Hey there! We've revamped our Language Sprint rewards and are excited to share the news! No more 100% cashback, but get ready for something even better: more free classes to celebrate your achievements! 🌟 Complete the regular Sprint, attend 30 classes in 2 months, and score 40 free lessons as your reward. Opt for the Super Sprint, complete 60 classes, and unlock 75 free lessons! 🥇🏆 Plus, don't forget: your language skills will soar, and you’ll learn for free even after the challenge ends! 🚀 Ready to level up your language journey? Let's go! 🎉
2:33 Plattdeutsch is a separate language while Friesisch is "just" a dialect. The former i learned via my grand parents so although i can't really speak it and i only know our local dialect of it (a mix of Bremen's and Hamburg's) i can understand it 17:30 well, in the beginning when you only know so much vocabulary it is not really feasible to speak that language full time. for me it was 4 years of french at school and we spoke french most of the time only in the last 2 years due to finally knowing enough of the language. similar with english which i had in school for 11 years but it only got better when i was forced to use it at work or through the internet
Ukranian, Russian, German, Englisch. I have little practice speaking English, but I can understand it without subtitles. I learn it from your TH-cam channel and can compare life in the USA and Germany
I am 62 and American but took 3 years of German in high school and have continued to try and become fluent ever since. There is little opportunity to speak German in America but I have a strong interest in German and European railroads and Model Trains. Reading train books and magazines in German and ordering models from German hobby shops has helped me learn more German. I have also traveled to Germany six times for vacations and practice German each time. My son who is 17 is going to German language school in Freiburg this summer! He wants to be an engineer and possibly work for a German company.
Funny. I'm a 70 years old German with a "strong interest" in American railroads ( besides European, German and the rest of the world railroads ). "Reading train books and magazines" ( trains) from the US and playing with trains from America and all over the world with Train Simulator and Open Rails. Greetings from Germany.
@@joachimniebling5034 Thanks for your comment. I am also in American railroads and models. I model the 1930 US time period with steam and electric locomotives and I model German Epoch III. We travel to Europe and Germany to go to railroad museums and ride on steam lines and excursions. We loved the Harzbahn and an excursion with the Eisenbahn Museum in Dresden. The Eurail pass works great for us and we go everywhere by train. We also love to get a compartment in a Schlafwagen for overnight trips. Europe has such a wonderful rail system. The USA is far bigger with long distances but our Amtrak system still should be better than it is. There are some great tourist railroads in the USA. If you haven’t been on the D&RGW in Colorado or the Cumbres and Toltec in New Mexico those are two of the best steam lines. Also Alaska RR in Alaska is very scenic.
Let me tell you a true story which is only possible in Flanders. A few years ago on a story telling event they had 4 story tellers. But each of them told in his own language: Dutch, French, English and German. The room was packed with hundreds of listeners, which all knew it and understood the 4 languages. That gave it a very special taste.
Was knowing these languages a requirement to go to the event? Because, yes you learn these languages in school somewhat, but I don't think most Flemish people speak German and French enough to follow a story. I've met some young Flemish people and they said they didn't really speak French at all.
I can see something similar happening theoretically in Switzerland, with German, French, Italian and Romansch. But I don't think people in a given region would know all four of these languages. Other than that, I can't imagine many places in Europe this would work. But other continents experience similar events frequently, especially Africa and Asia.
@@Anonymous-sb9rr They don't like French, but they at least understand it. Exposure is ubiquitous. Flamish is a dialect of Dutch which is pretty close to German.
@@sertaki Nobody understands Rumantsch. They speak German among themselves when they come from differen valleys, because the different variations of it are not mutually understandable. English is by now the language of exchange between the different linguistic groups. Ticinesi are usually quite fluent in German and to some extent in French by approximation. Among many foreigner, Spanish, Italians, Portuguese and even some Slavs, Italian is a lingua franca in the working class, still common on construction sites.
@@HelmutQ I think they only have a limited amount of exposure to French. Dutch and German are not mutually intelligible, they're not as close as a lot people think. It's not like Spanish and Italian, those are really close. But they are more similar than Dutch and English.
Mother tongue German, then learned English from 5th grade, French from 7th grade. But due to lack of practice the French almost completely vanished. And lastly Swahili which I need because I live in rural Tanzania. I feel uncomfortable visiting a foreign country and not at least try to know a few words. To me it's a sign of respect as well.
I couldn't agree more on the respect. Also, especially with rarer languages, I find it to be a huge door opener and conversation starter. Also, as soon as you travel outside of bigger cities and touristic areas, fewer if any people tend to know English. And even if they do, it's important to keep in mind that people may know English because the country used to be a colony. So the reception they give to someone who tries to speak their native tongue may be more positive because of that as well.
Thanks for raising the respect issue: I'd never visit a country without being able to say at least the very very basics (hello, thank you, excuse me, good bye).
@@ElinT13 A wise lady told me to learn those basic words you mentioned, how to count to ten, but also how to say " what do you call this" in the local language.
Yes! The first thing I learn in a new language is how to say Thank you, then please, then hello and goodbye, and only then, basic travel phrases. Consequently, I know how to say "thank you“ in many languages!😂
Oh yes. i got the same a language-history as you, but it's really "use it or lose it". And i don't think I learned all that much in school. Although I was a good student. Some vocabulary, grammar rules... but even after 9 years, i wouldn't have been able to survive in the wilderness of the UK much better than a tourist. Then comes University, and for the first time ever i had to translate a text from German into English. i learned so much in such a short time!
As a native Norwegian speaker, I began my journey with English at the age of 10 or 11. However, I don't view your content to enhance my English skills. I am drawn to your channel because of the exceptional quality of your well-researched content. It's both informative and factual, which is the sole reason for my viewership.
I'm German native who started English at the age of 10. I learned French for 5 years until 2008 but didn't really use it since. Now I'm learning Spanish since half a year at the age of 31 ... we'll see where that ends up :D
And yes here ist anathor native German who listen two your Chanel because of your contend. About my language skills, Sure First of all German and in Grade 5 I had to start with English, but when my Grandmother and my mother started to speak to each other, I allthogh piked Up a View Dutch words. In 8th Grade I started with french and after my First vacation in Italy I Beginn with Italien. But if it comes to the Level of fluency I would only consider German and English as funktional. The other languages are at best to survive a Restaurant visit.
i started with french (grade 5-11), then english (grade 7-13), and when there was a choice between another language and _"Darstellende Geometrie"_ i chose latin (grade 9-11) to get the _"Kleines Latinum"._ Of course i never spoke latin (and rarely french), but once having known french and latin (and frequent holidays in italy, although on a "german campsite" :-) enabled me to communicate in basic italian (restaurants, hotels, shopping :-) and even once have a tedious but successfull basic conversation with a monolingual spaniard without ever really having learned any of those latter two. The more languages you know, the easier it is to at least somewhat learn or understand other similar (for me: south/west or north/west european) languages. too bad that because of politics and their travel limitations to eastern europe, all those languages were completely foreign to me during the first half of my life, and then learning them from scratch (never being exposed to them or even having heard them) at a higher age wouldn't have been easy enough without a useful goal (and having become "too lazy" to attempt learning more completely different languages "just for fun").
Abitur ist nicht die einzige Möglichkeit eine Zugangsberechtigung zu deutschen Hochschulen zu erlangen. Zugegebenermaßen eher ungewöhnlich, aber ganz sicher nicht unmöglich. Lg
I was born in Kazakhstan in a German family. This means we were speaking German at home and Russian outside. In 1988 I came to Germany, where I learned English and French at school. I continued to use English, but French I know only passively. As an adult, I spend a little bit more than a year living in Romania, where I learned to Romanian. I still use it. Although my level is probably not higher than A2. Now I have married an Afghan husband, and therefore I am learning Farsi. Learning languages is fun. It opens for you a new world of understanding and feeling about things. I’m watching your videos because it is interesting to see my own culture from the perspective of a foreigner. I watch a lot of channels with intercultural content
I don't know if I missed it in this video, but learning English at German schools is not a choice. Everybody has to learn English. I am 53 years old and I startet with English at the age of 10 (in Western Germany). Today kids start earlier with English. My native language is German and I understand ostfriesisches Plattdeutsch. Me and my sister shouldn't learn to speak it even so our entire family spoke it. So we were a kind of bilingual at home. My English increased a lot through videos like yours (THANK YOU ❤), series and movies, English music and reading. But I still don't think as a fluent English speaker of myself, even so my speaking improved in the last years.
I’m going to be 60 in a couple months and my ex wife and I met in 1985. She’s two years older than me and German. Her English was not very good but today her American English is almost perfect. We struggled communicating for a while but she learned fast.
However, I know quite a few people in Germany who don't remember their school English if they are young enough to have had it required. So, if you do not travel to English speaking countries, and don't use it, it is not necessarily a working language.
I have never been to an English speaking country and I didn't really use my school English for over 20 years. But I had a basis to build upon - which I learned at school. Learning languages works different for everybody and of course there are a lot of people who don't remember much of their school lessons - me included. But it makes a difference if you had to learn it at school or not.
as a spaniard living in Germany married to my italian wife, i´m fluent in all this 3 languages; + to some degree, also fluent in english....to speak 3 or 4 languages is very common for us europeans !
As Southtyrolean with a strong bavarian-austrian dialect I learned standard German in school, after second grade Italian (because Southtyrol is a part of Italy). I had Latin and ancient Greek later what helps to understand written Latin-based languages. I started learning english during Covid, mostly to watch american TV shows in original - so I watch your videos to train my listening skills.
Americans can’t even speak or write in English, it irritates me to read American “english” and the way they murder the English language when they speak.
One thing that bothers me is that Americans often don't even make any effort with other languages. Not speaking a language is one, but not even trying to pronounce some simple words is quite another. This happens with videogame titles for example, like Einhänder, Herzog Zwei or God of War: Ragnarök.
My native language is Finnish. Additionally, I speak English and Swedish fluently. I can also speak some Estonian and Spanish, but I'm definitely not fluent. I have also studied some German, Italian and French... but only remember some words and phrases 😅 I watch your channel to learn from two foreign cultures at the same time. German culture is of course quite similar to Finnish culture, but getting to see things from an American perspective is really interesting.
@@maikotter9945 It was a very short period: When the legal government, a.k.a. the whites or the butchers, depending on one's point of view, had won the civil war in 1918 (with decisive German help) and Germany had dictated a harsh peace to Russia at Brest-Litovsk, it was a popular idea among the White victors to create a Finnish king out of a German prince . When, just months later, Germany had accepted the harsh Treaty of Versailles, the very same White victors of Finland's civil war realized they would rather be more like the French and the Americans and have elected presidents instead of hereditary kings.
