Is too much English spoken in Berlin?
Here’s what I’m thinking, let me know down in the comments what you’re thinking.
Hey everyone, Dana here. Back at the end of February, beginning of March Stefan and I took the train to Berlin
where we filmed with Cari and Janusz from Easy German, have you seen my collaboration
with Cari yet?
4 Things not to forget when learning German, share it with all your friends who are learning
German to save them from making those mistakes! Linked up here.
And in that video Cari and I briefly talk about how lots of people in Berlin speak English.
And I said that I would like to go more in depth in that in another video, and here is
that video now.
On the train ride home from Berlin this last trip, Stefan and I started counting up how
many times we’ve been to Berlin.
And realized we’ve actually kind of lost track.
I think I’ve been 8 times, maybe.
And of those 8 times I think Stefan and I went together 5 times.
I’m not sure about those numbers, but suffice it to say, we’ve been to Berlin a few times now.
And yet, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed so much English being spoken in Berlin as
on this last trip.
Maybe there was always this much English spoken in Berlin, maybe it’s been like this for
years and I just didn’t notice it before.
For whatever reason.
Or maybe over the years more English has started to be spoken there. I don’t know.
But I do know that on this trip I really noticed it.
And I really felt like English was being spoken everywhere in Berlin. So much English.
And I’m really not used to that living here in Munich.
Yes, you can get around pretty okay in the city center of Munich using English, but most
places you go it’s still standard to speak German.
German is the default language in most places in Munich.
Most places that I go in Munich people can and do speak to me in German.
In Berlin, this last trip I really noticed a bunch of times where I would go into, for example,
a cafe, and I would speak to the server or the person working behind the counter
in German, and they would not only speak back to me in English, but it was clear that English
was their preferred language.
Like, it's not that they were speaking back to me in English because they picked up on
the fact that I wasn’t a native German speaker.
Like does sometimes happen to me here in Munich.
No, they spoke back to me in English because they either maybe didn’t speak German, or
it was clear that English was very, very much their preferred language.
At least between English and German.
And I know that that’s the case because Stefan, who okay, maybe he does have somewhat
of a regional accent when he speaks German, but he definitely sounds like a native German
speaker, at least I think so.
And I don’t think that anyone who would hear Stefan speaking German would think he wasn’t
a native German speaker, and he also got spoken back to in English in Berlin.
So as far as I know they weren’t speaking English because of me.
They were speaking English because they wanted to speak English.
This happened so often on this last visit to Berlin, that a few times I actually kind of
forgot, like, where I was in the world.
I would meet some friends at a cafe and we’d be speaking English with each other, which
is also pretty common for me here in Munich.
I do speak English with a lot of my friends.
But usually here in Munich all around me German is being spoken, and the people working at
the cafe speak to me in German.
So even though I'm speaking English with my friends I don’t forget that I’m in Germany.
But in Berlin it happened a couple times that I was chatting with my friends in English,
the server at the cafe did not seem to speak German or they didn't want to speak German
or whatever. They spoke to me in fluent English.
And so many people around me in the cafe were also speaking English.
So that after a couple hours in that environment when I walked outside and left the restaurant
or the cafe I had this weird dazed feeling of, like, where am I?
I knew that I was staying in a hotel and that I had traveled to get to this location, so
I felt like I had gone somewhere, you know?
I knew that I wasn’t at home in Munich anymore.
And it clearly wasn’t the USA because it didn’t look at all like the USA, small cars,
small streets, the skinny rectangular license plates.
Maybe I’m in England I thought for a second.
This was a split second, you know.
This feeling and all of these thoughts flashed before my eyes in an instant, it wasn’t
like I was walking around super confused for long, after just a few seconds I quickly remembered
that I was in Berlin, but yeah I definitely had a couple moments of dazed confusion about
where I was because there was just so much going on around me in English.
But okay, is this bad thing?
A lot of English is spoken in Berlin. Is it a bad thing?
I'm not really sure. I’m really looking forward to hearing what you have to say about that,
what you think about it down in the comments.
Um, I would say that on the one hand, I can definitely see how that could be
frustrating for Germans who live in Berlin or Germans who visit Berlin and maybe they
feel like they can’t speak German in their own capital city.
I can see how that could be frustrating to say the least and maybe even really sad for
some people. Maybe some people feel like the capital is losing its language.
And while it might simply be frustrating for Germans who speak English, they might be frustrated
that they have to order their coffee in English, for Germans who don’t speak English it could
be a really challenging and maybe uncomfortable and maybe upsetting experience.
Yeah, I can see how that could be upsetting.
You don't speak English and you go to a cafe in Germany, not a British pub or an American
restaurant or something like that, no you just go to a, you know, “normal” German
cafe in Germany, and the server just comes up to you and speaks English to you and expects
you to speak English back.
And I think maybe even if you’re a German person who can speak English, yeah, I can
imagine that that expectation to speak English when you’re in Germany could be kind of
frustrating or annoying.
You know, this expectation that you should speak English, when you’re in Germany.
That the server didn’t come over and ask if it would be cool to speak English, if that
was okay with you, and if the person says no, that there would be someone else working
there who would come over and happily speak German with them.
I think that would be different.
But no, that it's this expectation that English would be fine, I feel like that might be the
most annoying part of it for Germans?
That the person at the cafe or the restaurant or the store or whatever just assumes that
everyone should be ready to speak English with them?
Yeah I can imagine that maybe that could make someone feel out of place in their own country.
Let me know what you think down in the comments.
However, I can also see the other side of it.
Like, you know, countries evolve, cities evolve, societies evolve.
Things change.
People might feel sad that things are changing, but things change in this world, and you can’t
really stop change, you can’t really stop a place from speaking a particular language.
Like if I remember correctly when I applied for my German residency I had to show that
my German was to a particular level of proficiency, and I’m guessing that’s the same in Berlin?
So I think that should hopefully help to ensure that people at least learn some German.
And for me personally I never considered living in Germany and not learning German.
Like from the get-go I was always like, I need to learn German, I need to learn German,
I need to learn German.
And, yeah, maybe if I had lived in a city like Berlin where so many people were speaking
English all around me, maybe my German would not be at the level that it is today because
there would just be so many people around speaking English.
And as Cari said in the video, in that scenario one might not have the pressure to really
practice the language.
But in the end you can’t stop a place from speaking a particular language.
Yeah, it's going to evolve and it's going to change, and I feel like you can't really
stop that change.
And I know that lots of Germans really love speaking English, and so I can imagine that
some Germans probably really love that Berlin is so full of English.
When Cari mentioned it in our video together she said that the diversity in Berlin is what
she really loves about it.
Berlin is a really international place, and English is often the language spoken internationally.
So I guess it would make sense that a lot of English is spoken in Berlin.
Um, I think that sometimes that might be the best way to enable the most number of people
to be able to communicate and take part in a conversation.
Having that conversation in English.
However I can also see that that might be really easy for me to say because not only
can I speak English but I am a native speaker of English, so there's that bias there as well.
So like I said, I’m really interested in hearing your take on it down in the comments.
So my question for you is: What do you think about English being spoken in Berlin or English
being spoken in other cities around the world that don’t have English as their native language?
Do you like speaking English in Germany?
Please let me know in the comments below.
Thanks so much for watching.
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