Programmer in Berlin: Language

This is part 5 of a 5-part series detailing what I wish I had known as an American programmer moving to Berlin. This page talks about learning the language of the country you’re in.

I’ve saved this for last, because I think it’s the most important thing in this series. I believe that learning the local language is the strongest driver of belonging in a new country. It requires real effort, and you will have to prioritize it over other things, but doing so pays off handsomely in the long term.

Intensive Intro

One of the best things I did when arriving in Germany was signing up for an intensive after-work German class. Signing up for something like this gets harder and harder the longer you live here and get more social and familial obligations, so sign up while you still can.

Europe ranks language proficiency with a scale from A (beginner) to C (fluent), with a 1 or 2 in between. A1 is absolute beginner, and C2 is the highest level the scale supports. Your goal is to get out of the A zone as quickly as possible. B1 is roughly the area where you can learn German completely in German, without resorting to English or whatever your native language is. The benefits of only speaking German in German class are huge, so getting there as quickly as possible is key.

Staying in German

I can’t stress this enough – you need to try and stay in German as much as possible. Not sure how to say something in the past tense? Ask someone (in German) a question like ‘wie sagt man ‘ich esse einen Salat gestern?’" (“how do you say ‘I eat a salad yesterday?’”). If the person is used to speaking to German learners, they’ll likely know what you meant and respond “gestern habe ich einen Salat gegessen.” (“I ate a salad yesterday.”) Try to avoid just asking someone the question in English. I’ve found that doing so (or using a translation app) means the translation goes in one ear and out the other. Struggling to formulate the question is what makes the answer stick in your brain.

Additionally, try to never ask for a translation for an English word if you have enough vocabulary to describe the thing in another way. This isn’t a very efficient way to communicate, but is the best way to really make vocabulary stick in your head. I once asked someone what all the große Pflanzen (“big plants”) on the street were, because I forgot the word Baum (“tree”). I didn’t know the word for hose, but I knew cable (Kabel) and water (Wasser) so I asked about a Kabel für Wasser, which is a Schlauch. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the word Schlauch, because I am immediately reminded of asking about a cable for water. Obviously, this technique works best with people who know you are learning and have the patience to teach you.

Sometimes you even strike gold! While trying to describe a sea urchin, I talked about a kind of “sea… hedgehog” (See… Igel). “Do you mean a Seeigel?” Apparently so!

Forcing yourself to stay in German

Of course, putting yourself in a position where you must speak German is even better. Nothing drives fluency like necessity. I’ve listed three tips below:

• 50/50 it. I was once in a German/English language exchange group, and found that the discussions tilted toward English because there were far more Germans than English-speakers in the group. To keep things fair for the English speakers, I proposed that we rotate: we had an English week, followed by a German week, and an English week after. It worked great! Later on, my (German-speaking) partner and I established a similar system for each day. By keeping “English days” and “German days,” we avoid getting into the common pitfall of only speaking English in a two-language household. This takes some effort, especially on days where the “weaker” language is being used, but completely worth it in my opinion. You can also 80/20 it, or have “German Sundays,” whatever combination works best for you. I don’t know why more people don’t do it!

• Do a Bildungsurlaub intensive course as mentioned in the culture section. I had one lined up that got canceled due to Covid, and am kicking myself for never going back and signing up again.

• Spend some time in a smaller city with fewer English speakers. You’d be surprised how much harder it is to use English outside of larger cities.

Prioritization

You will find that in a city like Berlin, many people know English well, are eager to speak it, and view speaking English with you as a practical way to conduct business. This is at odds with stumbling through a transaction with a barista in German where you can’t even say the numbers correctly just to learn the language better. I think the best thing to do is look at each situation and decide: is it worth continuing in German, or should I switch to what is more practical. Take into account the other person’s situation as well – usually you can tell if the person is eager to help you or not.

At the extreme end of this are friendships and relationships. You may choose to only speak German with one group of friends. However, you won’t be the same person in German as you are in English. You won’t be able to rattle off quotes from TV shows like you normally would, you won’t be able to react quickly and naturally to jokes, and you will always have to spend a little bit of extra energy to overcome awkwardness in how you communicate. This is totally fine! I’m just letting you know so you’re not caught off-guard. It might be that your two selves will converge over time, but that might take a while.