Being German, I of course speak German at home. I have always had an interest in and a knack for learning other languages, so in school I took as many as I could. That resulted in me taking 5 years of Latin (which is of questionable use, admittedly), 7 years of French and 9 years of English. I think the last point in the video is the most important. I have forgotten most of my french, because since I left school I haven't really used it at all. English, on the other hand, I've likely actually gotten better over time because I use it almost daily. That's partially my personal preference, as I watch films and series as well as read books in english, because I dislike the German dubs and translations, but a lot of it is interaction with other people online. Whether in games with voice chat, in the youtube comments or on forums and discords, it's always English that's spoken, because with English it doesn't matter where you're from. Speaking it is kind of an entrance requirement to most of the internet, I feel.
Oh cool! I think Latin would be fascinating to learn. I know of a few friends who opted to learn Latin because they were pre-med in University and they found it super helpful for understanding the root names of diseases and conditions.
@@TypeAshton You actually need Latin for some study programs (partially also depending on which university you visit). Additionally, knowing Latin makes „understanding“ (written) Italian or Spanish much easier.
@@TypeAshton not only that, Latin is probably the single most influential language. Everywhere the Roman empire spread, you find traces of it. English has had a double influence even through the occupation and its french roots. I find it super interesting looking at the etymology of Latin words and how their meaning changed over time. Like apothecam (wine cellar, iirc) and modern day uses like apothecary or Apotheke. I was fortunate to have had very good teachers in both Latin and English who raised our awareness for these connections and it is so interesting and enriching and there are countless Latin words surrounding us. Most people just don't realise it.. like audio (I hear), video (I see) it's everywhere..
@@TypeAshton honestly: The most fascinating aspect of learning Latin for me was, that it was a huge additional (but very, very Euro-centric) history course. The Roman Empire has had one of the most historic influences on our continent and therefore is for the whole of Europe a very important aspect. Learning the language not only was very boring and really, really hard, but the effect, that learning Latin for ancient texts means, you never get in the mode of being able to SPEAK Latin, always gives you the feeling of being held back. This is a huge problem, because it excludes the most important part of language learning, as you know yourself of course: having conversations. So in hindsight for me it was not a good idea to start foreign languages with Latin, as the most valuable early years for fluency (for example in English), were kind of wasted. Wouldn't I have started to explore the internet at the age of 14 and at the same time also not want having to wait for the translation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I probably would have had a very hard time to become only somewhat fluent up to 10 years later during my college years.
I'm half Scots, half French. I grew up bilingual in Scotland and had the weird experience of being taught French (a language I spoke natively at home) as a foreign language in school for 6 years. I did end up being able to spell better than my cousins in France, though.😂 I also learnt Latin for 5 years at secondary school. I began learning German at 15, Spanish in my early thirties. Those two languages were learnt mostly by immersion in the countries themselves, catching up on the formal grammar later. I acquired a passive understanding of Catalan, Italian and Portuguese, as well as Low German (Plattdüütsch), and some Dutch. I worked with languages professionally, translating and interpreting. For the past year, thanks to online resources, I've finally got around to learning Scottish Gaelic - something I've wanted to do for years. Through that, I've also come to understand some Irish too. Learning languages keeps your brain fit. I watch your videos to get the American perspective. But also because you're a nice family.
My native language is English, but have German family so I felt incentivised to learn German and then converse properly with my relatives. I always tell people it took 9 years of learning to reach fluency. I also did Spanish in school, with a two year dose of Japanese. Now I live in the Czech Republic but work for an American company, so I speak English all day anyway. I know enough Czech to get by and deal with paperwork, but conversations with me in Czech are rare. Doesn't help that my local husband speaks better English than most natives.
Swedish here. I started learning English around 9 years old... and had english classes all the way up through the entire mandatory school, so until age 17. Along with lots of influence from media, English is definitely a language I'm comfortable with. The second foreign language I learned was French. That I began at age 13, and had classes up to age 17. There is no media in french in Sweden so I was never exposed to french outside of classes. I remember NOTHING of french today. Wouldn't be able to understand a single sentence of spoken french. So yes. Learning earlier is important, as well as being constantly exposed to the language. As a European I feel kind of like a failure at just being able to speak two languages... that's nothing. Especially since my only foreign language is english, the most basic and easy language to learn (in my opinion).
Hej, I can totally relate. As a German, I, too, am most comfortable with English, forgot most of my French and Spanish from school due to not really using it. But I took up Swedish and am determined to at least always keep my level there, even if I cannot always advance in my courses. But yes, two languages for me as well... kinda lame for a European ;)
It was the same for me, I didn't speak a word of French for 8 years after school. Then however I got to know some french people and (as the cliché goes) it was actually easier for me to "re-learn" French to talk to them than to try to communicate in English. And actually even though I thought I had forgotten everything, it all came back to me very quickly. I guess even if you never use it, multiple years of learning a language will still come back later if you need it.
I was born in the early sixties and when I was in the fifth year of elementary school I got my first English lesson, just learning words. It was the first year a foreign language was educated on my school. In the sixth year I learned simple sentences. At secondary school I got French (2years), German (3years) and English (4years and as an exam subject). In secondary technical vocational school I got German and English for 2 years. The third year is internship and the fourth year is exam year. In the first two years you could also take optional languages like French, Spanish and Italian or technical German and technical English. I chose the latter two, to broaden my technical vocabulary. Although I did benefit from technical German and technical English in my career I still feel a bit sad that I didn’t chose French and Spanish. I would have loved to be fluent in French and Spanish also. Maybe after I retire.
Russian is my native language, but I was in a special school in then-USSR that had English classes starting 2nd grade (8 y.o.). As Ashton pointed out in the video, emersion is very important -- I got a huge boost in my language abilities during a school exchange trip I took in high school. At age of 28 I moved to Poland so now this is the 3rd language I know.
Hello, My native language is german. Growing up close to the danish border, I started learning Danish and speak it at a mother tounge level. We started learning English at school at the age of 12-13. In my early twenties I learned Italian, which I now speak fluently as I live in Italy. ❤ PS: Thank you for the very well researched video. It was very interesting.
As a Belgian (from the Flemish part) I speak our three native languages (Dutch, French and German). Since English is important wherever you go I also speak that. And since my level of these languages is not so bad I can also understand a bit of Spanish and Italian. As in the Netherlands all programms on TV are in their original language, so alot of children have already a notice of another language (especially) English before they got their first lesson at school. I can say that it is definitely true you better understand the way of thinking of a foreigner if you speak his language.
I am a Ukrainian native speaker who grew up in a bilingual UA-RU environment, had English as my first foreign language and German as a second foreign language. I enjoy your videos, but currently, I am not at the point of learning English anymore, it is more of maintaining the level I have and enjoying the wide variety of content that the English-speaking community provides. Looking forward to your new videos!
My third language, or second foreign language in school, was Latin. At that time my school would only offer Latin or Russian, and I chose the former. I actually didn't regret it. Although my Spanish, Italian and French are pretty much non-existent or let's say on touristy level, it does help to figure out the meaning of many (written) words of those languages. Since learning Latin pretty much means learning grammar my understanding of English and also German grammar has really improved. Bonus: Reading the SPQR novels by John Maddox Roberts is a lot more fun with some knowledge of Latin and Roman history. 😂
But let's be honest here: yes, the "Latin Languages" are obviously related to each other. If you learn spanish, portuguese, italian, french or latin, you will be able to learn the other ones faster and mkght be able to figure out the meaning of many words in those other languages. So why would anyone pick the only dead language that isn't spoken by anyone anymore? Why not pick italian right from the start? I know, you didn't have that choice, but still! It alsways baffles my mind that people say "learn latin, that will make it easier for you to learn italian" instead of "learn italian".
I myself speak German, Bavarian (which is not considered as an official language though 😅) and English. However, my English is only something between B1-B2. I learned it at school for almost 5 years, but I forgot so many about grammar rules and vocabulary. I've decided to start learning English again about 6 months ago and that was one of the main reasons why I started watching your videos. So I apologize in advance for all grammar mistakes that I've made to write this comment 😅
German, English, French, Spanish... I am not watching your Videos for the language, but for he content and your way of presenting it. You are a great educator. ❤
While I agree starting earlier if definitely a huge advantage, I think many underestimate how far you can get starting later if you have the motivation and put the work in. I'm an American who started learning German at 19 years old, (3 years ago), and at this point Germans are usually shocked when they find out I'm from America. I think one of the areas that many learners stumble at is pronunciation. It's helps so much to get a bit familiar with the international phonetic alphabet and the sound system of the target language (and even with your first language too!). Many Americans pronounce German as it they were reading an English text with weird spelling, when (imo) you really need to fight that urge and learn the rules from scratch, which letters correspond to which sounds, and when you stumble across a new sound, to try to learn it. Here, a speech coach helps a ton, I had one who was familiar with American English, and meticulously pointed out where I needed get over bad habits. A good speech coach is definitely worth the money!
I 100% agree with your pronunciation point. To me, it seems that's what people from America struggle the most with. Other countries seem to be doing much better with pronunciation though. In my experience, most Americans struggle with German pronunciation even after years of learning, while most other countries seem to adapt much quicker. No idea why that's the case, but you definitely made the right choice by focusing on pronunciation. That's probably the reason why people are often surprised by how good your German is.
@@Feeber2 Not only Americans, Canadians and Brits as well. I think that is caused by the really different pronunciation rules for English compared to most other languages using the Latin alphabet.
I grew up in the States with a German mother. I speak English and German and some Spanish. I had some French in school. I taught in an international school in the Dominican Republic which is where I mainly used German in the community, because at the time German speakers were the largest expat community there, and Spanish I was learning living there, even though the Lingua Franca of the school was English. My husband who grew up in Germany speaks German and English fluently. He is good at modern Greek because he studied in Greece, and took it in school. He also has a working knowledge of Latin, Italian, French and then worked on Spanish on our honeymoon in Mexico. He studied Russian in school, so now he is studying Russian, Polish, Ukrainian and Czech on Duolingo to see whether learning languages in the same family is easier. He thinks it helps. My mother speaks German and English fluently, and also studied Arabic, and Persian. My neighbor who is from Finland and is a translator speaks at least 8 languages, and her husband who is German and Egyptian speaks at least 8 languages as well, and is a prof of Near Eastern Studies at our neighborhood University. In fact, several of my friends are in that department and speak several languages as well. That is probably because our local university draws faculty and students from all over the world.
I speak German (native) and English (C1). I learned Russian in school because it was mandatory at the time, but I barely know any of it anymore. I also tried Japanese, but only a few words are left. I watch your videos because you give an outsiders look on Germany, which I find interesting.
