Today, I found out the German I've been learning for nearly a month is a dialect only spoken by people in a small area of the country. This means I'll need to re-learn most of what I thought I knew. FML
Collection
Halloween
A failed costume, stolen candy and a very real scare: Halloween, the one night when fear is allowed.
Today, I arrived in Austria. Within about an hour, I realized that I couldn't understand any "German". Turns out they have a totally different dialect here to anything I was taught in school. I'm here till May. FML
Today, I arrived in Germany for a summer-long stay. The family I'm supposed to stay with had said they spoke fluent English. They don't. I don't speak German. It's going to be a quiet two months. FML
Today, I returned to Germany for a break from my studies abroad. I got lost while out for groceries, so I tried asking a guy for directions. I went totally blank and strained to think of the right words, prompting him to mutter about rude foreigners not bothering to learn the local language. FML
Today, I found out that while on foreign exchange for over six months now, I have been pronouncing the word for "night" in German wrong. Apparently, this whole time, the way that I have been pronouncing it in German means "naked". This explains a lot. FML
Today, I found out that I was moving to Germany. I'm going to be put back a year in school because of the system change. I also don't speak a word of German. Why? Because my mother wants to brag about this experience to her friends. FML
Today, I found out that my German wasn't as great as I thought it was. Trying to give directions to some German tourists, I tried to say, "I hope I don't get you lost." Turns out I actually said something closer to, "I hope I don't seduce you." FML
Today, a German guy came into the place where I work. Eager to use the German that I'd learned from my immigrant mother and her family, I started a conversation. Things were going well until the term I grew up thinking meant "Africa" turned out to be racist, translating as "Ape Land." FML
Today, I have learned a lot of "big" words from reading so much, but can actually only pronounce about half of them correctly. FML
Today, I went to the hairdresser for the first time in the country I just moved to. Guess I don't speak the language as well as I thought. FML
Today, I was reading a book in German, which I don't know very well. Suddenly I reached a passage I had no trouble understanding. Excited, I showed my husband, saying I was finally getting the hang of it. He laughed and patted my head. Turns out, that particular passage was a quote. In English. FML
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Top comments
mliajkfml 15
Maybe only ever visit a small area of Germany?
cornwallus24 8
Germans will help you.They probably know better English than you.
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Comments (54)
DonULFonso 22
Well, the official slogan of Baden-Wurttemberg is "We can do everything, except speak German", and while it's kind of a joke, it's dead earnest, too! They are honest about it, so what did you expect? ;)
shade34 19
welcome to Germany dude! where each and every tiny village has its own dialect!
Elkawea 5
You'll be understood in almost the whole rest of germany. I think your english accent is going to be stronger than the baden-Württemberg accent
Mightytall 35
You're very optimistic... Schwäbisch Denglish would be almost like trying to understand a Frenchman speak English. Even they say it's easier to learn French than to try to understand them speaking English.
Unenunciable 14
I wouldn't be so sure... If it's an "extreme" dialect like Plattdeutsch people might have some difficulty, but if you're just speaking some kind of Badisch, other Germans should still understand you. My father, whose native language is English, speaks German but can't understand a word of dialect. However, native German speakers usually understand what you're saying.
TanteTine 5
I'm German and I've never heard a dialect that I can't understand. The basic vocabulary is usually the same, so I'm sure you can still use it to communicate. Where in Germany are you?
neverready 25
Good old Schwaben. Poor you :D But you won't have to relearn everything, just leave most of the "sch" out of the words :D I am German, can speak a few dialects and understand the most, because I have relatives all over Germany. But now that I live in B-W since a few months I have to admit, sometimes I don't understand a word. Even when the other part is trying to speak High German. It's true. "Wir können alles, außer Hochdeutsch!". From my experience there should be living lots of people from other parts of Germany around you, too, try to befriend some of them (the best would be someone from the north-west who doesn't speak low german. They have the most understandable accent to an English speaker, if they have one :D)
davek 36
Scheiße
DonULFonso 22
Ha noi, verreck!
Shay_Shay97 23
Yikes. Das ist nict gut. Tut mir leid OP.
SiraSiemens 21
as a swiss person i definatly understand your problem. this is one of the reasons its hard for foreigners to integrated well in switzerland. they have to learn standard german to able to read and write but we all speak dialect that differes quite a lot from standard german :(