Goal Setting / Expectation Management

There are a lot of Americans who move to a new country and learn a new language who have a desire to “blend in like a local” in a hobby-like way, as compared to people who do this for immigration/assimilation/discrimination reasons. I understand the pull, once thinking that myself, but I am here to tell you that achieving such a thing is extremely time-consuming and probably not worth it if your goal is ultimately a party trick. It turns out, “blending in like a local” involves far more than pronouncing Brötchen (“bread roll”) correctly. It involves changing what you wear, how you stand, how you walk, how you eat¹, even how you pose for pictures. You’re probably not going to start watching German cartoons from the 90s on the off chance someone drunkenly brings it up outside a Späti (“corner store”).

Additionally, I’ve heard people state that they want to “become fluent.” Fluency probably doesn’t mean what you think it means, it just means that you can hold a conversation on a wide range of topics without pausing a lot. It doesn’t mean your vocabulary, pronunciation, or comprehension are good, it just means you can mostly understand and react in a “fluid” manner. Further, you might be “fluent” but unable to express certain concepts² and just steer the conversation in another direction. The word you’re probably looking for is “mastery,” which approximates how a native speaker would speak.

However, “mastery” is itself a slippery goal to define. You may be a native English speaker, but do you have a doctorate in English, casually read Chaucer, and keep tabs on the latest developments in Indian English literature? Probably not. I wrote this entire article series without realizing my spellcheck was off, and when I turned it on I started questioning my own mastery of English. Instead of going for fluency or mastery in the abstract, I recommend setting yourself some realistic, concrete goals and work toward them. Here are some examples:

• Order at a restaurant entirely in German
• Have a small conversation with a friend entirely in German
• Have a work discussion entirely in German
• Understand what someone has angrily yelled at you in German³
• Watch a TV show or movie entirely in German
• Read a news article entirely in German
• Attend a party and speak entirely in German
• Spend an afternoon or entire day with someone who does not speak English
• Angrily yell at someone in German⁴
• Write a lengthy email entirely in German
• Read a novel entirely in German
• Give a presentation entirely in German
• Write a novel entirely in German?

Daily Usage

Here’s a few tips I used when starting out, and I think they helped me a lot:

1. Start a conversation in German, and keep going as long as you can before switching to English. Even if you only last half a sentence, the practice (and hopefully the feedback from the other person) will be helpful.

2. Set your phone to German. This will suck, and you’ll get things wrong all the time, but eventually you’ll start to recognize words like Entwurf (“draft”) and Hinzufügen (“add,” like to add to a list) which you might not otherwise pick up in everyday usage.

3. Don’t start conversations on the telephone with “sorry, my German is bad, but…” It took me a long time to realize that they already know, and announcing it just starts off the conversation in the wrong way. Usually what you’re trying to say is “please speak simply and slowly.” I would recommend just saying that in response to the person speaking quickly. It also helps to learn the small phrases that modulate the flow of a conversation: Wie bitte? (the polite way to say “what?” or “could you repeat that?”) works well. Depending on your level of German, Könnten Sie langsamer sprechen? (“could you speak more slowly?”) or simply “Langsam, bitte” (“slowly, please”) work to modulate the flow of conversation as well.

4. Germans pick up the phone by announcing their name, and expect you to announce your name as well. If you don’t it’s rude. You don’t have to say your name when picking up on a private number, but if you call a place they expect you to say “{last name} hier” or something. I’m told you don’t have to do this for short requests, like asking for opening hours, but anything longer needs a name. If you forgot what the caller’s name was, the right way to ask is “Wie war die Name nochmal?” (what was the name again?), and not “Wer ist das denn?,” which is what I once said, which roughly translates to “who the hell is that?”

5. “Halt” and “denn” are extremely different words to master. I don’t mean their usage as “stop” and “then,” I mean their slang usage. “Halt” is roughly equivalent to the American teenager usage of “like,” in that “es war halt irgendwie komisch"komisch roughly translates to “it was, like, kinda weird.” “Denn” represents some kind of surprise or incredulity. “Wie lecker ist das denn?!” is “how tasty is that?!” I once read a cutesy ingredient label telling me that something contained “Salz halt,” which was difficult to parse but meant “just salt” or “salt, period.” Unfortunately, I’ve found both “halt” and “denn” too tricky to work into sentences without bungling the meaning or making things sound forced. Just leave them out until you’re ready.

