Expats in Berlin: “Sorry, I don’t speak German”

The biggest problem with getting coffee in Berlin these days isn’t having to choose between seven “milk” alternatives, opening the drinks menu using a barcode, or paying six euros for a cup. The biggest problem is that in popular districts such as Kreuzberg or Friedrichshain, a simple “A coffee please” is met with incomprehensible looks. “Sorry, I don’t speak German” is the best case scenario; Sometimes you will be looked at aggressively until the idea arises to repeat your request in English.

Just as sourdough bread attracts hipsters, Berlin attracts so-called expatriates, people from abroad who live and work in Germany without naturalization. They come from countries such as Australia, France, England, Italy, Egypt, Spain, Poland or the USA and work in start-ups, companies, bars, the creative scene or are self-employed. Their commonality is not based on a common origin or culture, as in other parallel societies, but on a common foreignness. Distinguishing feature: English.

A friend from Amsterdam, currently learning German and looking forward to testing his progress on a recent visit to Berlin, has quickly reached his limits. The waiter at the restaurant did not understand him. Did my friend speak badly or have a misleading accent? I assured him: No, his German was very good; It was the waiter who did not understand German. I recently met a friend of mine who had fled to Berlin at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, and I asked him if he had learned German in the meantime. He laughed. He told me that his German was better before he came to Berlin. In Berlin he forgot everything he had learned at school in Ukraine because there was no opportunity to speak German here.

The problem isn’t limited to ordering coffee. Most of the group chats and friend circles I belong to have, at some point, tacitly agreed to communicate in English if not a single person is a native German speaker. Once we were speaking English in a large group in a restaurant in Neukölln because – as I assumed – not one of the people there spoke German. When, by chance, it turned out that the woman had lived in Germany for fifteen years and acquired German citizenship, I exclaimed with joy: “Oh, then we can speak German, right?” After all, we were in Germany, everyone there was German and spoke German. But he replied: “Yes, you can, but I will answer in English.” We stuck to English in order not to hinder the flow of conversation by balancing two different languages.

Masochistic Self-Suppression

Do I lack empathy for the challenges of daily life as an expat, even after a six-year expat experience in New York? Does my sometimes aggressive rejection of English contribute to Germany’s only 50th place this year? “Expat Insider” surveySo it’s at the bottom of the list of most popular countries for expats to live? Or is the rule of “Adjust to your host country and learn the language”, which was imposed on me like a survival mantra by the exchange institution before my one-year student exchange to Venezuela in 2008/2009, really outdated today?

Perhaps the situation cannot be reversed. Perhaps this is not due to a general unwillingness to adapt, but to a specific inadequacy affecting the German language. How susceptible the German language is to its own disappearance can be seen in all the returnees who, after a year abroad in the United States, suddenly can no longer think of any German sentences or can replace their mother’s American accent. language with great effort. Denglish inflation, that is, the excessive use of English words in German, also means a lot. The German is prone to masochistic self-repression.

How else can one explain the fact that people in Berlin speak English as a prophylactic measure because a person of any non-German origin can be found nearby? Or is the development of Anglophilia due to a malaise linked to German history? An interesting counterexample is the writer Katja Petrowskaja, who only started learning German at the age of 28 and wrote her novel “Vielleicht Esther” in German instead of German, about her great-grandmother who was killed by the National Socialists in Kiev. native language is Russian. So he consciously chose the more difficult path, in both senses of the word, and wrote both in a foreign language and in the “language of war.”

Ostracism through Anglophilia

The Berlin English fetish is also surprising in another respect: in their book “English in Berlin: Exclusion in Cosmopolitan Society”, Moshtari Hilal and Sinthujan Varatharajah draw attention to the gentrifying logic of exclusion of popular English-speaking bars in Kreuzberg or Neukölln. subject. Despite their inclusive, cosmopolitan appearance, they not only exclude non-English-speaking Germans (which is both class and age discrimination) but also immigrants who seek protection from other countries and who now have to learn English as well as German. to participate in daily life.

Expats who constantly speak English, although it is not a requirement, thus contribute to a two-tiered society: They narrow rather than expand the scope of tolerance. A striking double standard in terms of content; For example, in a “bookstore for women and queer writers” in Neukölln, arguments imported from the USA, such as “Black Lives Matter”, that have little to do with the reality of life are discussed. People are just one street away. Or like this New Zealand He recently got to the bottom of the parallel society problem in Zurich, a stronghold of foreigners: “If a foreigner avoids integration, the city can only stand by. In times of skills shortage, expatriates are privileged outsiders.”

In Cemile Şahin’s new novel “Kommando Ajax”, it is said that you learn the language of a new country much faster on a construction site “because everyone on the construction site is always a foreigner and communicates in the new language they have learned. By the skin of their teeth as they try to understand each other better, instead of all strangers talking to each other in their own foreign language and no one understanding anyone else.” This doesn’t apply to expats because they already have a secret language that everyone understands except construction workers, but they still don’t go to trendy cafes, bars and clubs. This is not only due to the price barrier but also the language barrier.

A German friend of mine, who is more involved in the Berlin club scene than I am, recently asked me to recommend him novels specifically in German, because he has a very good ability to express himself in writing, since he only watches English TV series, reads English books and speaks English. his native language has become noticeably worse. Maybe I should suggest him a novel that isn’t set in Berlin.

This text is translated as follows: deep. You can find the original article in German Here.