Comment by pjmlp
1 day ago
Yes, although quite often they forget not everyone speaks German.
I once had a bit of Schadenfrunde while travelling in Netherlands, having the conductor telling us to switch trains in Dutch, and all my German fellow travellers wondering what it was all about.
I wonder what's the level of mutual ineligibility between DE<>NL (probably DE is easier to NL) but it's funny how Germans sometimes seem to play dumb and not understand a thing in NL
As a German speaker, spoken Dutch REALLY trips me up because of small pronunciation differences in almost every word. Written Dutch is way closer.
The Dutch seem to understand German better, but my Dutch friends credit that more to education and exposure.
Your Dutch friends have it right: In German high schools you don't get Dutch, Polish or Czech as a rule but you do get French and English. But in Dutch schools you do get German.
I don't know about the Dutch but apparently the Flemish don't understand German without having learned it at school.
I speak both some German and some Dutch (as nth languages, I can understand them fine but speaking is hit and miss) and sometimes I don't notice which is which and answer in the wrong language, to me they're almost the same language with a different accent. I translate the German into some Frenglish mess for my Flemish friends to help them understand and it works great.
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they have access to german tv and watch it.
I'm German, I don't speak Dutch. But I was able to follow a Dutch tour guide in Den Haag just fine when she was explaining things in Dutch. She kindly repeated everything in English for my benefit (I was the only foreigner) even though I told her I understood her just fine in Dutch.
You have to "adjust your ears" a bit but I think if you know German and English then you can understand Dutch just fine if it's not slang.
It also depends on the particular dialect a German speaks. Dutch is effectively old German before all the various alterations and "reforms" to the German language that were instituted to create fragmentation between the germanic people of Europe, i.e., English, Dutch, Germans, Austrians, Swiss, Belgians throughout the ~16th-20th century by aristocrats driving wedges between peasants between kingdoms and dukedoms in order to define their own nations/ethnicities through language and culture so their royal families could rule over and would find it difficult to associate with each other. It is one of the things that also contributed to the fragmentation of Germany before unification, language barriers that even created unique cultures between sides of a valley that were in different dukedoms.
A similar thing has caused the tension between the germanic and Romance languages that followed the Roman border line N to S that separates Europe.
I can barely follow German and I've been taught it in high school for a couple of years. I would not expect a German person to understand Dutch.
dutch is a bit harder to understand. like some german dialects that not every german understands either, like swiss german, luxemburgian or friesian (also spoken in the northern parts of the netherlands), or plattdeutsch.
i grew up in austria and in the north of germany so i got an early appreciation for understanding dialects. yet learning dutch took me a few months of staying in the netherlands. on the other hand when i visited luxemburg people were shocked that i could understand them when they spoke amongst each other
Frisian is not a dialect, and is not usually spoken outside of Frisia (the Dutch province). In German Ostfriesland they do speak a German dialect with Frisian roots.
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Ironically, technically speaking, there are seemingly more similarities between British English, i.e., Anglican German and current High German due to various perversions and "reforms" of the German language over the last many decades, in order to drive the Germanic people away from each other.
If the EU were a serious and legitimate institution, there would be an effort to implement reforms that nudge English, Dutch, and present day German all towards better mutual intelligibility, NOT diversion from each other through perversion and "simplification", or what seems to be a pollution and destruction of the current German and Dutch language through what at least Germans have a term for, "Verdenglichung", i.e., the portmanteau of German (De..) and English, prefixed with "ver...", meaning the transformation or application of.
Do you seriously believe that the German spelling reforms were done to "drive the Germanic people away from each other"? If so that's quite the insane conspiracy theory you got yourself there. And lmao at "Anglican German".
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I speak fluently 6 languages, and a few dialects of them, how many do you speak?
Does it matter to the OP's point how well-spoken you are? Biting down some non-constructive snark here.
Yes, English is a good lowest common language, and it is mostly that announcements are in English. But learning enough of the native language that you are at least puzzled enough to ask another passenger seems like a not very high and reasonable bar for travel-speak to pick up.
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Well it's generally a good idea to ask a fellow traveller when you hear an announcement you don't understand. Especially if it doesn't use words you've commonly heard before. And maybe tell them instead of having Schadenfreude?
Which is what happened next.
The point was that even in international trains inside Germany, announcements related to trains problems are only done in German.
I speak it fluently, including some variations, however most travellers do not.
I also remember there used to be ticket machines in NRW only in German, about 20 years ago.
How dare they speak their own language in their own country on a regional train
I think you still should be able to expect a bit of accommodation on trains that cross country borders or go to airports.
The EU makes travel between EU countries as easy as travel between US states. You can just get on a train from Germany to Spain without any prior planning.
The regional trains usually have announcements in the language of the neighboring country when they get close to the border
It's also unusual given how much English you'll hear in Germany nowadays (at least in major, tourist-attracting cities) in just about any other context.
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They can. But they should also not be assholes with everybody else. And no not just local trains, I got information in English exactly zero times when there were huge delays on international trains. And it happened 2 times from 3 when I tried to cross Germany by train. And Germans (and Austrians btw) are terrible with this, even compared to others. The German site at my multinational company at the time was the only site on Earth which had to introduce an internal regulation about mandatory English, because they just switched to German all the time even when there were people on the call from different countries. I’m living now in Wien, and they are terrible with this even in friendly environments.
YMMV. I worked in three different German startups in Berlin and I almost never heard anybody speaking German in the company, even though more than half of the people were from Germany. Maybe it's different in bigger companies, or outside Berlin?
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It was an international connection train, ICE, between Amsterdam and Cologne....
So Dutch and German? Actually, those ICE are staffed by Dutch NS personnel until Köln where they swap with their German DB colleagues. Usually that means Dutch and German messages from Amsterdam to Köln (sometimes English too), and German afterwards.
> Yes, although quite often they forget not everyone speaks German.
Do you complain when announcements in your home country are given in exclusively non-German languages?
This is a bad faith argument. English is (like it or not) the international language. If you want tourists to understand what's happening, do announcements in your local language and in English.
Making announcements in German in the US makes little sense.
Or.. english-speaking people forget not everyone speaks english. If you go to another country you have to learn a bit about how things are done there, ask for help, etc.., most people consider this a normal part of traveling.
Great advice which I assume you follow to the letter.
idk man, I get it's nice if things are clear for you, but it's misplaced IMO to have this level of entitlement over people speaking their mother tongue in their own country
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