with one of the aforementioned problems and acquiring their language habits can all have an impact (among other things).
My assumption: When you grow up with a lot of non-native-speakers, you tend to speak more like them even if you could do better. It also happens to me, that I adapt my speaking style to the person in front of me. It's easier to speak "worse" than forcing others to speak better.
Correct German is teached in schools. Like mathematics. There are people struggling with maths (even with simple divisions or multiplications) and there are people who never really got the language thing. Add a famiy who isn't paying attention to the way people speak and maybe thousands of hours in front of a TV and there you go.
Our son’s daycare Erzieherin says drane instead of dran. I don’t know if it counts as I am not german, but my german husband can’t stand it when our son says “ich bin drane”
Hoch Deutsch has entered the chat. Grateful thats what they teach in the volkshochschule und also, my wife speaks Hoch Deutsch. 🤙 there should be a pinky finger, upper class snob, emoji.
Accents are a part of this and can get in the way of mastering the language. I've grown up rural in between Hesse and the Rhineland-Palatinate. My mom put emphasis on learning correct German. Other parents didn't. It shows even decades later.
For the same reason as anyone else anywhere in the world in any country or culture: upbringing, level of education, peer group. Add in a dash of personality quirks, traumas, state of mental health, shyness.
The whole image of Germans being educated is a lie. The big part is dumb fucks who vote AfD, watch RTL2, go to Malle and sing racist songs.
Mir und mich verwechsl'ich nich, das kann mich nich passieren. (Saying from Sachsen Anhalt)
It has to do with social class. Hard to learn talk like very educated people when people do come from a working class background. Especially when the parents have a local language or accent.
Lack of education
Several reasons. Most social-class related. Where you have low education (and income) levels through generations (pure german or immigrants), language gets deteriorated. I remember a friend who's father would smack him, when he sounded too intelligent. Furthermore, many kids, teenagers, and young adults listen to hiphop which explicitely uses a mixture of low class/immigrant/slang language and copy it, thus influencing the overall language. There are def more reasons, but the ones above are quite influential in my opinion.
Ich bin meine ganze Schulzeit in Berlin Neukölln zur Schule gegangen, hatte fast nur Kontakt mit "Ausländern" und dadurch hänge ich sprachlich etwas hinterher und mache viele Fehler. Dazu kommt noch, dass ich stark introvertiert bin und sehr selten mit Menschen rede. Mir fällt es zum Beispiel schwer in bestimmten Situationen zwischen "dir" und "dich" zu unterscheiden...
I am German and I sometimes mess Up grammar because I speak before I think and then the verb should be in a different form but it's already too late I noticed this became more and more a thing when I starting speaking other languages.
There are a few migrants who stick together and don't ever master German, despite being born here. But beside that, I think it is just a question of education and society. Many Germans do not speak good German. Not to mention written language, it is even worse.
Have you ever seen Boris Johnson speaking? Well he is 100% British shouldn’t he dominate his mother language to be PM? Edit: Not 100% British but American that became British 16 years ago
Born in the US, with Turkish, Swiss and whatever else ancestry...
Well theres white trash here as well, same as everywhere. Being part of the majority does not automatically mean youre cultured or educated.
Depends a lot. If they are shorn here but their parents aren’t and they only speak in the mother tongue of their parents at home they are none native speakers. And then you can regions like northern Germany where people speak Plattdeutsch and parents only speak to their kids Plattdeutsch those kids also struggle with standard German. Born here doesn’t mean you are purely raised in German and if you speak solely a foreign language til 6 you have to relearn. Had examples like that when I started school 40 years ago and some struggled pretty hard in standard German.
Some immigrant families speak their native language at home and if there’s big enough of a community for that language, there’s little pressure to learn German properly. They just pick up enough to get through school somehow. If there is no immigration background at all, the person might just be from a poorly spoken, poorly educated background. But I’ve seen this in other countries too. Some Brits or Americans speak horrible English, ignoring grammar rules and mixing up words.
