Subject: No German From Me - Or Not Enough ? - Why Don't I Speak More ? From: German_Complainer@ Sender: German_Complainer@ I append http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/why_not_more_german.txt See also: http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/mail/no_german.html http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_german.txt http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_german_bg.txt http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/not_a_german_customer.txt http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/txt/grammar.html & more generaly: http://www.berklix.com Computer Consultancy http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/cv/ My Resume - English & German http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/contact/ Contact - German for business OK. http://www.berklix.com/free/ Free Software http://www.berklix.org Free Organisations & Clubs Yes I've been here long enough to learn German, Yes I Can read most German easily, (including business legal contracts, spotting traps & negotiating, including dense newspaper articles: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Streiflicht, excluding insurance policies, excluding medical reports) No, I don't read mostly German, Yes I've spoken & lectured to large audiences in German, No it doesn't scare me, though I know my grammar is flakey (much easier lecturing, than writing business letters in good German grammar!) So why do I think English is often appropriate ? Is it just because I'm English or lazy ? No, that's an easy accusation, but a small part of the reason. Consider ... "Horses for Courses !" ;-) Choose your language like a tool: The best tool for the job at hand: English is my computer industry's language (American actually ;-) (Equally, I prefer an American keyboard, as the BIOS & base OS expects it, not a British keyboard with lost pipe etc eg | < >, or even worse a, German keyboard where most of my vital control characters are shifted & missing eg { ' } [ ] \ ). Speaking or writing German with ever more English computer words & acronyms mispronounced in German fashion gets increasingly ugly, clumsy & verbose, Examples: When some (not all) Germans mis-pronounce a SCSI LUN as a Loon (pronounced as in "Lunatic", & then argue their Germanic pronunciation is correct despite it' an American acronym from a specification in English. When one hears "Ich habe es ge-initialisiert." instead of ... "I initialised it." It would be too restrictive using German: I spend all the time at my desk working in English: the language of international computer industry development project mail lists. If a German asks a question in German on a local list, a few fellow Germans & an Austrian may see or respond. If a German writes in English (poor grammar or not, irrelevant) to an international list, a whole World of experts can offer advice (even if they too may have some other Chinese or Swedish or whatever language as first/native language), & that expertise is available awake 24 hours a day, no waiting for just Germanic speakers working/ awake in time zone CET=GMT+0100/0200. (Yes I know there's an African or 2 speaks German, & probably a few descendents of Germans on the River plate ;-) Never saw any such developers though lists before I stopped using those lists. If a German mails me in German asking for help, I can't quote his text in German on international development mail lists, without extra work translating, CC'ing become a problem, & I can't forward advice back in English from Russians, Japanese, Americans, Spanish or whoever on international lists, if I don't know if the German can read English well enough. While it makes sense for some Germans to be on German lists, it makes far less sense for me, so I'm still on a few with local geographic relevance, but I dropped off just - nation - wide ones. Bilingually fluent people say it changes the way of thought, depending what language one thinks in. I noticed a difference of thought pattern when I thought in French as a kid sometimes (in Italy!), I occasionally think in German, it's different, mostly rather constraining perhaps as less fluent, what it told me was that humans don't just use human language to communicate to others, language also helps construct more complex thoughts that perhaps we, at least probably I, couldn't achieve without a language, so a language most likely Does constrain our ways of thought subtly, & differently depending which language is used. Perhaps thinking in English might constrain thought in some aspects more than German, but I expect mostly its the other way round, as so many different nationals consider German as rather rigid. An English Patent Examiner friend considered German a more useful language than English to precisely phrase patent applications in it's perhaps a question of choosing the best tool for the job. In conversational groups of at least 2 Germans & 1 native English speaker, if a German sees a Du/ Sie problem approaching with another German, sometimes they'll switch to English - suiting all more than a contrived re-phrasing into a passive context remaining in German (Equivalent of asking "What might one think if ... ?" rather than "What would 'You = Sie_Or_Du [am I [yet] on formal or informal terms with this human?] ' think if ... ?" Working 1 to 1 with Germans, I rapidly switch to German when I see them getting stuck or slowing in English, & hope they as rapidly switch to English when they see I'm getting tangled (or when lots of the industry words just Are English or more accurately, American anyway :-) It works well, we're here to build technology, not be slowed by human language grammars ;-) English for me is also partly a convenient filter to ensure I generally mix with more technically competent locals: Within a few months of arrival in Munich in '85, it was a German speaking Swiss, who told me that those who didn't/ speak English weren't so good technically. (They weren't comfortable enough in English to be able to easily read all the American computer manuals, books & commented source code.) More computer books are translated now to German, perhaps with subsequent less requirement to be fluent in English for younger newcomers to computing, but the Internet has also arisen since, & development groups work in English. People expect that foreigners a long time in another country will learn some local language; but what many don't stop to realise, is that all languages are Not equal; some languages are better than others for some or most things. Not all screwdrivers & hammers are equally good for all jobs. Neither are languages. Alarm bells ring, echoing "Skill level ?" if a German supposed computer expert expects me to confine myself to just German for the whole of a computer conversation. Why would I want to communicate with someone who doesn't use the language of international developments ... Unless he's paying me a lot of money for my computer consultancy of course ? ... Then I'm more than willing ;-) Analogy: If you were the tennis pro at the club, would you happily work in the local language If they paid you_ ? ... Me too :-) If you wanted to be a really good tennis player, would you prefer to spend your unpaid time with internationaly competitive players or people using just the local language ? ... Me too ;-) English will be the world language someday I expect, (Romano Prodi, (president of the EU commission) is quoted in Newsweek June 2004 as saying that, adding that it won't be the language of the English, but a changed rationalised English that foreigners standardise on) (Good: there certainly are inconsistencies that could & should be discarded from ENglish to achieve a world language.) I read & negotiate German contracts, technical books, magazines, newspapers, & even novels, but I prefer original texts, not German translations of English. I have very few computer text books in German on my shelves, those few were first written by Germans In German. German is a more verbose language: (I first learnt that in 1985, having been responsible for installing translations of English & German in both directions in computer products, & taking account of a translators natural tendency to expand a bit in which ever direction they're going). But when a doc is originally written in German, if the translation is poor I usually quickly abandon English & read the original. Sure there are lots more German computer text books available now, but they're usually thicker & heavier versions of an English original, or translated later, after the original English is on sale, usually "Me Too" later entries to the book market, selling to those who can't comfortably read the previously published internationally known books in English. Makes sense for the author & buyer, but makes no sense for me to buy such usually entry level books: One also can't quote a page number of a German translation to some international project member on an international mail list in America, Russia, or Japan. Sometimes being able to read German is an advantage: my favourite occasional computer magazine is CT Mag. Those who can only read English can't read it. There's nothing near as good as CT on British computer magazine racks. Local events & business & mail lists of course run often/ mostly in local languages, so one reason to be reasonably fluent in both local & industry international languages. Yes, I probably could restructure this text, but I've always got programming to do, or some international computer project to participate in - in English ;-) Ja, falls sie bezahlte Projekt moeglichkeiten kennen, koennen wir gern reden, nur ruf mich an :-)