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
Fall
Dead leaves, the first cold of the season and an umbrella flipped inside out: fall, the season of grace.
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)
DameGreyWulf 1
Uh, duh? They sure didn't teach you anything about world culture while teaching you languages, huh? 49 has all point.
cursedcutiepi 0
SO get over yourself and LEARN IT. yu atleast understand a little. sheeesh. dumbasss.
gigi2009 0
chill!! it's not fun to arrive in a country and realise that you actually understand jack all, when you had planned on understanding most of it -- try it first.
solocard 0
To be honest, "School German" isn't entirely helpful. OK, yes it may teach you enough German to pass an exam and get a grade, but had I gone to Germany afterwards, I could have said "Excuse me, where is the post-office" (and only under stood the answer if it was 1st / 2nd street left/right), and "My bum hurts". ....And of course all the German swear words.
europe_rocks 0
Mein Arsch tut weh?? :D hahaha that's amazing!
xNephilim 19
Honestly, most language classes offered in school will never prepare you for the real deal. I learned English since 5th grade (in Germany) and out of my entire class of 32 people, I was the only one to actually achieve a semi-perfect English and that was only because I almost learned it as a child when I spent 4 weeks in the US at 4 and 6 and because of the fact that I sat down and read books in English, watched movies in English, etc. Most people in my class either had a ridiculously strong accent, almost embarrassingly small vocabulary, or just couldn't speak English to save their life. There were some who did a lot better than others, but overall, most of them would've been so lost upon visiting the US. Remember, I'm talking about learning the language since we were about 10 or 11 years old up until the age of 16 or 17 or even more, depending on the type of schooling we chose to do. Here in the US? I had two semesters of Spanish. That's a year compared to the typical 6 years of English in Germany. That year managed to teach me, well, pretty much nothing.
perdix 31
You probably went to one of those shitty schools where no matter what language you sign up for, they just teach you igPay atinLay. uckFay ourYay ifeLay
hedgehogs 0
You will acclimate like I did. Just listen close all the time, like in restaurants, stores, anywhere Austrians are talking. It's kind of like the Universal Translator on Deep Space Nine. You will become accustomed to the speech patterns, and they begin to make sense. In the meantime, "Bitte," will get you a very long way >wg
dawnsdream 0
You'll be fine. :) For a while, if you're having trouble understanding someone, ask them to speak Hochdeutsch and most people will gladly oblige - they'll be pleased that you're giving an attempt to speak their language in their country. Listen to the people around you and you'll pick up the dialect fairly quickly.
nextbattier5 0
Did you really not thinkat all? Clearly Austria would have a ******* different dialect! It's not Germany! It's AUSTRIA!
xNephilim 19
Okay. Let's say you want to go to a Spanish speaking country. Mexico, Spain, Peru, etc. They all are Spanish speaking countries. You'd assume you'd be perfectly fine in all of them, right? Wrong. They, just like German speaking countries such as Austria, have different dialects and slangs. People don't really second-guess it when they hear a country speaks German.
capricaz 0
Um you will learn? It may be a different dialect but you still have some base. You will learn quickly. If you're not comfortable talking to people then watch some Austrian TV and/or read books.
myfriend_youfail 3
Ahhhh please, you'll do just fine. I took Spanish, and I couldn't make heads or tails of anything when our class went to Mexico. They have some pretty messed-up slang there, so I could be saying "I would like a sausage and a glass of watermelon juice" and really be saying "I like dicks and a glass of watermelon juice". But then I said "My first language is English, please help me understand", and they laughed and corrected me, teaching me the appropriate local words to use in place of what I had been taught formally. If you make it clear that their local German is not your first language, the people you meet will be more than accommodating. High German is used in most government documents and such in German-speaking countries, and as such, most people in Austria will catch on after a short conversation and make themselves understood in High German, and/or help you understand their vernacular. The more you talk to them, the easier it will be to understand the differences between what they speak, and the formal German you were taught in school.
angelwing701 0
that's because you. probably learned Castilion Spanish which is spoken in Spain Mexicans speak somewhat different Spanish