As a Dutchy I speak Dutch obviously, English, German, a little French (enough to go around) and a few words of Spanish. As a Dutchy people keep telling me that the Dutch are straight forward in sharing their opinion when asked but I think it is rudely and unheard off to start a conversation in English (Native or non-native speaker) and expecting people to understand you and expect them as well to answer you fluently in English as well, without excusing yourself not knowing the local language. Now, where on earth did such a rude attitude come from..? Remember that knowing the language at least for a certain degree of the country you're visiting is a must. Don't expect local people to understand any foreign language at all, and remember that we, (the locals in Europe) effectively know one language well enough to express ourselves in and that would be our mother language. The rest of the languages one learns much later at school, but barely ever is spoken, since we all speak the local language, and so is not practiced, and so becomes a language one does not or barely control, and so is a language one does not really master and so is not a language one likes to be forced into by foreigners whom demand fluent speakers of the language of their choice, since the little travel booklet told them we Europeans are all bi-lingual--> which is sadly not the case.
Alles Liebe zum Muttertag! ❤ Welcome, little Black Forrest family addition! My native language is German. Languages at school (in order): English, Latin, French, Italian (extra curricular) and Spanish. I also took some Chinese classes at Volkshochschule, but forgot most of it. 😅 I went on studying English at university and also lived in the UK for a bit. Now I'm so happy to be able to use English everyday in my job - I'd really miss it otherwise.
I started listening to your content because of my interest in keeping my English fluent. But by now I very much appreciate your diligent research - no matter what topic you choose to present - I always feel my brain has had some training. I have very often thought you should be in the teaching profession somewhere because you have the gift to break down complicated topics in a way which makes what ever it is comprehensible. Kudos!
I am Colombian and I am native in Spanish, have English as my second and German as my third languges. I do as well have learned some Italian, French, Portuguese and Russian to communicate better with my friends here in Europe. My brother lives in Europe as well and he does know even more languages than I do (namely 6 fluently and some others by curiosity). I watch these videos because of the great contrasts you make about US and German cultures, I end up learning a lot about both ❤
As a native Mongolian, I am fluent in both English and German, which makes it easier for me to communicate with people from different countries. I also have the ability to read Cyrillic and can understand a little bit of Russian. I find English valuable as it enables me to explore the diverse perspectives and thoughts of people around the world. English serves as a bridge that connects various ideas and individuals, allowing me to engage with a broader range of information and experiences. On the other hand, my experience with learning Spanish in school was not very successful, and I still struggle with it. However, I believe that in the future, I will undertake the task of learning Chinese, as I aspire to teach it to my future children.
My work helps people from other countries making their first steps in Germany. I cannot stress enough how important it is to learn the German language. Besides a couple of specialized jobs, you won't find high, or even average paying jobs if you don't speak German. Can you survive without German: yes, can you live without it: no. P.S. German, English & Spanish.
I agree with this statement only to a certain extent. It really depends on your profession and the area where you live. If you work at a global firm in a major citiy and possibly in a job that assumes a high level of qualification you can live in Germany for years without learning the language. Work in IT at the Telekom in Berlin for instance and no German is needed. Most IT projects include foreign (American, Hungarian, Spanish or Chech) experts and the common language is Englisch. Major German cities are so international, that half of the conversations you overhear in the streets are not held in German. Here in Berlin we have plenty of cafe's and restaurants - and not only ethnic ones - where the waiters don't even speak German and expect you to order in English. I do agree however with both Ashton and you, that it makes things soo much easier and just more interesting and rewarding if you speak the language of the country you live in. PS. Germain, English, French
Hey I‘m a german native speaker and I do also speak English, French (learned in school), Spanish (I have relatives in Mexico) and Russian (my wife was born there). And I actually watch your videos because I like the way you give insights into everything around Germany that the Germans themselves often don’t see. Plus your explanations are so good that I actually understand better how my own country works :)
Vielen Dank fuer die Inhalte auf eurem Kanal! Meine Muttersprache ist Englisch, und meine Deutsch-Faehigkeit ist ungefaehr B1. Eines Tages lerne ich mehr Sprachen (Spanisch, Schwedisch, Platt, usw), aber zuerst muss es mehr Stunden in einem Tag geben :)
My first language is German, I moved to Canada when I was 5. I moved back to Germany in 2002 for work and was able to communicate in German but the primary language was English. My German background was very helpful with my accent as I was able to pronounce German words with more accuracy and became somewhat of an anomaly in our company with my German capability. It was a very unique experience for me to see employees from the UK and the USA struggling with German. I have also learned that language is very important to learn at a young age. My daughters have learned German, English, and Spanish, being born in Germany and now living in the USA as of 2015. This will be an advantage for them as they move forward in life. Please do not consider my next comment negative. Your German is very American. I do however love that you are learning and want to learn! This is very rare among Expatriates. I love this channel and watching your family discover all that is great in Germany! I only moved to the USA as I was transferred by my company to do big things.
Hello Ashton, hello Jonathan, Congratulations again to your new family member! I hope you all are doing well? I personally speak three languages, hochdeutsch, english and pfälzisch(our local dialect). 😀 In my opinion it crutial to start learning a second language as soon as possible. Best regards Ralf
Hi Ralf! We are all at home and resting 💜 One of the big reasons why we enrolled Jack in Kita was so that he has exposure 5 days a week to native German speakers and can hopefully develop two "native languages" in tandem. When we were in the hospital with the newest little one, he spent one morning with our neighbor who has a son the same age as Jack and they spoke exclusively German together. Really cool to see. 💜💜
Hallo, I am a russian native speaker, but my German ist better than my russian today. I learned english in school and try to practice everywhere i can. Because of that i See you Chanel. Thank you for great content every time!
Another great video. Thank you! I do have one tip: The language called "Hochdeutsch" has - here in Hannover - a clear LONG "o" in the first syllable. Have a lovely Mother's Day! ☺
Growing up in Germany with a canadian dad, made me a natural bilingual. In school I learned french, but I've forgotten like everything. At best I could order a coke in a restaurant. Then a friend taught me some of his norwegian. It was so good and great. He moved away sadyly. But if I'd find a norwegian course i'd really would think of taking it. As a hobby. And if you can talk one of the 3 scandinavian languages, you'd get by with the other 2 as well due to their similarity
Dear Ashton, the last few days I have watched some of your videos and want to thank you so much for your very informative and entertaining videos. The quality of your videos is far above the average standard of other „expat in Europe“ channels 👏🏻
Thank you for the comprehensive view. One thing i like to mention is, that Americans often have Problems understanding the Englisch that is spoken globally. I have done IT-Projects in a global Corporation, and in Phone or Video Conferences People from Brasil, France, Argentina, Italy could very well understand each other in english, while our American Co Workers often had to ask twice. For your language statitics, German native, english on business level and resonable Spanish. For travelling i have a basic knoweledge of french, italian, portuguese and dutch.
Fantastic topic. I was born and raised in the US, came to Germany almost 40 years ago as a soldier, stayed, married a Turkish/ German woman, had 2 daughters, both are tri-lingual and are now learning Spanish and Latin in high school. I speak English with my daughters, German with my wife and at work, my wife speaks Turkish with our daughters. No one has really figured us out. My daughters attend a German/ American school in Berlin and we spend our summers in Turkey. The Turks have a wise saying that learning a new language is learning a new culture.
The funny thing about this slogan is that, their local dialect is High German. Even Austrian and Swiss dialects are High German. The only people not speaking High German are in the North, speaking Low German. This confusion happens because colloquially we use the terms "Standard German" and "High German" interchangeably.
@@frankmeyer1473 : I agree. "High German" is imho a inappropriate translation of "Hochdeutsch". It just means standard German. Well, I'm speaking the "High German" dialect Alemannic. :-) When I'm visiting northern Germany (ok, meaning: Every state northern to BW and Bavaria :-) = "Weisswurstäquator") and I'm really doing my best to speak "High German", I'm often get asked: "Are you from Switzerland?" Because accidentally I'm using some southern German words, phrases or it's just because of my grammar 🙂
Hi! I'm a Venezuelan living in Spain, so my native language is Spanish. I speak English as a second language, and I watch this kind of videos to practice 👍🏽. I learned how to speak English over 20 years ago, so I use videos, movies, books, magazines... anything that can help me to maintain my level and (why not) keep learning, since languages are alive and they never stop evolving ☝🏽
I like the recommendation I read somewhere to learn four languages: 1) a lingua franca (English) 2) a language of historical importance (e.g. Latin, or in my case French) 3) a regional language (for me, that's Czech) 4) one just for fun (Swedish) Except for English, I'm not really proficient in any of those, though... only basic communication.
Mine look like this (an American): 1. The Lingua Franca (Spanish) [I'm in Texas, Latin Americans often take the same attitude to English learning that Anglos do to Spanish learning.] 2. Historical Importance/Serious Hobby (German) [My intended 2nd language to learn, and very useful for understanding older works of English literature that took the bizarre sentence patterns anyway.] 3. The Blowoff Hobby/F*&k with Native Speakers of #1 and #2 that don't have the decency to not switch to English when I'm talking to them in their language dammit, and sorry the accent isn't 100% perfect! (Russian) 5. Auxiliary (What Else is needed in the moment)
Interesting as always. I'm American born and though my grandparents spoke other languages as well as english (German, Italian, Yiddish) we never spoke anything but english at home. I had French in high school, as did my wife and when we went to France 35 years ago we were completely lost and unable to understand what was spoken to us because they spoke so fast we couldn't even pick out words we knew and very little on the menus matched up with what we learned in school. It was also a time that the French weren't particularly fond of the US so absolutely no one would speak English to us except in the hotel in Paris. As we drove around France for a week we managed to find everything on our trip but we didn't find out that the US had bombed Libya until we were on our British Airways plane flying to London. Fast forward to more recent times and our more recent trips to France the locals were very friendly and many spoke english. My daughter is now fluent in German as she has lived there for a few years, but she says that the locals, in Mannheim speak a dialect of German that even many of her German friends can't figure out a lot of the time, because even though they learn Hochdeutsch in school they speak Mannheimer (Palatine German) at home and then rarely use the standard German. Actually so many Germans (at least younger ones) that she encountered speak english that she had a hard time using German because as soon as someone realized she wasn't German they switched to english.
I was raised with and speak Dutch, but my English is probably just as good and i use it extensively for work and consume most media in English. Additionally I speak some German and can read and understand it well. My French is very very basic (though i can still read it). I learned some ancient greek and Latin in high school as well and all that actually helps a lot with recognizing some words in some of the other languages in europe.
born in slovakia - thus i understand czech as well without any issues (but i don't really speak czech; they anyway understand slovak good enough)... learnt english and german in school, using english basically daily since i started working (i work for a german multinational corporation)... and now i live in germany (still working for the same german corporation, they have transfered me to germany) and speak german as well... basically i speak 3 languages, understand 4 (understand here means that i can read books/newspapers and watch videos/movies in these languages without any issues) and no, i don't watch your videos to learn english - i watch them, because they are interesting, well researched and i always learn something new from your videos - just not english per se :)
In linguistics, bi- or multilingualism is defined by the languages that are aquired rather than learned or teached. A "second/third/n-th language" is one you get automatically by contact with native speakers (like parents, neighbors, friends, kindergardeners) during childhood, while languages you _actively_ learn are considered "foreign languages". In that regard, the Cencus Bureau's definition of multilingualism is actually a bit closer to the academic definition than simply counting what language you are able to understand and/or communicate with.