6. I recommend downloading an offline German<->English dictionary app to use on your phone. When learning a language, translate apps will always hinder you, and having quick access to a dictionary is invaluable. You may not always have cell service, which is why offline functionality is critical, and many online dictionaries slow you down with cookie banners, huge ads, etc. I used the PONS app, which cost about $23 back in the day. The app is mediocre, but having the content on hand was great. I also paid a few bucks for a verb conjugation app, because PONS doesn’t list that information for some reason. iOS and macOS users have free built-in German<->English dictionaries, but you might have to install them. macOS has the Dictionary app, while iOS only exposes this via the “look up” prompt for a highlighted word. I don’t know why iOS makes this difficult to access.

7. If you can’t find a direct translation for something specific, sometimes you can use the Wikipedia trick. Just go to the Wikipedia page for the thing you want, and change the language to German (if it’s available). Often the title of the page or some subheader is the translation you’re looking for. For example, rainbow trout are Regenbogenforelle. Thanks Wikipedia!

8. When dealing with small monetary amounts, pay close attention. Ein euro achtzig (“one Euro eighty”) sounds pretty close to ein und achtzig (“eighty-one”) if spoken quickly.

9. When stating times, saying “Uhr” (in this case, something like “o’clock”) is very important. I once wanted to make a reservation at 6:30pm for two people. The proper way to do that is to ask for a table “um achtzehn Uhr dreißig,” (for 18:30), but if you say “um sechs Uhr dreißig” people will probably understand. When I called, I said “für sechs dreißig.” The hostess panicked, talked to her boss, and after some discussion said it wasn’t possible. I hung up, reflected on how strange that interaction was, and realized my mistake. My sentence was grammatically ambiguous, and using “für” instead of “um” primed her to interpret my request as a reservation for 36 people. Had I said “sechs Uhr dreißig,” the Uhr would have made my request much clearer.

10. Match your media to your level. When I first got here, I bought a copy of Der Wüstenplanet⁵ and started a subscription to Der Spiegel. Don’t do this! Unless you are a literal child, you can’t learn a language “by absorption.” It’s far better to read Deutsch Perfekt or grab something from the Deutsch als Fremdsprache (“German as a foreign language”) section of your public library. They even have novels targeting specific German knowledge levels. You need to engage with and (mostly) understand the content, otherwise you’ll just learn a few new vocabulary words and eventually give up. Consistently reading and listening in another language is difficult; you need to actively set yourself up for success.

11. Learn the prepositions, learn the genders of the nouns. I’m still very bad at this, and it haunts me to this day. Get an app, make your German friends aggressively correct you, do whatever you can! Anki is, of course, the gold standard for this kind of stuff.

12. Umlauts are important! It may seem like a minor detail to you as an English speaker, but I have eaten enough kitchens in German to know that you really need to nail the difference between u and ü. Just like the words “bar” and “bear” are completely different in English, so are Bar (“bar”) and Bär (“bear”) in German. A and ä are pretty easy to distinguish and pronounce for English speakers, but o/ö and u/ü are a bit harder.

13. Every once in a while you’ll see your German friends chuckle while speaking. Here’s a few tips on avoiding embarrassing moments:

• Nouns are sometimes pluralized by adding an -n to the word (such as Kunde (“customer”) -> Kunden) and sometimes by adding an umlaut to the vowel (Vater (“father”) -> Väter). However, I must stress that the plural of Vogel (“bird”) is Vögel and, under no circumstances, vögeln (a slang term for intercourse).
• The word for a sheet (like a sheet of glass) is Scheibe. The word for a sheath is Scheide, which colloquially refers to a sexual organ that might, uh, “sheath” a “sword.” I remember the difference by saying “the D stands for don’t say it.”
• The word for shooting is schießen, which is very close to the word for shitting, scheißen. Strangely enough, the two words in English are also only separated by a vowel change.
• A bakery chain in Berlin has great Zimtschnecken (cinnamon rolls, literally “cinnamon snails”), but also other kinds of “snails:” Schokoschnecken (“chocolate rolls”), Walnuss-Ahorn-Schnecken (“walnut-maple rolls”), etc. I once walked by a coworker at lunchtime and said “Ich hole eine Schnecke!” (“I’m picking up a snail!”) and all the Germans are facepalming right now. Schnecke can also be an outdated, not very nice slang term for a young woman.
• The word for a dash (-) is a Bindestrich (“binding line”), not a Bundesstrich (“federal red-light district”). I think Germans find this one especially funny because Bundes- usually implies something very boring, as if the DMV also regulated red-light districts.
• Bookstores are filled with Reiseführer and driver’s licenses have Führerschein printed on them. These aren’t “travel Hitlers” or “Hitler licenses,” but travel guides and driving licenses. The word führen means to guide, drive, or lead and is used in everyday language. Generally you’re safe if you use it as a verb or as part of a compound noun, but be very careful when using it as a noun on its own.
• Finally, here’s the opposite of an embarrassing situation! Geil used to mean “horny,” but is now slang for “great.” It’s not often used anymore, but a supermarket did base an entire ad campaign around it.

