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The language learner's catch-22

Since arriving to Munich, Germany in April of 2023, I’ve noticed an interesting trend with the conversational German-speaking abilties of various international students. While some I’ve met spoke at a level close to fluency, others have struggled with basic sentence structure, even after having lived in Munich for multiple years. I think I’ve finally come up with a theory as to why.

I want to start with the Englishization (this definitely isn’t a word, but whatever) of Germany. Basically all of the young adults here can converse perfectly well in English. If you are an international student with poor conversational German and you try speaking to a German, one of two things will happen; either the German will switch immediately to English, assuming that’s a shared ’tongue’ between you two, or the conversation will die due to the slow pace and choppiness of your conversation. This sucks for the international student because she’ll have a harder time improving her German, and it’ll encourage her to seek out people with whom she shares a native language. This ends with her speaking less and less German, which will cause it to plateau. Unless there is someone willing to put up with the her poor speaking abilities, she will suffer.

On the other hand, if you arrive to Germany and speak just enough to have a moderately normal conversation, people will be more open to speaking to you in German. This is a positive feedback loop as you will continuously develop your prose from lots of practice, which in turn lets you have better conversations.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is if you are set on hopping the border to a country speaking a language different from your native one, it’s best to bring it up to a conversational level first or have someone willing to put up with your choppy speaking skills (significant other or intensive language class).