Mark Twain wrote an essay about The awful German language
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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... What German posts?
Lemmy tags all posts with the language they are written in. Most clients filter any posts not of your selected languages by default. Hence, there is a good chance you never notice German posts.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that setting. Since that specific setting says, "If you deselect Undetermined, you will not see most content," I just assumed most people didn't select a language when they post. Since I still have "Undetermined" selected, I'd assumed I'd still see some foreign language posts.
I haven't seen a single one, so nicht ich.
I was learning it (super slowly, thanks ADHD) anyway, but it was when I finally read a 3-sentence long post and could read 90% of it without really thinking about it that I felt I was progressing at all
So of course I haven't practiced in weeks now, fuuck
I lived in Germany from '83 to '94, but I never did learn to speak much of it since I went to American schools. Apparently most Germans speak decent English now? That would have been nice back in the day!
English is on the curriculum of all schools as a mandatory subject, but learning it in school =/= speaking proficiency. That usually comes with a ton of practice, and not all that many of us are exposed to English on a daily basis, even less so in lower income strata.
I've just read that a lot lately, that most people speak English relatively proficiently there. Back in the 80s and 90s it was somewhat rare. Possibly the internet helped a bit.
The internet helps with reading/writing mostly, and that comes with the benefit of looking things up when needed, which you really can't do in a normal conversation. But yeah it has most certainly improved. I think it's now also mandatory as a first foreign language, back when I started high school in 1994 we were still given the option to start with French or Latin instead (with English as a mandatory second language from grade 7 then).
But don't quote me on that, I haven't had anything to do with the German school system after graduation, it's mostly hearsay.
Don't learn german. As a german I always feel sorry for people who learn this language just for 80 million old people ^^
Someone forgets the existence of other countries where people speak German
As a german I have to say learn whatever language you want, even if nobody speaks it.
Ok, I'm learning QBASIC
You should rather learn FORTRAN and make a lot of cash at some bank ;)
Most of the classic big financial tech mainframes actually run on COBOL, at least in Europe. Though even those are very slowly being replaced, mostly by Java. Still, freelancers with COBOL specialty do rake in huge sums. It's not only about the rare tech skills ( COBOL isn't worse or harder than other languages, it's just old and thus simple), it's about having those skills combined with a sufficiently high security clearance.
Oooops sorry, I meant COBOL
I use catodon.social and it's got a ton of German speaking people, and while Catodon is very very well designed it doesn't have a translation option yet.
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