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jackx -> RE: English in Europe (4/4/2010 10:10:12 AM)
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I won't add much to the points already made by the other Germans, as they were fairly comprehensive - English skills are more or less expected, and when one is asked which foreign languages one speaks, the general implication seems to be "foreign languages in addition to English".
That point still seems lost on a large number of young people, whose English skills don't really extend beyond a crude mix of school English and whatever they picked up on the internet. Not that you can't communicate with that, but it's not necessarily English anymore - I think it was the BBC that had an article or even a series while back on how English as a lingua franca (and at a fairly high, i.e. business level, at that) could be notoriously hard to understand for native speakers... ;)
To be fair, however, one has to take into account that an increasing number of (young) people in this country are not actually native German-speakers, and English subsequently isn't the first foreign language they have to learn, but the second or even third.
For me, that second foreign French, and to be fair, I shouldn't claim to be able to speak that, as I hardly ever have need to do so, and my pronounciation is horrible because of it. I'm always a bit ashamed of that, since while I mainly need good reading comprehension for university, I live close enough to France to easily be able to hone my French if I wanted to. :(
Latin complements the package, but I have no love for that language, nor am I any longer very good at it, as GoodGuy already pointed out, it was required as a qualification to get into university in the first place, and hasn't been needed much since then.
And while I think it's admirable that most Germans, even those with a very limited grasp of English, do try to accomodate others by using it when possibl, the results sometimes just make me cringe, and if/when professional translators are available, such vile aural attacks should be avoided (yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. Oettinger >;)).
What's worse though, and really annoys me, is the often garbled translations one gets as part of the news, both on radio and TV. These usually come by way of voice-over a second or two into the foreign language being spoken, and more often than not, if you do actually understand what's being said by the foreign speaker, you'll quickly realize that there are subtle (or sometimes quite grave) differences in meaning. I could live with that if they blocked out the foreign language completely, but since it can still be heard behind the voice-over, it's like a constant reminder that they're getting it wrong.
I've had a friend from the US comment on that while he was staying in Germany, that was quite an embarassing moment... but I guess it doesn't say much about how Germans treat foreign languages, but rather more about how TV and radio stations try to cut costs... ;x
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