Kudos to the Germans!

Guten Tag :-)

I must pay tribute to all the Germans out there who speak English. To Matt and mines amazement, there are English speaking Germans pretty much everywhere you go. I did not expect this, nor have I ever heard this before coming over here. It doesn't matter if you go to a small little grocery store, a big market, talk to the postman, or your next door neighbor...... a very high percentage of them can understand you. The extent of our knowledge of German is so minimal:

Sprekin si English?
nein
yah
bitte
autobahn
wc
cheers
alvedazeng
helfa

...well, you get the idea. We know more words than that and have picked up a lot, but it still doesn't even compare. When you ask them if they know English, the most standard answer is "a little bit." Their "a little bit" and my "a little bit" are two totally different things. If they truly don't know much, we use hand signs and gestures and we usually get through it. Its a little intimidating at first, but you get used to it and just learn to laugh.

I just wanted to commend the Deutsch on their ability to know more than one language well enough to speak it. I realize that English is the universal language, yet I still am very impressed. On one note, I'm a little sad because I thought we would be forced to pick up some German. They cater to us so well, we don't really have to. In fact, some of them really enjoy "practicing" their English on us! One more interesting tidbit on this subject is that they listen to English growing up on the radio. I thought we would have one station to listen to over here, but there are many to chose from. They speak German while introducing the song, with a little English thrown in here and there. I assume this is how most of the younger crowd learn to speak English so well, as well as from a few classes in school.... We usually head to a young tyke if we need some help in translation and they usually can help us out!

Cheers!