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Germany
Today, I had a day trip to Stuttgart.
Ironic really, if you add up the 20 minutes to the airport either end, and the hour and a half flight time, it's actually comparable to a commute to London at that time of day.
I was struck, as ever, by how embarassingly good at English most of the Germans are. My german skills remain at 'year at secondary school' level - which is just about enough to try and pick up the gist of a conversation.
I so need to work on that.
As ever, I was struck by how different things were. I mean, you can tell you're in continental Europe, and specifically Germany - there's just a different feel to everything around you - Nothing specific, all the same factors are there, but the architecture styles, and how people tend to dress are just so different.
The other thing that I noted is the progressing corruption of conversational german. There were numerous instances of an idiom that was just plundered verbatim from english.
I guess we have to thank Hollywood, TV and the internet for that one.
The day was more productive than I had hoped. We got lots of stuff done, and I think we started to understand one another at a professional (if not linguistic) level. They seemed like thoroughly solid blokes and I'd look forward to working with them.
Ironic really, if you add up the 20 minutes to the airport either end, and the hour and a half flight time, it's actually comparable to a commute to London at that time of day.
I was struck, as ever, by how embarassingly good at English most of the Germans are. My german skills remain at 'year at secondary school' level - which is just about enough to try and pick up the gist of a conversation.
I so need to work on that.
As ever, I was struck by how different things were. I mean, you can tell you're in continental Europe, and specifically Germany - there's just a different feel to everything around you - Nothing specific, all the same factors are there, but the architecture styles, and how people tend to dress are just so different.
The other thing that I noted is the progressing corruption of conversational german. There were numerous instances of an idiom that was just plundered verbatim from english.
I guess we have to thank Hollywood, TV and the internet for that one.
The day was more productive than I had hoped. We got lots of stuff done, and I think we started to understand one another at a professional (if not linguistic) level. They seemed like thoroughly solid blokes and I'd look forward to working with them.
no subject
It was astounding. Primarily, I taught two classes; one of about 8-year-olds, one of students my own age.
The 8-year-old lessons primarily consisted of the kids pointing at something or saying a word in German and my writing it in English on the board and telling them how it was pronounced.
The 18-year-olds, I was performing a series of presentations on English life. And all I had to do was... talk. At my normal pace, using normal English speech, and they didn't miss a beat in understanding me.
Schools in other countries primarily start teaching languages way, way, way earlier than schools in the UK, hence the massive difference in ability despite English being such a hard language to learn.