5 ms·

Remember that this guy already has had British citizenship, but he decided to immigrate to Germany despite the language barrier and not being a citizen.

AdrianB1 5y ago
Language is probably the biggest roadblock in getting a job in Germany and most people ignore it. German is not easy (my grandmother was a German teacher, some of my family members are of German descent and none of us is speaking any decent German) and Germans are more xenophobic than they will ever admit. Even in my American company meetings with German people sometimes we have very awkward moments when the Germans switch from English to German mid-talks, even if they are peers or lower ranking than the non-German speakers in the discussion.
- quonn 5y ago
  So Germans speaking their own language in their own country is now xenophobic? (referring to your first paragraph) It‘s true that with the exception of big companies or certain industries much German is spoken at work. Exactly like Spanish in Spain, French in France, Italian in Italy or Portuguese in Portugal. I‘m German myself, mostly living outside Germany. I try to fit in as good as possible, including making an effort to learn the local language. It would never cross my mind to think of a country as xenophobic because they speak their own language.
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    There were two statements: - Knowing German is important - Germans are more xenophobic than they care to admit Why are you forcing them to be one then attacking that false premise?
    - quonn 5y ago
      Because these statements are logically connected in the form of an argument and even an example is giving.
      - BoorishBears 5y ago
        You literally just confirmed my comment. You understand that they're not saying Germans are xenophobic because they prefer a language, but that it was just a single example. That they are two separate concepts and one is just a small part of the other. If I didn't know better I'd think you forced more of a connection than there was to build a strawman argument.
        quonn 5y ago
        It‘s perfectly normal to use words like „and“ and still make an argument. This is done all the time in articles, it‘s not math but language. There was an assertion, then another assertion and then an example related (but not equal) to the first assertion. Sandwiching things like that can at best be called misleading, but I stand by my understanding which is that a connection between language and xenophobia was made. Other replies by the same person inside this thread confirm this as well („Germans that know English refusing to speak to people that only know English and Pashto is xenophobic.“) So he made a connection between language and xenophobia. Can we agree on this basic fact?
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        "This is language not math" is exactly my point, you're trying to paint this as me looking at a technicality or something, it's literally misconstruing someone's very simple words They made a connection and it's not the connection you implied... > It would never cross my mind to think of a country as xenophobic because they speak their own language. This person never said Germany is xenophobic just because they speak their own language, it's insulting people's intelligence to pretend they did. This isn't HN-style "haha got you on the mathematical sum of words" this is having the basic decency to reply to what was said, not what you're pretending was said. Maybe not everyone is capable of that.
  - ausudhz 5y ago
    Xenophobia has been an increasing concern in Europe in the last 10 years and nobody wants to admin it. There are "new-nazi" movement in Greece and Germany for example which of course target (not only but mostly) immigrants. I guess is totally disconnected from the language discussion.
    - quonn 5y ago
      Golden Dawn in Greece and AFD in Germany (although it should be noted that AFD is not quite the same. GD would be equal to NPD or similar). Both have about 10% of the vote more or less to give you an idea of the size. This is one of the most widely discussed political topics here and has been since at least 2013. I don‘t see how „nobody wants to admit it“. The Green party was recently at 30% and is now at 18%. The social democrats + liberal + green party are currently at 53% - all decidedly not xenophobic. (source: sonntagsfrage.de) The fact that a right-wing party exists is normal in a democracy. We should keep in mind that the Republican Party is in many ways more right-wing than AFD. And it‘s far bigger. The German conservative party is in many ways left of the Democratic party in the US. The social democrats and the Green party would be completely unthinkable there right now. (I‘m voting for the Green party.)
      - ausudhz 5y ago
        Left and moderate politician know the issue, I'm saying normal people and far right won't admit it because they think since they live in their small bubble the entire country is the same. There has been immense pressure in the last years against immigrants in Europe and is true in every European country. Le Pen in France (21% in the last presidential election, 33% on the second turn vs Macron) and Salvini in Italy (Lega got 17% in the general election) are far right and xenophobic parties too. They won't admit it publicly, but they are not even taking the distance from whom in their party are racist as that helps them on getting votes.
  - AdrianB1 5y ago
    No, Germans that know English refusing to speak to people that only know English and Pashto is xenophobic. I saw that many times in Germany (mostly in Munich), people refusing to talk to you in English even if they knew the language.
    - quonn 5y ago
      Can you please describe the situation? Are you saying someone asked a question in English and got a reply in German? Or are you saying there was an office with 20 German-speaking employees and one English speaking one and then much of the informal talk was in German? It‘s true, it‘s like that. And that‘s not xenophobic. It may be impolite, depending on the situation. It‘s not specific to Germany as anyone working in other places in Europe knows. Some people don‘t talk English because they lack confidence.