@@TypeAshton I work as a language service provider and no one in my field considers themselves bilingual when they haven't aquired the language on native or near-native level as a child. I would never call myself multilingual although I speak several languages.
Native German. Learned English in school and from American relatives. My wife is half French, learned bits n pieces of French in school as well. Also I now got relatives in France, so that's a no brainer to just be able to speak it. I like the positive tone of your videos, find it interesting to see, how your life in Germany goes, what you experience and how you feel as Americans. The YT algorithm seems to understand quite well, which languages I understand in order to provide refommendations; which I also find kinda interesting. Keep up the good work.
First, congrats on your newborn! 🎉 Second, I speak quite a few languages: my native Slovak, and - as born and raised in Czechoslovakia before it split - Czech as well (not only understand, but also speak and write on C2 level). My third language is Polish, as I grew up on the Polish border, where I am somewhere on C1 level. And I'd say I am around C1 in English, too, though I don't have any official exam. Where I do have an exam and a certificate is German, for the B2 level, which I needed for my Swiss permanent residence permit. Speaking of Switzerland, I understand Swiss German, particularly Basel/Baselbieterdütsch quite well now, but don't dare to speak it (to not endanger my neighbors with death from laughing 😂). And there is a bunch of languages I speak on a touristy level (to greet people, ask/thank for something, order in a restaurant, ask for directions,...), in particular Russian (which I learnt in primary school, as it was mandatory at my time), French (which is an obvious choice, living in the Dreiländerecke), and - as as long time karate practicioner - Japanese (though I haven't been to Japan yet).
similar situation here ... born Slovak, I can use Czech to a decent degree, learned German and English. I can understand most German dialects and also quite a bit of Polish since it is a similar language to Slovak/Czech. It is the situation with small countries/nations that they have to learn the languages of their neighbors to function properly :-) But that was mentioned in the video. If you are an American from the middle of the country, you'll most likely never meet a person that does not speak English.
Not gonna lie. This hits close to home because more than almost anything, I try so hard not so much to not have an American accent, but to speak well out of respect.
Hope all is going well with the newest black forest family member and everyone is getting enough rest and bonding time!! In the Netherlands the benefits of speaking a second language is well understood and if im not mistaken both Dutch and English are mandatory with French and German optional. Also they start at a much younger age then when i was in school (many many moons ago 😂) granted kids nowadays are way more exposed to other languages then we ever where (like through music etc).
Dutch and at least one modern foreign language are mandatory, the latter usually defaults to English, but French, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese and Arabic are also allowed. There may be even more allowed languages, but it is very rare to encounter those at school in the Netherlands.
Hej , I am from Québec and now live in Danmark . My first language is of course French , I had to learn English at school but got really fluent when I went to an English speaking university.. Later after two years of teaching , I went back to university to do a bachelor in Spanish. My last sessions was in Salamanca ( Spain ) and I got fluent there. Before leaving Europe and go back to Canada , I went to Murnau (Bayern ) and took 5 months of German in the Goethe institut,. I am still speaking German pretty good even after more than 35 years.. From there I came to Danmark and got Married ,I speak Danish as a native with a little accent. With the help of my danish , I can easily read Swedish and Norvegian and understand the most of what people say but , I have never tried to speak those languages. living in Danmark and having lots of vacation I travelled to Italy 5 - 6 times and now speaks Italian easily but still makes a few mistakes and I am missing some vocabulary. I also went twice to Portugal ( 3 months in all ) , when I am there I only speak Portuguese with the people and get by quite easily . To learn languages is like everything else , you have to want to learn , use a lot of time and dedication and practice every time you have the opportunity..
Great video as usual! Being from India and now lived Germany and Switzerland, I was already tetralingual, if that’s a word i.e. 4 languages (English, Hindi, Bangla, Odia) and now German. Yes! English is our native language as well 😂 In India it is actually expected to know more than one language. It’s funny ‘cause here in Europe people are impressed by that but Indians are not usually impressed 😂 Such an interesting phenomenon.
I am Dutch, and speak English as a second language. I also learned German and French at school, and at work I deal with a lot of Portugese truck-drivers, so I started learning Portugese as well. It's fun to learn new skills, but it's a must for me to have the language playground, to test my skills on native-speakers of that language, otherwise I won't know if I learned correctly.
Frisian is not german. It is not hard to measure if a people or person is bilanguage or understand a language. You measure how well a person understand the words and vocabulary. Sweden didn't have a official language since it was was just viewed that we speak swedish and it wasn't viewed necessary, until 1 july 2009. Swedish was the language was out of as we say of hävd/Usucaption. The Louisiana Creole or French was really mistread in the USA the same with swedish speakers.
Youl talk about how large the hispanic is in USA. But you call yourself american bet say that your an estor is from germany are you really a american. And not all american are not amercan bet french dusch. And can't be a one part something.
I was born and raised in the south of Moldova in the region called Gagauzia. I speak Gagauz (native), Russian (second native), English (not fluent, but confident intermediate level, i work in IT so English is indeed one of my working languages), some Romanian (official language in Republic of Moldova), some Turkish (because i studied in Turkish liceum and because Gagauz is similar to Turkish (and other Turkic languages)) and now i am learning German, since i moved on to München :) Gagauzia is a monoethnic region, where mostly live Gagauzians. Majority (majority but not all) of us speak Gagauz at home as a first language. Some Gagauz people speak Russian as a first language, though they still know Gagauz at some level. Russian is one of the official languages in Gagauz autonomy (together with Gagauz and Romanian/Moldavian). Russian is a language of municipal authorities, education, local TV and press, most books i've red in my live are Russian, most movies we, Gagauzians, watch in Russian. Linguists would call Gagauzian vernacular/colloquial/spoken while Russian official/high/written/prestigious. And there is a tendency to prefer Russian instead of Gagauz as a first language; even in our family for me and my older brother Gagauz was native and first language, whereas for my younger brother and sister their native and first language is Russian, though they also know Gagauz. Thank your for your video! With all the details, facts and numbers, as i like. I wish you and your family all the best! :)
Languages open doors that you otherwise could not enter. I would have never be able to work in Canada if i would not have improved my English skills or could not even follow your Videos. Also i think that learning another language also means respecting another culture on a Personal level. Also here in Germany we love to See that people at least try it out. Language and Music are the corner Stones of Personal Interaktion. On the other Hand i think it is a life long process until auf Grab all the fine nuances a language has to express yourself in it❤
I wish there was greater foreign language opportunities both in and out of the classroom in the US. I grew up in a VERY rural part of the US and German wasn't even offered to us as an option (not enough students or teachers to make a class useful). I didn't take my first German class until my late 20s and my brain already felt like a dried sponge.
@@TypeAshton But living in a country where you need the language is a great help and speaking it casually 'all the time' is much more helpful than class learning only.
@@TypeAshton The other thing is: Why would you possibly learn a foreign language in the rural USA? There is basically no need for that, unless you want to leave (for the great great outside world)...🤷♂
@@TypeAshton That was the case before Internet. Nowadays it's easy to take private lessons with a native speaker anywhere in the world, no matter where you live. It's just a matter of dedication and available time.
At school, I learnt English, Latin and French - later on, I had a boyfriend from Latin America and decided to learn Spanish. When I was a small girl, my family went on holiday to Italy, where I got to know an Italian girl my age and we kept the connection, thus I have a passing understanding of Italian (of course facilitated by Latin, French and Spanish. The reason I watch your channel is I find the outsider's view on my country interesting - and I very much appreciate the well researched content. So please keep going!
Defining "bilingual" as "speaking a non-English language at home" isn't just misleading, it's as wrong as it gets. It doesn't even include the most fundamental requirement of knowing more than one language. By that definition a Mexican immigrant who speaks exactly one language, Spanish, is counted as "bilingual". But of course only a cynic would accuse the US government of attempting to sell the results of uncontrolled mass migration as an improvement in national education. After all, governments never lie.
I am German by birth and came to Canada as at the age of 13. I had taken minimal English classes in school in Germany, but learned Canadian English growing up. We continued to speak Pfalzisch or Plattdeutsch at home, but I heard and read German books in Hochdeutsch. Although I lost complete fluency due to German magazines adopting a lot of English terms and tech words, I continue to be "fluent" in German, even though the German speaking part of my family has now passed away. I love your show, because my youngest so;n and I would love to go to live in Germany or Europe in general. You have inspired his interest in learning about European culture and their social and economical ideals. Thank you, Vielen Dank.
I can’t really relate to the idea of feeling privilege because everybody would address me in my first language. I’ve always enjoyed listening to, and trying to speak, foreign languages. When I travel, I’ll prefer going abroad for this very reason. I will prefer going to countries where I do speak and understand the language, because the feeling of immersion is so good. But I also enjoy the Internet because it enables me to practice my foreign languages, and I will use at least two of them every day. The benefits of multilingualism go far beyond practical application, and I’m sorry for people who only see the utilitarian perspective. Practicing multiple languages is good for your brain, and getting used to making extra efforts to understand another human being certainly has psychological benefits as well. There is a quote attributed to Charlemagne that to possess another language is to possess another soul, and I would subscribe to that. When I started working for a company where most of the work got done in French, for a few months it felt like someone else was doing the work for me - no kidding. The extra effort that I had to make was more than compensated by learning new expressions and vocabulary every day.
the reason im watching your channel: i do have alot of friends in america, and also in the usa. it is fascinating for me to see how you approach and think about things we have, i do have the feeling i get a deeper understanding of what makes my american and us friends tick.
There is an American journalist named Erik Kirschbaum who is on German TV quite a bit. He has been living in Germany since the late 80s but still speaks German with a heavy American accent, as if he were chewing gum while speaking. I'm like, dude, what's up with that?! When I moved to the U.S. as a non-native English speaker, my accent was largely gone after a year or so.
As always a very informative video. But it is not yet certain that english will remain the lingua franca. E.g. in African countries that speak French, the population is increasing and could displace English as the most spoken language on the African continent.
English and Russian. Watch your channel because of the fascination of your journey. The fact that you fully assemilated into the German culture and persevered through the difficulties of German, continues to inspire me to keep learning Russian.
