This. The landing story is uncharacteristically soft, surrounded by English speaking colleagues in an international company. On average, you'd find that Germans tend to grow weary speaking in English sooner and almost press you to speak German the first time you blurt a reply that sounds vaguely correct German. It almost becomes a matter of protecting your personal space if you don't want to feel embarrassed for making mistakes, especially in the work setting. Think about it: You're already focusing on your work and explaining it in English. The documentation is in English. Your code and your documentation are in English, but the chat absolutely needs to happen in German. Why? Work culture. I'm calling it out, because that chit-chatting by the water cooler is also how you get some crucial information to position yourself in the company for promotions, and you're always in that weird state of mind if you speak German, you risk sounding like a child and if you don't, it seems like you're being passed over.

If you live in an unfurnished apartment or buy your own sooner, then you also get to see how the service sector currently sees all white-collar workers: Cash cows who don't know how to hold a screwdriver properly. Add on top of that the joys of building a family in Germany and the associated paperwork and multiplying appointments, and suddenly you find yourself living that NPC life, being yelled at on the street for insisting on their rights, misreading the situation and thinking you broke the most superficial law. While having the privilege to pay into the tax system that drains your take-home pay, of course. Being a rule follower yourself doesn't always shield you from all these.

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aleph_minus_one 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> but the chat absolutely needs to happen in German. Why? Work culture.

Rather: because a lot of less formal thoughts (including jokes) are difficult to express in English since they often rely on structures that the English language does not have.

> if you speak German, you risk sounding like a child

I can ensure you that you don't sound like a child (nursery language is typically not taught in language courses for foreign speakers). Rather, you sound like a person who did not take learning German seriously.

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flobosg 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It goes both ways, of course. There are Germans who do not take learning English seriously, and foreigners who stumble because many informal expressions (including jokes) are difficult to express in German since they rely on structures that the language does not have.

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moezd 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I miss speaking my native language, too, but English is what I take as common ground. As an adult, I can never hope to compete on native German fluency with someone who's born and raised in Germany to educated German parents. That's just biased.

You missed the point. Just take an immigrant in front of you next time and see him make two mistakes in a row in one sentence while casually talking to him (maybe he's tired, maybe he's lazy but who's to judge). You'd inherently think less of him, deep down, wouldn't you?

	▲	aleph_minus_one 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Just take an immigrant in front of you next time and see him make two mistakes in a row in one sentence while casually talking to him (maybe he's tired, maybe he's lazy but who's to judge). You'd inherently think less of him, deep down, wouldn't you? No, I wouldn't. I think a lot comes down to differences in mentality: - Many Germans think that they had a hard time getting to a decent level in English. So they expect the same willingness from foreigners to get to a decent level in German. (#) - Many German native speaker really care about their language: It is a very common situation that German native speakers correct both native speakers and people who learn German as foreign language. With some people who learn German as second language, I get the reaction "Even if this is grammatically wrong, you nevertheless understood the sentence.". I do believe this person did not get my point: Among English native speakers I often observe this mentality for their native language, but I would really claim that "German language is a kind of thinking", so such mistakes really feel like a wrong-typed computer program. So > As an adult, I can never hope to compete on native German fluency with someone who's born and raised in Germany to educated German parents. Being able to compete on this level is not something that is expected from you. But (also cf. (#)) willing to cram brutally hard to get near to this level over some time is. --- Thus, to come back to your point: > Just take an immigrant in front of you next time and see him make two mistakes in a row in one sentence while casually talking to him (maybe he's tired, maybe he's lazy but who's to judge). You'd inherently think less of him, deep down, wouldn't you? As I wrote: I really wouldn't think less of this person because he makes mistakes. But - very in accordance of what I wrote - I would think less of such a person if he doesn't work really hard to get better in German fast. In other words: It's really not about not making mistakes (everyone does), but about not working hard to get better.

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alberto-m 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> but the chat absolutely needs to happen in German. Why? Work culture.

It's absolutely normal that people speak their mother tongue when they have the possibility. One can be kind and speak English to make a guest feel more comfortable, but if a permanent resident refuses to learn the local language fluently he should not demand that everyone else bends over backwards to accommodate him.

	▲	moezd 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Comfort of native language is undeniable, that's not even close to my point. Of course you would be kind and use appropriate local language whenever you can. It is that native fluency cannot be matched really as someone who learns the language at a much later stage in their life, and Germans usually have unreasonable expectations from immigrants to speak perfect German, especially when that said immigrant is also aiming for career advancement. Therefore everyone is being measured on their ability to climb a tree and while Germans are like monkeys, some immigrants are like fish. Speaking English in the work setting would level that playing field (many immigrants are not native English speakers, too), and it's one thing the German companies just wouldn't give up. Why? Work culture. Riddle me that.