      - AdrianB1 5y ago
        Simplest example: my first time in Munich I was struggling with the subway instructions, they were all in German and this was before Internet on smartphones and Google translate, so at the entrance of the station I asked several people in English if they speak English and can tell me what ticket to purchase (the different ticket by area concept was completely foreign to me). A couple said yes, I asked the question "what ticket I need from here to X station" and the 2 answers were in the tone of : - Read the instructions // - But they are in German // - Learn German. If you go to Albania, where no foreigners speak the language, they will be happy to try to communicate in Italian (some people know it). Go in Romania, they will use whatever language they know (mostly English or German, but Italian, Spanish or French are not rare at all). Everywhere in the Balkans people will try to communicate, same in Italy, France or Spain, not a problem at all in the Netherlands, Hungary, Czechia or Slovakia, no matter how bad they speak the language they will communicate with you. At the opposite side of the spectrum is Germany. I travelled for work or vacations in all the countries in Europe except the Scandinavian Peninsula and Russia/Belarus/Ukraine, I never had a communication problem outside Germany. It almost makes me able to draw some conclusions from my personal experiences and the ones of many people that I know, including family and friends working in Germany for the past 30 years and for the 20 years of having work colleagues and one direct manager in Germany. I am not saying Germans are bad, my best manager ever was a German moved to US, my current manager is a German in Frankfurt and he is a great guy, but the experience with the people on the street is that they don't want to speak English in many cases.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    @AdrianB1 (a reference to the CEFR score?) said “and” not “therefore”, so you shouldn’t be presuming there is intended to be a causal connection between those two things. My general assumption when I looked for places to move to in response to Brexit was that people in one country are much the same as people in any other; as almost every nation is “more xenophobic than they will ever admit”[1]. I happen go think that Germany is far less xenophobic than most countries[2], while still being more xenophobic than it wants to admit. Assuming the same distribution of personalities is also one reason why I picked Berlin over any tiny village somewhere, as my experience in the UK says London is more welcoming of outsiders than are random quiet British villages, and I applied this pattern everywhere. Former coworker from Pakistan confirmed this hypothesis with stories from his experiences in other parts of Germany. I’m looking forward to this pandemic being over so I can do meatspace language lessons instead of relying on apps and websites. [1] for example, the UK has many loud people who refuse to accept they’re xenophobic while saying the country has too many Muslims (and then the Mosque they’re complaining about turns out to be a Catholic cathedral or a former Royal palace). Likewise apologists for the British empire. I even knew someone whose response to asylum seekers causing the Eurostar being delayed one time was to suggest the government would make the next train drive through anyone on the line, as if late trains were not a standard part of modern Britain (I no longer talk to this person). I would be surprised if this was uniquely a British delusion, or if any other nation managed to avoid it, and the nature of the graffiti I saw outside the Bad Kissingen train station, and on political posters in Nürnberg (a city, but I’m not saying all racists live in the countryside), certainly indicate that it is similar. [2] e.g. opinion polls showing high level of public support for more asylum seekers.
  - kergonath 5y ago
    > So Germans speaking their own language in their own country is now xenophobic? (referring to your first paragraph) How dare they speak their language!? Well, they can't really speak English either, because that would be cultural appropriation.
- oaiey 5y ago
  I would separate the topic of language and xenophobia. The language is hard and acceptance to speak English - while generally there - is not universal. However, the bubble of non English speakers, the bubble of xenophobic people and bubble of racists in Germany have not the biggest overlaps. Native languages in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japanese or China have a very long history and the countries are very confident of themselves. A German thinks: you are here so you should speak German. Maybe I am nice and talk English to you, but I expect you to learn German if you are here. The French are even stricter on that.
  - AdrianB1 5y ago
    Tourists don't have to learn the language if they are there. I was a tourist most of my travels in Germany.
    - oaiey 5y ago
      They should but they do not need to. But we are talking here about some individuals being declared xenophobic because they did not want to speak English inside of Germany despite having English language capability. Germany is very welcome to tourists, but we are 80 million country where tourism is a tiny fraction of our GDP. We are not Mallorca, Ibiza or the Bahamas. There cannot be an expectation that as a tourist you have an easy way there.
- s9w 5y ago
  Germans speaking German, how dare they
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. It's a road to hell, and a particularly avoidable one. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - AdrianB1 5y ago
    Sorry, I just tried to give an example why knowing German is essential if you want to work in Germany, nothing else.
LatteLazy 5y ago
>He chose Germany because he expected it to have a better economic future and a leading role in the telecom and IT sectors in the long term. Seems logical to me. The UK is at the start of a lost generation.