I am Brazilian, so, my first language is Portuguese. Then, I learned English as a child, French, as an adolescent, and Spanish and Italian, as an adult. I speak these languages fluently, but my French and Italian are rusty since I don't use them often. Finally, I have been trying to learn Korean. It's been 3 years and I can barely say I am at an intermediate level. By the way, I have been living in the US for 22 years, so, I do not see your content to improve my English, but, because I like to see how people live in other countries, and you make wonderful videos.
I'm 78. I took German for 3 years in American High School in the early 60's. I took 2 more years in college. In all that time I never met a German speaking person other than 3 teachers. No internet, so I slowly lost what German I had learned. I might add the city I live in sent a busload of students - 4 high schools' worth - to a competition in a nearby university. I got the highest score for my city, so I wasn't bad at learning. So, where I live in Illinois is a longer trip to the next closest state, Indiana than it is from Berlin to Poland. Face it, America is big. You could fit most of Europe in the Dakotas. They compare Germany to the size of Texas. So it isn't Americans' fault they don't speak multiple languages. We just don't have the opportunity Europeans have.
My native language is Dutch, I speak English fluently, I’m near fluent in German, Danish and Swedish and can manage in French, Italian and Spanish. Let’s say I just love languages :)
I am Danish, so I speak Danish, English, a little German & i understand Norwegian & Swedish. I read Danish, English, Swedish, Norwegian & a little German. Most norwegian & Swedish people that a have ever met, understand me when I speak Danish. My main reason for following your channel is that your channel is VERRY informative about the diffrence between the US & the EU, & GERMANY in general. The more i can get to know about my neighbors to the south the better. SIDE NOTE. : IF you speak the local dialect of SOUTH JUTLAND (sønderjysk), & you meet someone from SLEISWIEG (the northern most part of Germany), who also speaks his/her local dialect, you will be able to understand one another, whiteout speaking German. Because you have a common local dialect. A bonus that i don't need, but never the less derive from following your channel is that a am maintaining my level of understanding of the English language. In short the Black Forrest Family, is keeping me relatively well informed about a lot of diffrent subjects. I also believe that little Jack is a lot better of living in Germany, whit a set of parents, who are happy working in jobs they love, in an employment market, that affords you the time & other resources, you need to be good parents. + when Jack is old enough to do so, he will be attending school whiteout getting shot for the trouble of doing so. In Jacks future is also dual EU/US citizenship. I have met a lot of people that would sell VITAL parts of their own ANATOMY to be in Jacks position. Thanks for the great content. I am going to keep watching.
I was born to a family of German, English and Polish descent, learning French and Castilian (aka Spanish) later in school with an interest in (at least trying) to understand and speak different languages aswell. To the Franco-German Friendship Treaty I would also like to point out that some school even allow not only to make the Abitur but also the Baccalauréat which is its French equivalent which requires having subjects that are tought in both German and French (in my case History and Politics & Economics).
A couple of years ago I was in North Carolina for 9 month to work there. An American colleague told me a joke: What do you call people who speak 3 languages? --> trilingual What do you call people who speak 2 languages? --> bilingual What do you call people who speak 1 language? --> Americans
American from Georgia. Left the USA in 1990 and have never been back (not even to visit). I lived in Germany for 8 yrs as a US soldier, but took advantage of University of Maryland courses on the American installations where I was stationed. These were full, language from the basic grammar up courses, lots of verb conjugations, vocabulary memorisation etc. The first grounding course in this overall German study was 4 days a week, everyday after work for 90 mins. After that course, it was usually 2 times weekly but 2 hours. The teacher was a German who lived locally. So, not only did we learn the language in a university speed course with full scope of grammar, we learned from a native who spoke with the local accent. PLUS, after the class was over, I could go out into the local environment and begin using what I had learned immediately. And I DID. I spoke German every chance I got. I studied vocabulary rigorously daily, going over entire pages of new words. I paid special attention to gaining new verbs, because this allowed me to say a wider variety of things. And when I got to the more complex levels of German sentence structure- like when the verb order gets split, or when a subordinate clause's word order gets reversed- I would spend hours saying these phrases and sentences out loud over and over, so they would come naturally when I had to do it in a real conversation. Anyway, I wound up marrying a German woman who was a medical student, and after 8 years of living in Germany, I could go to German cinema and watch a film, read German novels, magazines, watch German television and converse in about any situation with no problems (technical situations where I simply didn't know the words for things that I rarely encountered would still trip me up sometimes). We eventually moved to Scotland and I've been here for 25 years now and as we're divorced, I rarely get the opportunity to speak German any more. I do dream in it, from time to time, and I don't consider the time and effort in learning and studying German to have been wasted. I learned a great deal about my own language from learning a second one, and speaking and understanding German vastly improved my experience of living there, and I look back on that time now with great fondness and nostalgia. I also studied Spanish for a couple of years here in Edinburgh. And although I never put in the all out effort with Spanish as I did with German, I did still take local university courses that taught the language the same way: from the basic grammar up, and I did put quite a bit of effort into amassing a respectable vocabulary. At the height of my Spanish studies, I was reading Spanish novels written for teens, able to follow the plot of Pedro Almodovar films ;-) and I was ordering television series in Spanish and watching them. Plus, it helps to be able to take a relatively cheap holiday down to Spain and put the language to use. Every now and again, I run into Spanish tourists in the Edinburgh city centre who are quite clearly lost, and I can help them out and give them directions in Spanish, and although this is still a small pay-off for the effort of learning the language, it is still satisfying to be able to do so. I enjoy seeing their faces light up when they realise they've run into someone who can communicate with them in their own tongue. And that's what learning language is all about, reaching out to others and not demanding that all communication be done on your own terms. We might usually speak a common official language, but I feel like if others know that you've taken the effort to learn about their language and culture, this makes for a deeper understanding and trust between people.
Hey Ashton. Informative Video as usual. To answer your question at the end. I am a native German but I like the English language a lot. I consume a lot of English media just to maintain my listening comprehention. I used to be in a relationship with a guy from North Carolina and tipped my toe into the American culture back than, liked it and miss it now. Following you guys is part of my way to not forget.
First, congrats on your newborn! 🎉 I learned english in school, but using that skill a lot it get lost over the years. The reason why i watch and more importantly understand videos like this here today is i decided years ago to stay away from german TV and watch most stuff i like online/streaming in english. At first with german subtitles, but after a while i turned them off. Of course listing is not the same as speaking a language, but a few years ago a had the chance to test my english with a guy from australia and he was pretty impressed by my english skills and the desent conversation we had that day. so, yes beside online classes to learn english, it will took it liitle longer, but watching your every day tv shows in english will help to improve your skills.
Native German, started English in the 5th grade, French in the 7th grade and Spanish in High-School. Later in some evening-class Italian at the "Volkshochschule" to prepare for a six month sabbatical in Italy. I love learning other languages. And most important, congratulations and all the best for your growing family❤
I'm a Spaniard born in the German part of Switzerland, to immigrant parents who spent their first couple of years in the French part of Switzerland and were in close contact with their Italian neighbors throughout their years in Switzerland. So I have both Spanish and German as mother tongues, French was spoken once a week at home (and studied in school); Italian was spoken with a large portion of neighbors, family friends and some classmates. I started learning English at age 14 in school and that lead me to now almost exclusively using English for entertainment (books, Series, movies).
Argentinian here, obviously native Spanish speaker and would say bilingual in English which you start learning early at elementary schools here as mandatory, although more language oriented schools have the option of French, Portuguese and lately also native languages like Guaraní and Quechua. Always found weird Portuguese wasn't mandatory here seeing Brazil is our biggest and closest neighbor so I'm it teaching myself nowadays. Your incredibly in depth videos about life in Germany is what I love most about this channel!
I am German, employed in a French company where the official language for communication with colleagues is English. I came to this channel because I want to practice the English language. You make it easy for me because you speak very clearly. Thanks very much! I recently saw a video in which an English-speaking man from India with a severe speech impediment (with the letter S) explained something. That was tough! But the English language is already spreading in German. There are so many English words that we naturally incorporate into our German sentences. "Cool", isn't it? Sometimes there are English terms here that are just made up. Which non-German already knows what a "Handy" is? It only sounds english. The term for a mobile phone, invented by a German marketing department. In all other countries we have to explain what we actually mean by that. The sentence formation itself also changes. Example: "Das macht Sinn" for "That makes sense.". This is now used in literal translation, although that is actually wrong. It should be "Das ergibt Sinn," but hardly anyone here knows that anymore. In France, attempts are made to keep their own language "pure". But honestly - they might delay it, but not prevent it.
A matter of opinion is just not a question of time, in which so-called world languages do not last forever. Latin is also extinct and was practically the world language in Europe in the past
I grew up with both German and French as my native languages. Then in school I learned English (9 years), Latin (4 years), ancient Greek (5 years) and Russian (2 years). Later, I taught myself and/or took classes in several other languages. I now consider myself more of less fluent in Polish and Spanish, but i also have some "survival knowledge" in a bunch of other languages like Italian, Finnish, Estonian, Czech, Croatian, Chinese etc, I never watched TH-cam videos with the explicit intention to learn English, but they definitely helped me in keeping up and refreshing my English.
Ashton, we missed you last week. I figured you must have delivered. Herzliche Glückwunsch zu dir und Jonathan. Auch Jack. Außerdem Glücklichen Muttertag! (I don’t know the proper expression)
Great video 😊 As a Norwegian I have studied English in school since the age of 10 (since 1994 Norwegian kids have English as a compulsory subject from the age of 6, 1st grade) but I did start learning on my own before I was 10 because I’ve always been a bit of a language buff 😊 I ended up studying English at uni and now teach it in high school 🤓 So I watch your videos not to learn but because I enjoy many of the topics you address (genealogy, city planning, languages). As for other languages, I did two years of French in middle school (only remember bits of it), three years of German in high school (can read and understand about 90% of spoken, but do not speak it because grammar), started learning Spanish at 35 (I’m 46 now and teach Spanish as well) and started learning Italian at 42 (am totally in ❤ with it, and am probably at about a B1. I take at least two online conversation lessons a week to keep progressing) So, four and a half languages I would say 😊 Also, you are never to old to learn a new language!
I'm German and over the course of my school education, I learned English, French and Latin. Yet I'm not very well versed in the latter two due to lack of practice, whereas English has been a constant companion in my life. An important factor with that is also media consumption. Naturally we watch a lot of American (and British) Movies and TV shows, so we are familiar with these foreign cultures from a young age and often like to learn more about them. Then there is pop music, computer games and of course the internet. German kids sure have a high motivation to learn English and teachers have all the tools to make it interesting. For example at my school it was customary for substitute class that the teacher would simply bring an undubbed movie for us to watch.
today i noticed the first time that the " Black Forest Family " has changed and it has split , and you Ashton have your own "show"and i understand why. Your own contribution is very academic and i think you are doing a great job collecting a lot of information first before going "on air "I am always enthusiastic seeing your point of view on all sorts of topics. keep on digging !!!
