Language barrier

The experience of the language barrier caught Laura by surprise.

Many people in Germany speak English well, and many more speak at least a little. But not everyone speaks English, and that includes many people you deal with daily: the woman in the bakery, the pharmacist, the man at the vegetable stand.

Even if they do speak English, it doesn’t feel right to walk up and just start speaking in English and assume that they will understand. But if you know absolutely no German that is all you can do.

Laura wasn’t prepared for how it feels to be in such a situation. You immediately identify yourself as being a foreigner – someone different who doesn’t fit in. For me personally, I tend to then feel incompetent, as though I should know how to speak their language and communicate.

Laura noticed this even caused her to change her behavior. She didn’t want to walk into the empty bakery because for sure the clerk would try to talk to her (in German).

I tried to teach her some of the basic things to say: please, thank you, I don’t speak German, do you speak English, where is the bathroom (only they say where is the toilet since “bathroom” would indicate you wanted to take a bath).

Even these few simple phrases are difficult to use in the moment when someone starts speaking a long string of German. I was standing in line waiting for an apple fritter when I saw the woman from the coffee shop come up and ask Laura something – I assumed whether we were done with our coffee cups. Even in this situation it’s hard in a split second to get a few simple words right: ich spreche kein Deutsch (literally, I speak no German). I could read her lips from a distance as she said, in English, “I don’t speak German.”

Laura said this gave her a new appreciation for people who come to the U.S. not knowing any English. I think people who are so adamant about only English being spoken in the U.S. have never been in such situations, and have never attempted to learn and use a second language. It is humbling.