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
Fall
Dead leaves, the first cold of the season and an umbrella flipped inside out: fall, the season of grace.
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)
huderle31 2
Das ist dumm
Lyshandra 8
Hey there, I'm not only german, but from Baden- Würrtemberg too (living in Kassel atm). I can easily switch from "Hochdeutsch" to dialect and to english. If you want, i'd help you with learning "Hochdeutsch". I'm not a teacher or something like that, but i love to talk to foreign ppl and learned a dutch guy to speak broken german in about a week once.
Ray_of_midnight 23
My mother was from Schleswig-Holstein and my father was from Switzerland, near Zürich. I grew up speaking two different dialects of German plus Hochdeutsch. I feel your pain.
bellydancer82 15
Yup, that's how it works. I've been learning German for two years, but I have 8 friends from different parts of Germany. They will tell you, every small village has a different dialect. So just keep that in mind if you plan on visiting or moving there...