Working in Berlin without speaking much German?

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Brian
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Re: Working in Berlin without speaking much German?

Postby Brian » Thu Nov 26, 2015 9:26 am

Knowing English and some Dutch should make German relatively accessible.
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PeterBunzel
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Re: Working in Berlin without speaking much German?

Postby PeterBunzel » Thu Nov 26, 2015 9:41 am

Hey guys, nice to meet you ;)

I don´t tell you something new when I say that when it comes to (language) learning you most basically need to be willing to put the hours in. AND to deal with a lot of frustration. This is not a thing, everybody is willing to deal with. And that´s ok. For that reason I can understand everybody who leaves it with some survival skills.

But I think it´s not a smart deal. You just exchange on form of "concrete frustration" for a form of "subtle frustration". And in my opinion the frustration that comes with living in a town barely being able to affort your gorceries in the local language is more critical - as it works on a deeper, subconscious level. I think for the soul its much more easy to process the fact of not being able to remember a certain rule of grammar (again, and again, and again, and again) than the constant impression of never arriving, never being truly at home.

Maybe that´s cool with some people, but I think most people would not be really happy in such a situation (at least I never met someone who just gave a #### during my career - everybody was more or less frustrated)

If I were you I would just try to make this transparent for your friend. Tell her the pros and cons, just: what she has to expect. Help her to put herself mentally in the situation before making the move. Berlin can be a tough place to live, as all the fancy stuff is superficial in the end and vanishes when there is a problem.

Just my 2 cents. Have a beautiful day everybody!

Peter
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Peter Bunzelhttp://www.peterbunzel.de

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Brian
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Re: Working in Berlin without speaking much German?

Postby Brian » Thu Nov 26, 2015 11:47 am

I suppose being a native English speaker does give you opportunities to carve out a little bubble in other countries. More so than other languages on a worldwide basis, although variation does of course occur.

Living in Amsterdam without much knowledge of Dutch? No problem. Moving to Berlin knowing just a handful of German words? A tougher assignment. Plonked down in Paraguay speaking no Spanish? Totally lost.

Learning a foreign language is a huge undertaking but virtually all human beings are capable of it. Personal motivation and a sense of expectation within the society that you know the local language will speed things along at a rate of knots.
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Re: Working in Berlin without speaking much German?

Postby PeterBunzel » Thu Nov 26, 2015 5:10 pm

Learning a foreign language is a huge undertaking but virtually all human beings are capable of it. Personal motivation and a sense of expectation within the society that you know the local language will speed things along at a rate of knots.


Good point, Brian! ;)

My perspective on learning in general (and language learning in particular) is that you need to create an attractive motivation that is custom-tailored to what drives your mind and heart CRAZY. Once you know what that is you need to take the effort of "connecting beauty and duty" as is like to call it. For me, to give an example, it´s the topic of "learning" / "improvement". And since I am a book author I am also highly interested in art, espacially written art. So, starting to translate my poetry or to start blogging in my target language was a perfect thing in perspective of my personal interests and individual strenghts. For somebody else this won´t apply, but I believe that everybody has something he or she is burning for.

To close the circle in perspective of the topic:

Maybe there is a way to create a custom-tailored motivation for the bespoke friend?
A motivation that´s bigger than just learning the language "since it´d be better to do so"?

Just my 2 cents.
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Peter Bunzelhttp://www.peterbunzel.de

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Re: Working in Berlin without speaking much German?

Postby aabram » Sat Nov 28, 2015 9:51 am

I'd still say that she could have a try, otherwise it will haunt her till the end of her days and all those "what ifs" will remain unanswered forever. We can all conjure pros and cons here all day long but in the end I'd say that if it has been her lifelong dream then just give her encouragement along with pessimistic-realistic viewpoints expressed here, pat her on her back and say "go!".

It never ceases to impress me how many people make it in situations that I'd deem hopeless or at quite least difficult for myself.
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