AdrianB1 5y ago

Language is probably the biggest roadblock in getting a job in Germany and most people ignore it. German is not easy (my grandmother was a German teacher, some of my family members are of German descent and none of us is speaking any decent German) and Germans are more xenophobic than they will ever admit. Even in my American company meetings with German people sometimes we have very awkward moments when the Germans switch from English to German mid-talks, even if they are peers or lower ranking than the non-German speakers in the discussion.

quonn 5y ago
So Germans speaking their own language in their own country is now xenophobic? (referring to your first paragraph) It‘s true that with the exception of big companies or certain industries much German is spoken at work. Exactly like Spanish in Spain, French in France, Italian in Italy or Portuguese in Portugal. I‘m German myself, mostly living outside Germany. I try to fit in as good as possible, including making an effort to learn the local language. It would never cross my mind to think of a country as xenophobic because they speak their own language.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  There were two statements: - Knowing German is important - Germans are more xenophobic than they care to admit Why are you forcing them to be one then attacking that false premise?
  - quonn 5y ago
    Because these statements are logically connected in the form of an argument and even an example is giving.
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      You literally just confirmed my comment. You understand that they're not saying Germans are xenophobic because they prefer a language, but that it was just a single example. That they are two separate concepts and one is just a small part of the other. If I didn't know better I'd think you forced more of a connection than there was to build a strawman argument.
      - quonn 5y ago
        It‘s perfectly normal to use words like „and“ and still make an argument. This is done all the time in articles, it‘s not math but language. There was an assertion, then another assertion and then an example related (but not equal) to the first assertion. Sandwiching things like that can at best be called misleading, but I stand by my understanding which is that a connection between language and xenophobia was made. Other replies by the same person inside this thread confirm this as well („Germans that know English refusing to speak to people that only know English and Pashto is xenophobic.“) So he made a connection between language and xenophobia. Can we agree on this basic fact?
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        "This is language not math" is exactly my point, you're trying to paint this as me looking at a technicality or something, it's literally misconstruing someone's very simple words They made a connection and it's not the connection you implied... > It would never cross my mind to think of a country as xenophobic because they speak their own language. This person never said Germany is xenophobic just because they speak their own language, it's insulting people's intelligence to pretend they did. This isn't HN-style "haha got you on the mathematical sum of words" this is having the basic decency to reply to what was said, not what you're pretending was said. Maybe not everyone is capable of that.
- ausudhz 5y ago
  Xenophobia has been an increasing concern in Europe in the last 10 years and nobody wants to admin it. There are "new-nazi" movement in Greece and Germany for example which of course target (not only but mostly) immigrants. I guess is totally disconnected from the language discussion.
  - quonn 5y ago
    Golden Dawn in Greece and AFD in Germany (although it should be noted that AFD is not quite the same. GD would be equal to NPD or similar). Both have about 10% of the vote more or less to give you an idea of the size. This is one of the most widely discussed political topics here and has been since at least 2013. I don‘t see how „nobody wants to admit it“. The Green party was recently at 30% and is now at 18%. The social democrats + liberal + green party are currently at 53% - all decidedly not xenophobic. (source: sonntagsfrage.de) The fact that a right-wing party exists is normal in a democracy. We should keep in mind that the Republican Party is in many ways more right-wing than AFD. And it‘s far bigger. The German conservative party is in many ways left of the Democratic party in the US. The social democrats and the Green party would be completely unthinkable there right now. (I‘m voting for the Green party.)
    - ausudhz 5y ago
      Left and moderate politician know the issue, I'm saying normal people and far right won't admit it because they think since they live in their small bubble the entire country is the same. There has been immense pressure in the last years against immigrants in Europe and is true in every European country. Le Pen in France (21% in the last presidential election, 33% on the second turn vs Macron) and Salvini in Italy (Lega got 17% in the general election) are far right and xenophobic parties too. They won't admit it publicly, but they are not even taking the distance from whom in their party are racist as that helps them on getting votes.
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  No, Germans that know English refusing to speak to people that only know English and Pashto is xenophobic. I saw that many times in Germany (mostly in Munich), people refusing to talk to you in English even if they knew the language.
  - quonn 5y ago
    Can you please describe the situation? Are you saying someone asked a question in English and got a reply in German? Or are you saying there was an office with 20 German-speaking employees and one English speaking one and then much of the informal talk was in German? It‘s true, it‘s like that. And that‘s not xenophobic. It may be impolite, depending on the situation. It‘s not specific to Germany as anyone working in other places in Europe knows. Some people don‘t talk English because they lack confidence.
