Tuesday 23 August 2016

German effect.


Cunard have given us something new to ponder . Till this trip the English have always been the largest group onboard! Now we are two huge groups containing as many Germans as Brits!
For some of the older generation this is a bit of a problem . But for most of us we can live side by side with no problems...
On our English speaking dinner table we have a lovely German woman with excellent English..I have just two words of German...."Gouten morgan" and "Danke"
Moving around the ship it is likely that your dining companions will not be English any more.. But it is also obvious that their English is much better than our German...
Most of them can make a stab at it whereas most of us Brits really can't..
This is difficult...it's hard to feel superior and British when it's becoming obvious that we are not!
Many of us Brits are attempting to close ranks! A certain anti German bias creeps in where two or more of us gather over food or drink....
I am not feeling that....I just know that I have to try harder than I have so far...I have to acquire some basic German from somewhere. That way not only can I make myself understood, I might meet some really interesting people!
Either way I'm doing a lot of smiling and dankering.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

1 comment:

UKViewer said...

I lived in Germany and Belgium during my Army Career and worked alongside and lived alongside German people on both occasions. I learned basic German and Flemish as part of those periods, but that was more than 40 years ago - I'm terribly rusty, but might be able to get by after some familiarity of hearing it spoken around me. I do hope that you can benefit from doing the same, I found asking questions about basic terms helped - and people were all to ready to help with the words and pronunciation.