My parents are Chinese so I learned Mandarin Chinese. I was Born in Germany and started learning German in kindergarten. I started learning English in 3 grade and French in 5 grade
I’m from the US…took Spanish and German for 3 years in high school. Joined the US Army to be a Spanish linguist and was sent to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey CA. A few years later married an Ecuadorian army sent me back to school to learn Indonesian; then a few years later to learn French. I still speak Spanish fluently, my French is a bit rusty, but can read and understand fairly well, for Indonesian, can still read a bit, but can barely speak/understand it when spoken.
I am 67 years old and an American. I studied French starting in the 8th grade through 11th grade. When I was in 10th grade, my high school French teacher organized a trip to France, which I went on. Loved the experience. My French accent improved significantly as a result. I still study it, but am not fluent. I wish schools would start foreign language study in elementary school instead of high school for middle school.
I grew up bilingual, English and German. My husband is English, so he only speaks English, and our baby boys will hopefully speak both languages well too one day. We will move to Germany (Geldern, bordering the Netherlands) next year after I complete my PhD and I can’t wait to watch my poor husband learn German then. Especially “der, die, das”. It’s so mean that there is no rule to the articles and they influence so many other words connected to them. Both your and our little boys will be so good in both languages one day 🤗🙌🏻🫶🏻
Being Russian, who lived in the US, Germany and now in Switzerland, I started to learn English at the age of 10. Learning German was an obligation when I moved with my ex to Deutschland. They make you to take Itegrazionskurs and pass a test in order to give you an Aufenthaltsbewilligung. When I moved to Switzerland after I have faced the same thing with French, because I lived in Wallis both French and German canton, but in a mostly French part so even I had my German test they made me to take a French test as well to give me my permis de sejours. So I had no choice. Now I am finishing my study in Lugano, in Ticino which is an Italian speaking canton, and it is completely in Italian. So in the end of the day I speak 5 languages: Russian, English, German, French and Italian. Not perfect, but fluent enough to communicate with people, feeling myself comfortable and work which is the most important. And of course I keep on learning all of them. I can say that learning every next language gets a bit easier, because your brain understands the process and the things that are important at the beginning. The most funny thing is to see how the words distort and moreover analyzing their origins helps to learn vocabulary. I can definitely admit that the complex grammar of my mother tongue helps me as well, so I have no issues with cases for example. However to be honest the environment is among the most crucial factors. And living in Switzerland in my case is a great opportunity to practice all my languages almost on a daily basis.
Fantastic video! English native speaker, learned German and French in school but retain only a tourist-level proficiency, and Thai at home with my husband.
Hello, I'm English but I've lived in five countries. With varying levels of fluency I speak English, French, Danish, Italian and Portuguese.I've managed to live in both Switzerland and Germany with very limited German because I work in international finance. I can also understand/read pretty well related languages like Norwegian, Dutch, Spanish, etc. but definitely not attempt to speak them. Next on my list is Swahili, and possibly Arabic, although that's more of a challenge because of the alphabet. I'm not a natural linguist, basically a techie, but if you put in the time it comes to you. At home I mostly speak English, Danish and French because the cats don't care.
I'm German and those are the languages I speak: German (native speaker) English Basic French Super basic Spanish Polish (just started learning it after reconnecting with the Polish side of my family) And I understand a lot of Lauenburger Platt.
i am from Sweden so I speak Swedish and have learnt English, German and French in school. I like your channel because you are from the US living in Germany and i like to follow your life in Germany.
Hello! South African here! Mother-tongue English-speaker. I also speak Afrikaans well, as well as not-very-good Xitsonga, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Siswati, isiNdebele, German, Italian, Portuguese, Nederlands, and French. I can also speak, read and write Latin and read and write Koine Greek, although I don’t get the chance to speak to many Ancient Romans or Greeks. I think growing up in a multilingual country makes learning additional languages easier because you are exposed to sounds which are not normally heard in your mother tongue; for example, the ‘click’ sounds of the Southern Bantu Languages. I could recognise and make these sounds long before I formally learnt the languages. And much of my German was picked up from playing with my German-speaking friends when I was in kindergarten.
I recommend watching "Sesamstraße" and "Die Sendung mit der Maus" with your son (soon sons) and any other TV Programs that the kids watch. I learned a huge amount when I watched these and others with my son when he was at that age.
When I first arrived here, and after my morning German lessons at University, I spent many an afternoon watching children's programmes. Also, took out children's books from the library and spent most weekends with my husband's nieces and nephews.
@@conniebruckner8190 Yes! I also read a lot of children's books. They're great for learning and the good ones are written with adults as much in mind as with children in mind. After all, if adults are reading to kids, the adults have to enjoy it too. :-) Back then, I wrote translations of words in the page (not in library books), and I saw the number of words decrease with the number of pages! That alone was encouraging! One of the books was "Eine Woche Voller Samstage", and the sequels were also great. One thing that was so fun about it was how much it made fun of "typical German" (and many other) things. I later read that book and the sequels to my son, and when he learned to read, he read them repeatedly himself.
@TheBlackForestFamily Herzlichen Glückwunsch zur Geburt eures Sohnes! Ich wünsche euch allen angemessene Ruhe (ich weiß, dass es nicht nur Ruhe sein soll ;-) ) und viel Freude.
I'm from Belgium and I'm bilingual, flemish and french. My dad is flemish, my mom walloon, so I grew up with both languages from birth. When it comes to english I started watching the BBC at a very young age, and I would also translate song lyrics with my dictionary (I was born in 1972, so no internet yet growing up) because I wanted to know what they meant. By the time I had English in school at 12 (we started french when I was 9) I could understand most english words, and speak and write it pretty well. Then at 14 we got German but I could already speak German quite well at that point because a few years after my grandpa died, my grandma married a german guy when I was 12. I'm not as fluent in German anymore, in fact speaking is quite hard now because I never speak it anymore (both my grandma and 2nd husband have died years ago) but I can still understand most of it. You really forget a language if you don't use it. Even though french was a natural for me to speak as flemish, because I never speak it anymore after my mom died, the times I have to speak french I really have to search for my words. I still understand it as well as flemish. I'm pretty sure if I spoke it regularly again it would all come back to me.
Hey there! We've revamped our Language Sprint rewards and are excited to share the news! No more 100% cashback, but get ready for something even better: more free classes to celebrate your achievements! 🌟
Complete the regular Sprint, attend 30 classes in 2 months, and score 40 free lessons as your reward. Opt for the Super Sprint, complete 60 classes, and unlock 75 free lessons! 🥇🏆
Plus, don't forget: your language skills will soar, and you’ll learn for free even after the challenge ends! 🚀
Ready to level up your language journey? Let's go! 🎉
isn't this an issue in England/UK also ie where they speak only one language vs Continental Europe ?
2:33 Plattdeutsch is a separate language while Friesisch is "just" a dialect. The former i learned via my grand parents so although i can't really speak it and i only know our local dialect of it (a mix of Bremen's and Hamburg's) i can understand it
17:30 well, in the beginning when you only know so much vocabulary it is not really feasible to speak that language full time. for me it was 4 years of french at school and we spoke french most of the time only in the last 2 years due to finally knowing enough of the language. similar with english which i had in school for 11 years but it only got better when i was forced to use it at work or through the internet
Ukranian, Russian, German, Englisch. I have little practice speaking English, but I can understand it without subtitles. I learn it from your TH-cam channel and can compare life in the USA and Germany
I am 62 and American but took 3 years of German in high school and have continued to try and become fluent ever since. There is little opportunity to speak German in America but I have a strong interest in German and European railroads and Model Trains. Reading train books and magazines in German and ordering models from German hobby shops has helped me learn more German. I have also traveled to Germany six times for vacations and practice German each time. My son who is 17 is going to German language school in Freiburg this summer! He wants to be an engineer and possibly work for a German company.
Ah that is really cool!! I hope you son enjoys his time in Freiburg. We LOVE this city!
Funny. I'm a 70 years old German with a "strong interest" in American railroads ( besides European, German and the rest of the world railroads ). "Reading train books and magazines" ( trains) from the US and playing with trains from America and all over the world with Train Simulator and Open Rails. Greetings from Germany.
@@joachimniebling5034
Thanks for your comment. I am also in American railroads and models. I model the 1930 US time period with steam and electric locomotives and I model German Epoch III. We travel to Europe and Germany to go to railroad museums and ride on steam lines and excursions. We loved the Harzbahn and an excursion with the Eisenbahn Museum in Dresden. The Eurail pass works great for us and we go everywhere by train. We also love to get a compartment in a Schlafwagen for overnight trips. Europe has such a wonderful rail system. The USA is far bigger with long distances but our Amtrak system still should be better than it is. There are some great tourist railroads in the USA. If you haven’t been on the D&RGW in Colorado or the Cumbres and Toltec in New Mexico those are two of the best steam lines. Also Alaska RR in Alaska is very scenic.
Have you been in the Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg? Did you like it? (I do!)
@@bettinaknuelle9981 Yes I have been there and loved it. I have also been to railroad museums all over Germany.
Let me tell you a true story which is only possible in Flanders. A few years ago on a story telling event they had 4 story tellers. But each of them told in his own language: Dutch, French, English and German. The room was packed with hundreds of listeners, which all knew it and understood the 4 languages. That gave it a very special taste.
Was knowing these languages a requirement to go to the event? Because, yes you learn these languages in school somewhat, but I don't think most Flemish people speak German and French enough to follow a story. I've met some young Flemish people and they said they didn't really speak French at all.
I can see something similar happening theoretically in Switzerland, with German, French, Italian and Romansch.
But I don't think people in a given region would know all four of these languages.
Other than that, I can't imagine many places in Europe this would work.
But other continents experience similar events frequently, especially Africa and Asia.
@@Anonymous-sb9rr They don't like French, but they at least understand it. Exposure is ubiquitous. Flamish is a dialect of Dutch which is pretty close to German.
@@sertaki Nobody understands Rumantsch. They speak German among themselves when they come from differen valleys, because the different variations of it are not mutually understandable. English is by now the language of exchange between the different linguistic groups. Ticinesi are usually quite fluent in German and to some extent in French by approximation. Among many foreigner, Spanish, Italians, Portuguese and even some Slavs, Italian is a lingua franca in the working class, still common on construction sites.
@@HelmutQ I think they only have a limited amount of exposure to French. Dutch and German are not mutually intelligible, they're not as close as a lot people think. It's not like Spanish and Italian, those are really close. But they are more similar than Dutch and English.
Mother tongue German, then learned English from 5th grade, French from 7th grade. But due to lack of practice the French almost completely vanished. And lastly Swahili which I need because I live in rural Tanzania.