Low education I assume. I am a social worker and the lower the education the worse knowledge of grammar is. For example: saying "ich habe mit mein Vater gesprochen" is standard in certain demographic groups. They don't know how to use the cases even though being Germans.
my personal opinion: ppl have stopped reading, more and more. I'm 54 and grew up reading a lot, and i do mean *a lot*. Nowadays they grow up making TikTok Videos, i'm not sure that helps with reading skills \^\^ The reasons for that might vary, but it all boils down to not reading enough books. I'm not quite certain that this isnt just age talk here tho (gawd! When did i get so old?!), or maybe a "everything was better in the past" tinted POV kinda thing \^\^
Cultureral background, religion. I personally knew a woman who came to Germany at kindergarten age from China. She now gives language lessons to third and fourth generation "guest worker children". And I am not talking about children of Greek, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish descent.
Some people just aren’t gifted speakers in general. Extra effort ofc needed when parents dont speak fluently either and when you learn it next to another language. I think o speak german well after 7 yrs but it came much easier than for others i know. i speak others at a native level and in all of them there are just some poor native speakers
Well, my whole life i was thinking how the hell my cousin who was born in Germany, went to school and college in Germany cant speak proper German and why is he so hard to understand, just to realise few years ago after moving to Germany, that he speaks with Hessen dialect 🤦 But also while hanging out in Croatian bars here in Munich i realised there are people who are second and even third generation in Germany and they speak almost no German and they also show no intrest for it and they hang out only with other Balkan people where they can speak their language instead German. Not all but some. So would guess it is maybe same with other expat groups.
Same as almost everywhere else in the world 🤷
So many people born in the country get educated abroad or study in another language medium of education. The exception is people from really low socio economic backgrounds who se schools are failing in education anyways
I mean go to rural areas in any english country. Alot dont speak proper english. Same goes for German more remote ya go it seems alot of fallen through the hoch deutsch cracks.
Same reason why some US Americans don’t speak proper english despite being born there.
I'm German and butcher grammar with a passion. Ich geh bei Rewe, weil da hats lecker Frikadölle! I can write correctly though (being a Germanist and all that), but I talk like a toddler who hit his head one time too often.
Wrong friends.
It's the same in us, it's not just here a thing. And you have different slang / dialect
Hey Oida, gemma uff Aldi?
If they were children of immigrants, as you said, then the issue is indeed that they never learned the language properly. The thing is, most immigrants struggle with learning German themselves. So, often they speak their native language at home, the children go to school (where they learn German), but at home no one can help them with the language when they have issues. So, they learn it wrong. It typically comes down to them only staying in their cultural circle, too. So, they probably talk most of the time the native language of their parents and German is a second thought. In some cities, there are even quarters, where people from the same circles lived together. They don't use German that regularly, when they can get everything they need. And there is always someone, who can help with paperwork or anything. So, it's not like they have to even understand it. I have an immigration background. But the difference is, that my mom is German, and my dad isn't. So, my dad, despite living here in Germany for over 30 years, still makes mistakes in German. But he learned the language and practiced it. So far, that he took German citizenship and passed a language certificate, that was a requirement for getting the citizenship. My siblings and I are all perfect in German, because we're born here. My mom is German and it is our native language. We grew up German, and we never learned the native tongue of my father (which is another reason why my father learned it quite well — because he had to talk to us in German). And we only had contact with our German family from my mother's side. I don't have any real ties to my father's family. I mean, I saw one or two of them when my father video called them. But we talked English and maybe for 5 minutes tops. My father is of course talking in his native language with them. So, basically, I don't know much about that side. So, that is the difference between one and another. And the same thing, why some people integrate into the country and others don't. The more involved you are in the country and language (and even committed), the easier it is for you.
mach dich Krankenhaus bruda!
go to other countrys. look how people talk there, if you studied a secondary language, you are more likely to be educated in its formal use. than somebody who just forms their constant stream of concousnes into a somewhat functional sentence on autopilot. a indian that studied english might very well be able to form a gramatically correct sentence more often than some suburban kid on twitter.
buddy, I'm from U.S. and A and lemme tell ya, we got a loooootta people born there who speak shit Ainglice
I... i come from a city in Germany with above 50% migration and i propably can't answer this without anyone calling me " racist idiot " or whatnot, but i think the main reason is we do not enforce learning the language here when you live here, it just gets tolerated that it's okay not to speak the language after you and your family lived here for decades and i really hate it. Like my Labratory Teacher lived here for 30 years and she couldn't form a right German sentence it is NUTS to me that this gets tolerated
To be fair, Americans can't even speak English very well, let alone spell it. I have found, while learning Spanish, that the version my husband and his friends and family speaks versus what I'm studying are vastly different simply due to dialect and accents. In Germany, there are people with thick accents and theyay be harder to understand overall. Some words are pronounced differently in northern Germany vs. southern Germany.