14. German is famous for its long compound nouns like Wohnungseigentümergemeinschaft and Wiedergutmachungseinbürgerung. People often shorten these to acronyms (like WEG) to make communication easier. However, sometimes they shorten them to the first syllable of each word (think SoCal or TriBeCa), which are called Silbenwörter (“syllable words”). Everyday language is filled with Kita (Kindertagesstätte, a combo daycare/kindergarten), Haribo (Hans Riegel Bonn)⁶, Kripo (Kriminalpolizei, the German FBI), Meck-Pomm (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) and Schle-Hol (Schleswig-Holstein). This can catch you off guard, like when someone says “sorry, I don’t drink KiBa” and you have to reverse-engineer what the hell they just said.

15. Even though German pronunciation is pretty regular, it can be difficult to remember how certain things are supposed to sound. Here are some tips to help you out:

• Enttäuscht (“disappointed”) mostly rhymes with Scoish Velociraptor Maloish.
• When a word has an ie or ei in it, the vowel sounds like the second letter’s long vowel in English. Wein rhymes with “wine,” while Wien rhymes with “green.”
• Pay attention to when German words are actually compound words, because the accent on the syllables changes depending on that. For example, Impressum (“imprint”) has the accent on press, while Lufthansa has a strong accent on Luft and a weak accent on han (imagine pronouncing it as two separate words: Luft Hansa). Hoffentlich (“hopefully”) has a strong accent on hoff and a weak accent on lich.
• Occasionally you’ll encounter a few French words which are pronounced accordingly. Chance (“chance”) and Regisseur (“film director”) are ones that will throw you off if you’re not expecting it.
• “Gel” is pronounced with a hard “g,” such as in Duschgel (“shower gel”).
• One of the hardest things for English speakers to pronounce is the German “R.” There are a few good videos about this. The best way I can explain it is that the English “R” is made with the teeth, but the German “R” is made with the throat. Imagine gargling some water, and moving the water up and down your throat while gargling. Now imagine gargling air, while also moving the focus of the gargling up and down your throat. Doing motions like this, you can make an “R” sound using your throat instead of your teeth. Give it a shot!

16. Occasionally you can work out what a word means by parsing out the roots, translating to Latin, and seeing if an English word appears. For example, take the word beeindruckend. Be- is a prefix that means “has been applied to,” like how “bespectacled” means spectacles have been applied to the person. Ein in this case means “self,” or “toward oneself.” Drucken in this case means “press,” and the -end suffix means “the kind of thing that does this.” So we’re looking for a Latin-based English word that means “the kind of thing that applies an inward press on oneself,” or im-press-ive.

Accents

At some point I wanted to pick a German accent instead of just learning Hochdeutsch (“high German,”⁷ the standard modern dialect). Some German friends jumped in and immediately discouraged me from doing this: “your American accent is still strong, so you’d just sound weird.”

I later learned what they meant: the TV channel DMAX has a show called “The Germinator”, about a German who became the chief of police in a small Texan town. There are many strange aspects to the show’s name: did they know that “germinator” is an English word that has nothing to do with Germany? Am I supposed to believe that this man is part German and part Terminator, a futuristic robot whose only function is to murder humans? Or am I supposed to take the loosest interpretation and assume that this German is unstoppable at his job, “like a Terminator,” but the job is police chief of a small rural town with just over a thousand inhabitants?

In any case, the Germinator speaks with a combination Texas/German accent. Hearing that, I’m fine learning Hochdeutsch for now.

TV Shows

Here are some TV shows to watch to help you learn German:

• Dark - a modern classic, Dark starts out a bit gruesome but grows into a fantastically written story. If you’re squeamish about horror, see if you can sit through the beginning because the series really isn’t about that. The German is modern and fast, but if you watch carefully with subtitles you can figure out what’s going on.