I feel uncomfortable visiting a foreign country and not at least try to know a few words. To me it's a sign of respect as well.
I couldn't agree more on the respect. Also, especially with rarer languages, I find it to be a huge door opener and conversation starter. Also, as soon as you travel outside of bigger cities and touristic areas, fewer if any people tend to know English. And even if they do, it's important to keep in mind that people may know English because the country used to be a colony. So the reception they give to someone who tries to speak their native tongue may be more positive because of that as well.
Thanks for raising the respect issue: I'd never visit a country without being able to say at least the very very basics (hello, thank you, excuse me, good bye).
@@ElinT13 A wise lady told me to learn those basic words you mentioned, how to count to ten, but also how to say " what do you call this" in the local language.
Yes! The first thing I learn in a new language is how to say Thank you, then please, then hello and goodbye, and only then, basic travel phrases. Consequently, I know how to say "thank you“ in many languages!😂
Oh yes. i got the same a language-history as you, but it's really "use it or lose it". And i don't think I learned all that much in school. Although I was a good student. Some vocabulary, grammar rules... but even after 9 years, i wouldn't have been able to survive in the wilderness of the UK much better than a tourist. Then comes University, and for the first time ever i had to translate a text from German into English. i learned so much in such a short time!
As a native Norwegian speaker, I began my journey with English at the age of 10 or 11. However, I don't view your content to enhance my English skills. I am drawn to your channel because of the exceptional quality of your well-researched content. It's both informative and factual, which is the sole reason for my viewership.
I feel the same way about the well researched and informative facts provided by the channel.
I am not Norwegian.
Same for me as a German.
I'm German native who started English at the age of 10. I learned French for 5 years until 2008 but didn't really use it since. Now I'm learning Spanish since half a year at the age of 31 ... we'll see where that ends up :D
And yes here ist anathor native German who listen two your Chanel because of your contend. About my language skills, Sure First of all German and in Grade 5 I had to start with English, but when my Grandmother and my mother started to speak to each other, I allthogh piked Up a View Dutch words. In 8th Grade I started with french and after my First vacation in Italy I Beginn with Italien. But if it comes to the Level of fluency I would only consider German and English as funktional. The other languages are at best to survive a Restaurant visit.
17:50 In fact, the Abitur, which is the only graduation that allows to attend any German university, requires to have taken 2 foreign languages.
In my case it was Latin.
i started with french (grade 5-11), then english (grade 7-13), and when there was a choice between another language and _"Darstellende Geometrie"_ i chose latin (grade 9-11) to get the _"Kleines Latinum"._ Of course i never spoke latin (and rarely french), but once having known french and latin (and frequent holidays in italy, although on a "german campsite" :-) enabled me to communicate in basic italian (restaurants, hotels, shopping :-) and even once have a tedious but successfull basic conversation with a monolingual spaniard without ever really having learned any of those latter two.
The more languages you know, the easier it is to at least somewhat learn or understand other similar (for me: south/west or north/west european) languages. too bad that because of politics and their travel limitations to eastern europe, all those languages were completely foreign to me during the first half of my life, and then learning them from scratch (never being exposed to them or even having heard them) at a higher age wouldn't have been easy enough without a useful goal (and having become "too lazy" to attempt learning more completely different languages "just for fun").
Abitur ist nicht die einzige Möglichkeit eine Zugangsberechtigung zu deutschen Hochschulen zu erlangen. Zugegebenermaßen eher ungewöhnlich, aber ganz sicher nicht unmöglich. Lg
Latein nur von der 6-9 gemacht. Da hat man alles wieder vergessen:D und trotzdem Abitur
in Baden Württemberg you can have a technical Abitur without a 2nd language and go to University - like me 🙂
I was born in Kazakhstan in a German family. This means we were speaking German at home and Russian outside. In 1988 I came to Germany, where I learned English and French at school. I continued to use English, but French I know only passively. As an adult, I spend a little bit more than a year living in Romania, where I learned to Romanian. I still use it. Although my level is probably not higher than A2. Now I have married an Afghan husband, and therefore I am learning Farsi. Learning languages is fun. It opens for you a new world of understanding and feeling about things.
I’m watching your videos because it is interesting to see my own culture from the perspective of a foreigner. I watch a lot of channels with intercultural content
I don't know if I missed it in this video, but learning English at German schools is not a choice. Everybody has to learn English.
I am 53 years old and I startet with English at the age of 10 (in Western Germany). Today kids start earlier with English.
My native language is German and I understand ostfriesisches Plattdeutsch. Me and my sister shouldn't learn to speak it even so our entire family spoke it. So we were a kind of bilingual at home. My English increased a lot through videos like yours (THANK YOU ❤), series and movies, English music and reading. But I still don't think as a fluent English speaker of myself, even so my speaking improved in the last years.
moin moin _p
I’m going to be 60 in a couple months and my ex wife and I met in 1985. She’s two years older than me and German. Her English was not very good but today her American English is almost perfect. We struggled communicating for a while but she learned fast.
Being "not fluent" is fine. As an American who learned German, my German is all but gone now... You can read, speak and write - that is excellent.
However, I know quite a few people in Germany who don't remember their school English if they are young enough to have had it required. So, if you do not travel to English speaking countries, and don't use it, it is not necessarily a working language.
I have never been to an English speaking country and I didn't really use my school English for over 20 years. But I had a basis to build upon - which I learned at school. Learning languages works different for everybody and of course there are a lot of people who don't remember much of their school lessons - me included. But it makes a difference if you had to learn it at school or not.
as a spaniard living in Germany married to my italian wife, i´m fluent in all this 3 languages; + to some degree, also fluent in english....to speak 3 or 4 languages is very common for us europeans !
As Southtyrolean with a strong bavarian-austrian dialect I learned standard German in school, after second grade Italian (because Southtyrol is a part of Italy). I had Latin and ancient Greek later what helps to understand written Latin-based languages. I started learning english during Covid, mostly to watch american TV shows in original - so I watch your videos to train my listening skills.
Americans can’t even speak or write in English, it irritates me to read American “english” and the way they murder the English language when they speak.
All names in big letters... English, Bavarian, Austrian, American.... otherwise your English is very good
@@kralikkral5560 thank you very much
> Southtyrolean
Südösterreicher. ;)
@@Kleberei oder Norditaliener
One thing that bothers me is that Americans often don't even make any effort with other languages. Not speaking a language is one, but not even trying to pronounce some simple words is quite another. This happens with videogame titles for example, like Einhänder, Herzog Zwei or God of War: Ragnarök.
My native language is Finnish. Additionally, I speak English and Swedish fluently. I can also speak some Estonian and Spanish, but I'm definitely not fluent. I have also studied some German, Italian and French... but only remember some words and phrases 😅 I watch your channel to learn from two foreign cultures at the same time. German culture is of course quite similar to Finnish culture, but getting to see things from an American perspective is really interesting.
Republik Finnland ... WHY KING?
@@maikotter9945
It was a very short period:
When the legal government, a.k.a. the whites or the butchers, depending on one's point of view, had won the civil war in 1918 (with decisive German help) and Germany had dictated a harsh peace to Russia at Brest-Litovsk, it was a popular idea among the White victors to create a Finnish king out of a German prince .
When, just months later, Germany had accepted the harsh Treaty of Versailles, the very same White victors of Finland's civil war realized they would rather be more like the French and the Americans and have elected presidents instead of hereditary kings.
Being German, I of course speak German at home. I have always had an interest in and a knack for learning other languages, so in school I took as many as I could. That resulted in me taking 5 years of Latin (which is of questionable use, admittedly), 7 years of French and 9 years of English.
I think the last point in the video is the most important. I have forgotten most of my french, because since I left school I haven't really used it at all. English, on the other hand, I've likely actually gotten better over time because I use it almost daily. That's partially my personal preference, as I watch films and series as well as read books in english, because I dislike the German dubs and translations, but a lot of it is interaction with other people online. Whether in games with voice chat, in the youtube comments or on forums and discords, it's always English that's spoken, because with English it doesn't matter where you're from. Speaking it is kind of an entrance requirement to most of the internet, I feel.
Oh cool! I think Latin would be fascinating to learn. I know of a few friends who opted to learn Latin because they were pre-med in University and they found it super helpful for understanding the root names of diseases and conditions.
Exactly my point of view.
@@TypeAshton You actually need Latin for some study programs (partially also depending on which university you visit). Additionally, knowing Latin makes „understanding“ (written) Italian or Spanish much easier.
@@TypeAshton not only that, Latin is probably the single most influential language. Everywhere the Roman empire spread, you find traces of it. English has had a double influence even through the occupation and its french roots.
I find it super interesting looking at the etymology of Latin words and how their meaning changed over time. Like apothecam (wine cellar, iirc) and modern day uses like apothecary or Apotheke. I was fortunate to have had very good teachers in both Latin and English who raised our awareness for these connections and it is so interesting and enriching and there are countless Latin words surrounding us. Most people just don't realise it.. like audio (I hear), video (I see) it's everywhere..
@@TypeAshton honestly: The most fascinating aspect of learning Latin for me was, that it was a huge additional (but very, very Euro-centric) history course. The Roman Empire has had one of the most historic influences on our continent and therefore is for the whole of Europe a very important aspect.
Learning the language not only was very boring and really, really hard, but the effect, that learning Latin for ancient texts means, you never get in the mode of being able to SPEAK Latin, always gives you the feeling of being held back. This is a huge problem, because it excludes the most important part of language learning, as you know yourself of course: having conversations. So in hindsight for me it was not a good idea to start foreign languages with Latin, as the most valuable early years for fluency (for example in English), were kind of wasted.
Wouldn't I have started to explore the internet at the age of 14 and at the same time also not want having to wait for the translation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I probably would have had a very hard time to become only somewhat fluent up to 10 years later during my college years.
I'm half Scots, half French. I grew up bilingual in Scotland and had the weird experience of being taught French (a language I spoke natively at home) as a foreign language in school for 6 years. I did end up being able to spell better than my cousins in France, though.😂 I also learnt Latin for 5 years at secondary school.
I began learning German at 15, Spanish in my early thirties. Those two languages were learnt mostly by immersion in the countries themselves, catching up on the formal grammar later. I acquired a passive understanding of Catalan, Italian and Portuguese, as well as Low German (Plattdüütsch), and some Dutch. I worked with languages professionally, translating and interpreting.
For the past year, thanks to online resources, I've finally got around to learning Scottish Gaelic - something I've wanted to do for years. Through that, I've also come to understand some Irish too. Learning languages keeps your brain fit.
I watch your videos to get the American perspective. But also because you're a nice family.
My native language is English, but have German family so I felt incentivised to learn German and then converse properly with my relatives. I always tell people it took 9 years of learning to reach fluency. I also did Spanish in school, with a two year dose of Japanese.
