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
Collection
Halloween
A failed costume, stolen candy and a very real scare: Halloween, the one night when fear is allowed.
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
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 was in an Austrian bar, making polite conversation in my broken German with a slightly odd middle-aged man. He said, winking, that he was near to his pension. I smiled and nodded, thinking he was talking about retirement. My friend later informed me that 'pension' is German for 'apartment'. Ew. 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, my German colleague complained that when I spoke German, I had a Swiss accent in it, which was "not nice to hear". Well Honey, we live in Switzerland, what accent did you expect us to have when you moved here? 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, 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 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, 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
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Top comments
allmidnighteyes 11
"ich liebe meine scheide" just say that everywhere you go
badbunny 0
remember, the universal language for ordering at a restaraunt is point at the item listed.
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Comments (204)
blackseminarian 0
You'll learn! That's the joy and pain of travel....
Kar98 6
No no, it's not the dialect. It's the German you learned. In other words, it's not them, it's you. You'd have the same problem anywhere in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein. I've met people who had university degrees in German and I couldn't understand a single thing they tried to say. /German native
theteal 0
Totally! I learned German from my family and it is completely different from what I am not learning in Uni. I find what I got at home is more beneficial than what I am learning at school.
europe_rocks 0
Every Austrian understands "normal" German. It's just the dialect we use when we don't speak "officialy", but you can communicate with us in the German you learned. Glaube mir, niemand wird dich komisch anstarren und denken, du sprichst eine unbekannte Sprache. Viel Spaß und nicht vergessen: Oachkatzlschwoaf.
gigi2009 0
OACHKATZLSCHWOAF! :D haha, sehr gut, des hob i lang nimma ghört
saunder 0
Chuchichäschtli :D
XFlyingxPiranhaX 0
Was ist oachkatzlschwoaf? /NOT German native. Second year German student in America.
dutchproudd 6
ehh i didnt get that last scentence. i've had 4 years german at school though. (:
cecilk 29
"oachkatzlschwoaf" (Eichkätzchenschwanz) is a schibboleth. We use it to 'torture' foreign friends to say it which is rather difficult for people not from the AustroBavarian region.
badbunny 0
he's not lazy, he just got the language wrong a bit. at least he tried.
somefacts 0
What you know is Hochdeutsch or high German. It is what most official documents are written in in Germany at least and everyone in a German speaking country should understand it. They sound a lot different variations of Osstereich (Austrian) Deutsch are common in southern germany as well, and if you pay attention aren't that different, but will have a strong accent. Its not as bad as Schyzerdutsch though many dialects vary a good deal. If your good at german you'll be fine.
RKC21 0
Where in Austria are you? I'm going there soon and i have a feeling ill run into the same problem!
lolsan 0
You should have done a bit of research before you went.... Go see Mozarts tomb :D
portlandrima 0
shout "GEEBICH VERRNADA!"
Nobinx 15
what does that mean? northern germa here :(
johnkzin 0
The good news is: most Austrians speak High German (what you learned in school) AND English. So, you should be able to ask your hosts how to adapt to Austrian German, and learn it over time. By May, you'll probably be MORE fluent in Austrain German than High German ... and may even have mostly forgotten English. (I had a HS friend who did a study abroad program, in that area, and said that when he came home, the 1 or 2 day conference they do with all of the study abroad students was invaluable, because he needed that time in order to re-learn the habit of speaking English instead of German) Good luck :-)
Mary_Poppins_fml 0
Indeed she will probably be more fluent in "Austrian-German" than "Hochdeutsch" after this time, but I doubt she will forget her English : it's now almost three years that I live abroad and I did not forget my language. It's true that it's hard to switch though, and some words just come automatically in the wrong language.
onigiriqueen 0
I agree. You don't just forget your own language in less than a year. I've been in Japan for just over a year, and I still totally remember English. Sometimes I forget a certain word I'm trying to think of, but that happened even before I moved away from the US. Sometimes Japanese slips into my English, but after speaking English for the first 18 years of your life, you don't just forget your native language. Young kids might forget if they never, ever hear their native language again, but not adults or teenagers.
europe_rocks 0
I knew a guy from New York who used to live in Austria, and after not even two months he understood everything that we spoke in our dialect. So don't worry, it's gonna be fine.