• Dealing with the Deutsch

  Filed under Foo
  Mar 8

  I love the online business I’m in because I frequently get to work with fellow geeks from all over the world. Well, yesterday, I learned something very interesting about American culture from one of my German friends.

  I’m due to take a trip to Germany later this year, and to date, I admit I know nothing of the language other than “Bitte”, “Danke” and “buch”. My German friend asked me if I knew anything about Nibelungen (a town), and when I said “No”, he wrote back “Heather, Heather. You know nothing about German culture.”

  Of course, like the typical American I am, I made a joke of it and then felt a twinge of guilt. So I started reading up on German culture written from ex-patriot Americans living abroad. “By god, maybe he’s right” I thought,”I don’t know anything about their culture, but I will by the time I have to travel there.”

  Interestingly enough, I learned more about how Americans view things rather than how the Germans live their lives.

  Apparently, I learned, Germans are very direct. If it’s been a while since they saw you last and you gained weight, they will ask if you gained weight. If they don’t like something that you do, say, how you cook, they will tell you that “You’re not a good cook.”

  Americans, on the other hand, infer. “Have you gained weight” and “You’re not a good cook” become judgements about ones character. I have come to realize that Americans place the phrase “You are flawed because” in front of every statement someone says about us that is less than flattering. The statement “You’re not a good cook” becomes “You are flawed because you are not a good cook.”

  Now this rule changes slightly if it is something the American says about themself *first*. But we still take it personally even if we do say it about ourselves.

  Let’s go back to the cooking example. I bring up the cooking example because my friend happened to use it when talking about his wife. Since I will be staying with him for a few days while I am visiting Germany, I said I could cook him and his family in exchange for my board. He said “That’s good because my wife is not a good cook.” I remember when he said it, I winced and was glad she was not in the room to read that statement. But, now, as I have learned, it is no big deal.

  I laugh when I think about what would happen to him if he said any sort of statement like that to an American woman’s face. Especially if she didn’t say it about herself first.
  God help him if he told any American woman if she gained weight. Blood would be drawn; he might limp for the rest of his life.

  I remember some of the conversations I’ve had with my German friends in the past and laugh at my ‘typically American’ responses to some of the ’statements’ they have made. One particular conversation involves the umlaut.

  Now, for those non-Germans in the audience, the umlaut is the two little dots above some of the vowels used in the German language. Here’s what letters with umlauts look like: ü, ä, ö.

  For a long time, I didn’t know how to spell umlaut. Besides, the two little dots looked like a little hat for a vowel. So, when asking if a letter in a particular word needed an umlaut, I asked if it needed a hat. ‘Hat’ is much easier to spell, and, at least in my mind, much more descriptive.

  I remember I got a response from one German friend — and this is a direct quote:

  “You must not call it a hat. It an umlaut or a double point.”

  Well, my first response was to laugh.

  In English, using the word “must” is a very stern, very demanding, thing to say. It is like a king telling his subjects what to do, or like an angry parent correcting a child for bad behavior. A peer never tells another peer what he or she MUST or MUST NOT do.

  So I responded back in my chat “Oh, I MUST NOT, must I? *LOL!*”

  No response.

  Now, I wondered if he really was pissed off. He didn’t say anything. No happy face, nothing. As an American, I was confused. I made sure never to mention the umlaut again, thinking it was a sore subject.

  Now, I understand, he was probably as confused and wondered why I laughed at the whole thing.

  One more thing I’ve learned about the Deutsch is that they very much want to get their hard-learned English correct. They expect and appreciate a native English speaker to correct them if they say something incorrectly. And, they expect that you will tell them directly.

  My friend was simply correcting me as he would expect me to correct him. Nothing more.

  The thing is, now that I look at it, I actually prefer the German way of doing things. There’s no guesswork. What you say is what you mean, nothing inferred. It removes a lot of stress to take away the inference “You are flawed because” from any given statement. In fact, a lot of the little petty bullshit in my everyday life will go away by removing it from any and all comments.

  The funny thing is, if my typical American-ness didn’t come into play in this whole ‘You-don’t-know-anything-about-our-culture” conversation, I never would have learned this nice little life lesson.

  And yes, I think my German friends will read this post and laugh.

Leave a Reply