    - AdrianB1 5y ago
      Simplest example: my first time in Munich I was struggling with the subway instructions, they were all in German and this was before Internet on smartphones and Google translate, so at the entrance of the station I asked several people in English if they speak English and can tell me what ticket to purchase (the different ticket by area concept was completely foreign to me). A couple said yes, I asked the question "what ticket I need from here to X station" and the 2 answers were in the tone of : - Read the instructions // - But they are in German // - Learn German. If you go to Albania, where no foreigners speak the language, they will be happy to try to communicate in Italian (some people know it). Go in Romania, they will use whatever language they know (mostly English or German, but Italian, Spanish or French are not rare at all). Everywhere in the Balkans people will try to communicate, same in Italy, France or Spain, not a problem at all in the Netherlands, Hungary, Czechia or Slovakia, no matter how bad they speak the language they will communicate with you. At the opposite side of the spectrum is Germany. I travelled for work or vacations in all the countries in Europe except the Scandinavian Peninsula and Russia/Belarus/Ukraine, I never had a communication problem outside Germany. It almost makes me able to draw some conclusions from my personal experiences and the ones of many people that I know, including family and friends working in Germany for the past 30 years and for the 20 years of having work colleagues and one direct manager in Germany. I am not saying Germans are bad, my best manager ever was a German moved to US, my current manager is a German in Frankfurt and he is a great guy, but the experience with the people on the street is that they don't want to speak English in many cases.
- ben_w 5y ago
  @AdrianB1 (a reference to the CEFR score?) said “and” not “therefore”, so you shouldn’t be presuming there is intended to be a causal connection between those two things. My general assumption when I looked for places to move to in response to Brexit was that people in one country are much the same as people in any other; as almost every nation is “more xenophobic than they will ever admit”[1]. I happen go think that Germany is far less xenophobic than most countries[2], while still being more xenophobic than it wants to admit. Assuming the same distribution of personalities is also one reason why I picked Berlin over any tiny village somewhere, as my experience in the UK says London is more welcoming of outsiders than are random quiet British villages, and I applied this pattern everywhere. Former coworker from Pakistan confirmed this hypothesis with stories from his experiences in other parts of Germany. I’m looking forward to this pandemic being over so I can do meatspace language lessons instead of relying on apps and websites. [1] for example, the UK has many loud people who refuse to accept they’re xenophobic while saying the country has too many Muslims (and then the Mosque they’re complaining about turns out to be a Catholic cathedral or a former Royal palace). Likewise apologists for the British empire. I even knew someone whose response to asylum seekers causing the Eurostar being delayed one time was to suggest the government would make the next train drive through anyone on the line, as if late trains were not a standard part of modern Britain (I no longer talk to this person). I would be surprised if this was uniquely a British delusion, or if any other nation managed to avoid it, and the nature of the graffiti I saw outside the Bad Kissingen train station, and on political posters in Nürnberg (a city, but I’m not saying all racists live in the countryside), certainly indicate that it is similar. [2] e.g. opinion polls showing high level of public support for more asylum seekers.
- kergonath 5y ago
  > So Germans speaking their own language in their own country is now xenophobic? (referring to your first paragraph) How dare they speak their language!? Well, they can't really speak English either, because that would be cultural appropriation.
oaiey 5y ago
I would separate the topic of language and xenophobia. The language is hard and acceptance to speak English - while generally there - is not universal. However, the bubble of non English speakers, the bubble of xenophobic people and bubble of racists in Germany have not the biggest overlaps. Native languages in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japanese or China have a very long history and the countries are very confident of themselves. A German thinks: you are here so you should speak German. Maybe I am nice and talk English to you, but I expect you to learn German if you are here. The French are even stricter on that.
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  Tourists don't have to learn the language if they are there. I was a tourist most of my travels in Germany.
  - oaiey 5y ago
    They should but they do not need to. But we are talking here about some individuals being declared xenophobic because they did not want to speak English inside of Germany despite having English language capability. Germany is very welcome to tourists, but we are 80 million country where tourism is a tiny fraction of our GDP. We are not Mallorca, Ibiza or the Bahamas. There cannot be an expectation that as a tourist you have an easy way there.
s9w 5y ago
Germans speaking German, how dare they
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. It's a road to hell, and a particularly avoidable one. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  Sorry, I just tried to give an example why knowing German is essential if you want to work in Germany, nothing else.

LatteLazy 5y ago

>He chose Germany because he expected it to have a better economic future and a leading role in the telecom and IT sectors in the long term. Seems logical to me. The UK is at the start of a lost generation.