• Deutschland 83 - a Cold War thriller about a young East German soldier who is tasked with spying on the West German army by living in the West and trying to fit in. Gives an interesting look at the differences between East and West Germany, as well as the political forces that shaped life back then.

• Türkisch für Anfänger - I was originally put off by the descriptions of the show that made it seem like a soap opera, but the first season is actually light and funny in a way that reminds me of Clarissa Explains It All. However, I stopped after the first season when it got too soapy.

• ZDF Magazin Royale - the German answer to John Oliver, Jan Böhmermann does a weekly satirical deep dive into news and societal topics. In addition to being funny, the show has the advantage that you don’t need to understand every sentence to understand the overall story. It’s also a good source of German pop culture references and – critically – Gen X and Millennial slang. If you’re in your 30s or 40s and talk like Jan, you won’t sound weird. German classes will only teach you how to communicate, not “how to sound,” and you usually pick up whatever your friends say. It’s nice to have a good reference on TV who produces so much content. My only word of caution is that the show likes to do skits and musical numbers which may not please non-Teutonic ears, so be ready to skip ahead if a bit isn’t your thing.

Note: if you find yourself watching actual television (not streaming), ask your local German to turn on the Teletext. It rules.

Video games

Video games can be a great way to help learn a language, but if you’re playing a translation you need to be check that the translation and localization are actually good.

• Stardew Valley was a great way to learn the names of various crops and minerals.
• Subnautica is great in German. The translation for the Peeper, a small fish with huge eyes, is Glubscher. Glubschen is northern German slang for “staring or observing,” making Glubscher a perfect translation for Peeper.

However, not every game can hit this level of quality. I just started playing No Man’s Sky and decided to start out with German. The game wanted to tell me I had free inventory slots in my suit, but the German translation used kostenlos instead of verfügbar. Kostenlos means “free” as in “no payment needed,” which is incorrect and even confusing if you’re just starting in the game. Verfügbar is the correct translation as it means “available.” I switched back to English after seeing that.

Things to read

Libraries

“Normal” libraries in Berlin (meaning, not research libraries or state archives) are part of the VÖBB. You can sign up for a library card by finding the nearest library on the map or sign up for a digital one online (there is a whole e-book rental system). The VÖBB website is pretty clunky, but it ultimately does function. Most libraries have a Deutsch als Fremdsprache (DaF) or leichte Sprache section, which offer books and magazines in simpler German.

E-books

I just want to mention that you can usually order e-books through your local bookshop instead of through Amazon or Thalia. Just ask the bookshop how and they’ll walk you through it. It’ll probably be protected with Adobe DRM (just like library e-books), so it’ll be annoying to load the book onto your e-reader, but it does work.

Magazines

Deutsch Perfekt is a decently produced magazine where articles are written in different levels of German throughout each issue. It’s worth picking up a subscription or seeing if the local library has copies.

Websites

• Tagesschau: the flagship German-language news website, and your GEZ⁸ Euro hard at work. Imagine if PBS was funded and everyone watched/read it.

• Golem: a wide range of general IT news. Disclosure: Golem paid me for a translated version of an article I wrote.

• taz: a left-leaning newspaper that also has sections focusing on Berlin and Hamburg.

Bonus Content for Germans

I know you Germans are out here reading this, waiting to correct me on something (please do!). As a bonus for you all, I’ve included a list of common mistakes German speakers make when speaking English.

1. Using the present simple tense instead of present continuous tense: “I go to the store right now” (incorrect) instead of “I am going to the store right now” (correct). This mistake makes total sense given that German grammar matches the present simple tense in everyday usage ("Ich gehe zum Laden”).
2. Using the present continuous tense instead of the present simple tense. This is an overcorrection from the previous point, as sometimes the present simple tense is appropriate. As an example, “That’s something I am always doing” is incorrect⁹, say “that’s something I always do” instead.
3. “Sew” is pronounced identically to “so,” not “sue.”
4. “Clothes” sounds nearly identical to “close,”¹⁰ and not “clo-thes.” The “th” is unvoiced and barely audible. I found a quick video about it that might be helpful. I’m aware that “th” is very difficult to pronounce for German speakers, and will happily attempt to pronounce “Brötchen” for you in solidarity.
5. “Berlin” is pronounced in English with the same stress on the second syllable as in German: “Ber-LIN,” not “BER-lin.” In rare cases you might hear it pronounced with the first syllable stressed, but as a rule just say it like you’d say it in German (with the English vowels, of course).

Navigation

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