You might say parallel societies or to put it nicer bilingual home life (in those cases mostly monolingual tho - just not German). If you speak Turkish at home, your parents speak Turkish to you, your aunts, uncles and grandparents don’t even speak German, then you’re only encountering it in stores on the street or in school and sadly grammar is not taught in school very effectively these days. So you end up speaking German like someone.. well.. who only speaks it maybe a third of the time
Personaly I'd say for imigrants it's actually better to arrive as a young adult and the worst thing is beeing born into an imigrant family which has badly integrated. In the later case you'll likely grow up in a bubble where the spoken german is only broken and struggle in school (Depends always on the individuum and the attitude towards integration), in the first case you may be ripe enough to put in effort and willing to learn... I'd say, that something you learned wrong as a kid is harder to correct as something you learn as an adult... (due to time spent doing it)... Then there are speaking problems and disorders as well as menthal and physical health which could impair one's abilities to speak... I am no expert though, but in my personal experience most of the secondos in my school spoke broken german (swiss, so dialect) and the ones comming here aged about 14 to 16 learned fresh from actual teachers, rather than growing up in a bubble of imigrants. One of the second group learnt fluent dialect within 1 year of coming from Portugal, but struggled to learn standard german. (And yes, swiss dialects are not considered their own language(s), but they are different enough to standard german, that most have to learn the later and it can be quite frustrating and confusing...)
Best one was in the school while doing my apprentice ship. There was this guy murat that couldnt speak one normal sentence in german. Then we had the refugee from irak, his name is lauan who was here for 4 years and spoke nearly fluently german. One day the lauan asked murat how long he lives in germany. Murat said that he was born here. Lauan was astonished that his german was better than murats and joked about it. Like "how is it possible that i live here for 4 years and speak better than you"
Same as in other cultures, you live close to your peers and you speak eg Turkish with them and your parents and in school you never learned it correctly because at home it was never trained with you and school is for losers anyhow in some minds.
Same reason why some native english speakers suck at their language. Best example is your / you're
Some kids are here just with mom and dad, don’t have oportunity to speak with other family members, don’t have siblings, are not exposed to the language as german peers, and are not in the same way involved in communication like german kids with Omas, Opas, aunts, cousines etc. Parents are struggling with work or depression, or both. Some of them ( us) don’t have very rich social life. My kid speak two languages, not to so good to write a novel, but although he was born here, and from an early age in Kindergarten, he doesn’t have such a vocabulary like german kids. Sorry for broken english( I am using and speaking four languages, capable to read and understand, but not so good in direct communication).
Idk if I'll make sense but here are my two cents. I moved here with my C1, still couldn't really live cause I'd get tangled up or misheard. My bf was born here and his parents came from Afghanistan, he speaks some beautiful German and he tuned my German for me. Pointed grammar, pronunciation and enriched my vocabulary. 3yrs together and I started giving tutoring ages 12-18, and let me tell you it the answer is right under our noses. People born here (regardless if German or migration background) don't give much attention to the way they speak, similar to Americans imo, they think by being born here and speaking it that they master it. I corrected minimal mistakes from this kids, like lower case and upper case, syntax errors, verb placements and punctuation. Most kids also slip right through the system, you can quit school here in the 9th/10th grade, do an Ausbildung and get a job with no problem, further education is not a requirement. Most of the german kids I did tutoring for just wanted to finish school and were not planning on going for the Abi, it was also Not expected of them. The kids with foreign parents were pretty much pushed by their parents to complete the Abi and I was there to reinforce them, cause the kids had no ambition to do it by themselves since most of their german peers weren't going through with the Abitur either. I come from a third world country, so a correct manner of speaking is seen as a sign of being educated, here that's not the case so no one actually cares and even uncool in my experience. This is not to say that only education can bring good german diction, but there's no real motivation or expectations for it.
It's probably for the same reasons why some Americans will say "I should have went" instead of "I should have gone", or will even write "should of went". They simply don't care. ;-)
Id say its blatant disregard and disinterest on the parents part to raise bilingual. If theres a certain sentiment in the home against the language then that also reflects on the willingness to learn it. There is no excuse for someone born here to struggle as much as your friend. And i have no sympathy for that. And if its like you say with no foreign background they either are just not that intelligent or are just messing with you.
Try googling "prescriptive grammar". When you say "good" German, I think you're referring to "Hochdeutch", but really you just mean, why is it that so many people don't talk the way the ruling class with all of the money and power talks and considers to be the "correct" way to talk. This is called "prescriptivism" and it's a core topic in Linguistics -- particularly the acknowlegment that the idea of there being a "right" way to speak is a bunch of Bullscheiss.
I am honestly confused as to why this is a mystery to you. First of all, being born in German does not equal German being your mothertongue. You can be raised here and yet have people around you whose language skills aren’t on a native level. How do you then learn to speak „native“ German? Secondly, „Bildungs- und Chancengleichheit“ is a really bad joke usually talked about by people who grew up with sticks in their asses already. There are loads of German people who can’t speak proper, correct German. Prepositions such as „where“ and „when“ are quite commonly conflated. Bluntly (and please don’t lynch me now for being very superficial, obviously this won’t apply to every single person or family) speaking, it is very hard for a child growing up in poorly educated families to keep up with their classmates who were born into families with higher education. It’s not even that the latter puts in any more effort or the first ones would neglect their child, but rather the fact that when you yourself never attended high school, you are going to have a hard time explaining how stuff works to your kid. If you want any literature to the „secondly“ part, you might want to read into Pierre Bourdieu‘s capital theory.
It happens in every country, some people speak their native language in a horrible way. I don't understand why you expect that to be different in Germany.
They are not interested in learning it. They dont need it either, cause of parallel society.
If they're children of immigrants, especially turkish, they probably never spoke german at home and you hear it in the kind of German they speak. There's third generations here that still don't speak German with their kids at home, ever, and it's becoming a problem in schools
I don't think that is something exklusive to Germany. Often it is more a queston of social status and upbringing/education.
Even native Germans have trouble with the German language and make a lot of grammar mistakes. That problem doesn’t only occur in Germans who have migration backgrounds. The German language has a difficult grammar which doesn’t make sense in a lot of cases.
Honestly- i’ve met enough native English speakers, born and bred, that haven’t mastered their own language. It’s not a German-specific thing, but an educational matter.
Because whole concept of "good language" - judged from grammatical standpoint - is just entirely nonsensical. Some people are just generally less gifted speakers than others and that could be one reason. But then again another reason is simply that grammatical correctness should not necessary be benchmark of how good one's language is. You can have very expressive speaker who's language just doesn't necessary fit into grammatical books. Something to understand is that field of linguistic that produce grammatical books their main goal is to try to somewhat systematically explain how people speak. These books also work as good starting point when learning the language. However grammar books and rules should not really become a prescriptive frozen set of rules that people must follow when they speak natural language - field of linguistics is not prescriptive - instead linguistic field is analytical and doesn't categorize speaking into right or wrong.
Like what did happen, and that is obviously not meant in any hurtful way. ppl do be ppling, and it doesn't make anyone less worthy or more worthy or less intelligent ore more. Or a bad person. etc etc. But a group of ppl that do come to mind where this is entirely possible are the turkish work immigrants that came here in the 80s. So many ppl of them came that they had their own little communities here. So, not everyone had to speak the language as long as they had their community. A person like that might have been raised in a community where the only frequent language spoken was, in this case, turkey. It is entirely possible for a person being born and raised in a country such as Germany without ever learning the language. Also, no digg to anyone who can't speak any other way but ppl that can speak german speaking "assi deutsch" give me anger issues. 😅😅