Now I live in the Czech Republic but work for an American company, so I speak English all day anyway. I know enough Czech to get by and deal with paperwork, but conversations with me in Czech are rare. Doesn't help that my local husband speaks better English than most natives.
Swedish here. I started learning English around 9 years old... and had english classes all the way up through the entire mandatory school, so until age 17. Along with lots of influence from media, English is definitely a language I'm comfortable with. The second foreign language I learned was French. That I began at age 13, and had classes up to age 17. There is no media in french in Sweden so I was never exposed to french outside of classes. I remember NOTHING of french today. Wouldn't be able to understand a single sentence of spoken french. So yes. Learning earlier is important, as well as being constantly exposed to the language. As a European I feel kind of like a failure at just being able to speak two languages... that's nothing. Especially since my only foreign language is english, the most basic and easy language to learn (in my opinion).
Hej, I can totally relate. As a German, I, too, am most comfortable with English, forgot most of my French and Spanish from school due to not really using it. But I took up Swedish and am determined to at least always keep my level there, even if I cannot always advance in my courses. But yes, two languages for me as well... kinda lame for a European ;)
It was the same for me, I didn't speak a word of French for 8 years after school. Then however I got to know some french people and (as the cliché goes) it was actually easier for me to "re-learn" French to talk to them than to try to communicate in English. And actually even though I thought I had forgotten everything, it all came back to me very quickly. I guess even if you never use it, multiple years of learning a language will still come back later if you need it.
Yup agree. As a German I wouldn't even count English as a Fremdsprache at this point either.
I was born in the early sixties and when I was in the fifth year of elementary school I got my first English lesson, just learning words. It was the first year a foreign language was educated on my school. In the sixth year I learned simple sentences. At secondary school I got French (2years), German (3years) and English (4years and as an exam subject). In secondary technical vocational school I got German and English for 2 years. The third year is internship and the fourth year is exam year. In the first two years you could also take optional languages like French, Spanish and Italian or technical German and technical English. I chose the latter two, to broaden my technical vocabulary. Although I did benefit from technical German and technical English in my career I still feel a bit sad that I didn’t chose French and Spanish. I would have loved to be fluent in French and Spanish also. Maybe after I retire.
Russian is my native language, but I was in a special school in then-USSR that had English classes starting 2nd grade (8 y.o.). As Ashton pointed out in the video, emersion is very important -- I got a huge boost in my language abilities during a school exchange trip I took in high school. At age of 28 I moved to Poland so now this is the 3rd language I know.
Hello, My native language is german. Growing up close to the danish border, I started learning Danish and speak it at a mother tounge level.
We started learning English at school at the age of 12-13.
In my early twenties I learned Italian, which I now speak fluently as I live in Italy.
❤ PS: Thank you for the very well researched video. It was very interesting.
As a Belgian (from the Flemish part) I speak our three native languages (Dutch, French and German). Since English is important wherever you go I also speak that. And since my level of these languages is not so bad I can also understand a bit of Spanish and Italian. As in the Netherlands all programms on TV are in their original language, so alot of children have already a notice of another language (especially) English before they got their first lesson at school. I can say that it is definitely true you better understand the way of thinking of a foreigner if you speak his language.
I am a Ukrainian native speaker who grew up in a bilingual UA-RU environment, had English as my first foreign language and German as a second foreign language. I enjoy your videos, but currently, I am not at the point of learning English anymore, it is more of maintaining the level I have and enjoying the wide variety of content that the English-speaking community provides.
Looking forward to your new videos!
My third language, or second foreign language in school, was Latin. At that time my school would only offer Latin or Russian, and I chose the former.
I actually didn't regret it. Although my Spanish, Italian and French are pretty much non-existent or let's say on touristy level, it does help to figure out the meaning of many (written) words of those languages. Since learning Latin pretty much means learning grammar my understanding of English and also German grammar has really improved.
Bonus: Reading the SPQR novels by John Maddox Roberts is a lot more fun with some knowledge of Latin and Roman history. 😂
I can agree on that bonus.
About SPQR: It is also used in the Italian version of Asterix & Obelix: sono pazzi questi romani
But let's be honest here: yes, the "Latin Languages" are obviously related to each other. If you learn spanish, portuguese, italian, french or latin, you will be able to learn the other ones faster and mkght be able to figure out the meaning of many words in those other languages. So why would anyone pick the only dead language that isn't spoken by anyone anymore? Why not pick italian right from the start?
I know, you didn't have that choice, but still! It alsways baffles my mind that people say "learn latin, that will make it easier for you to learn italian" instead of "learn italian".
I myself speak German, Bavarian (which is not considered as an official language though 😅) and English. However, my English is only something between B1-B2. I learned it at school for almost 5 years, but I forgot so many about grammar rules and vocabulary. I've decided to start learning English again about 6 months ago and that was one of the main reasons why I started watching your videos. So I apologize in advance for all grammar mistakes that I've made to write this comment 😅
German, English, French, Spanish... I am not watching your Videos for the language, but for he content and your way of presenting it. You are a great educator. ❤
While I agree starting earlier if definitely a huge advantage, I think many underestimate how far you can get starting later if you have the motivation and put the work in. I'm an American who started learning German at 19 years old, (3 years ago), and at this point Germans are usually shocked when they find out I'm from America.
I think one of the areas that many learners stumble at is pronunciation. It's helps so much to get a bit familiar with the international phonetic alphabet and the sound system of the target language (and even with your first language too!). Many Americans pronounce German as it they were reading an English text with weird spelling, when (imo) you really need to fight that urge and learn the rules from scratch, which letters correspond to which sounds, and when you stumble across a new sound, to try to learn it.
Here, a speech coach helps a ton, I had one who was familiar with American English, and meticulously pointed out where I needed get over bad habits. A good speech coach is definitely worth the money!
I 100% agree with your pronunciation point. To me, it seems that's what people from America struggle the most with. Other countries seem to be doing much better with pronunciation though. In my experience, most Americans struggle with German pronunciation even after years of learning, while most other countries seem to adapt much quicker. No idea why that's the case, but you definitely made the right choice by focusing on pronunciation. That's probably the reason why people are often surprised by how good your German is.
@@Feeber2 Not only Americans, Canadians and Brits as well. I think that is caused by the really different pronunciation rules for English compared to most other languages using the Latin alphabet.
@@apveening yes sorry, I should have said native english speakers
I grew up in the States with a German mother. I speak English and German and some Spanish. I had some French in school. I taught in an international school in the Dominican Republic which is where I mainly used German in the community, because at the time German speakers were the largest expat community there, and Spanish I was learning living there, even though the Lingua Franca of the school was English. My husband who grew up in Germany speaks German and English fluently. He is good at modern Greek because he studied in Greece, and took it in school. He also has a working knowledge of Latin, Italian, French and then worked on Spanish on our honeymoon in Mexico. He studied Russian in school, so now he is studying Russian, Polish, Ukrainian and Czech on Duolingo to see whether learning languages in the same family is easier. He thinks it helps. My mother speaks German and English fluently, and also studied Arabic, and Persian. My neighbor who is from Finland and is a translator speaks at least 8 languages, and her husband who is German and Egyptian speaks at least 8 languages as well, and is a prof of Near Eastern Studies at our neighborhood University. In fact, several of my friends are in that department and speak several languages as well. That is probably because our local university draws faculty and students from all over the world.
I speak German (native) and English (C1). I learned Russian in school because it was mandatory at the time, but I barely know any of it anymore. I also tried Japanese, but only a few words are left.
I watch your videos because you give an outsiders look on Germany, which I find interesting.
As a Dutchy I speak Dutch obviously, English, German, a little French (enough to go around) and a few words of Spanish.
As a Dutchy people keep telling me that the Dutch are straight forward in sharing their opinion when asked but I think it is rudely and unheard off to start a conversation in English (Native or non-native speaker) and expecting people to understand you and expect them as well to answer you fluently in English as well, without excusing yourself not knowing the local language.
Now, where on earth did such a rude attitude come from..? Remember that knowing the language at least for a certain degree of the country you're visiting is a must. Don't expect local people to understand any foreign language at all, and remember that we, (the locals in Europe) effectively know one language well enough to express ourselves in and that would be our mother language.
The rest of the languages one learns much later at school, but barely ever is spoken, since we all speak the local language, and so is not practiced, and so becomes a language one does not or barely control, and so is a language one does not really master and so is not a language one likes to be forced into by foreigners whom demand fluent speakers of the language of their choice, since the little travel booklet told them we Europeans are all bi-lingual--> which is sadly not the case.
Alles Liebe zum Muttertag! ❤ Welcome, little Black Forrest family addition!
My native language is German. Languages at school (in order): English, Latin, French, Italian (extra curricular) and Spanish. I also took some Chinese classes at Volkshochschule, but forgot most of it. 😅 I went on studying English at university and also lived in the UK for a bit.
Now I'm so happy to be able to use English everyday in my job - I'd really miss it otherwise.
I started listening to your content because of my interest in keeping my English fluent. But by now I very much appreciate your diligent research - no matter what topic you choose to present - I always feel my brain has had some training. I have very often thought you should be in the teaching profession somewhere because you have the gift to break down complicated topics in a way which makes what ever it is comprehensible. Kudos!
I am Colombian and I am native in Spanish, have English as my second and German as my third languges. I do as well have learned some Italian, French, Portuguese and Russian to communicate better with my friends here in Europe. My brother lives in Europe as well and he does know even more languages than I do (namely 6 fluently and some others by curiosity). I watch these videos because of the great contrasts you make about US and German cultures, I end up learning a lot about both ❤
As a native Mongolian, I am fluent in both English and German, which makes it easier for me to communicate with people from different countries. I also have the ability to read Cyrillic and can understand a little bit of Russian.
I find English valuable as it enables me to explore the diverse perspectives and thoughts of people around the world. English serves as a bridge that connects various ideas and individuals, allowing me to engage with a broader range of information and experiences.
On the other hand, my experience with learning Spanish in school was not very successful, and I still struggle with it. However, I believe that in the future, I will undertake the task of learning Chinese, as I aspire to teach it to my future children.
Funfact: There is only ONE country in the world with German as only official Language: Fürstentum Liechtenstein.
That is super fascinating!
And their German is terrible.
Germany is slowly speaking more Denglish......
We need to keep converting them to get the english rate higher. 🇬🇧❤🇺🇲 🤠👍
They speak Swiss-german.
@@oliverarndt4759 of sorts.
My work helps people from other countries making their first steps in Germany. I cannot stress enough how important it is to learn the German language. Besides a couple of specialized jobs, you won't find high, or even average paying jobs if you don't speak German. Can you survive without German: yes, can you live without it: no.
P.S. German, English & Spanish.
I agree with this statement only to a certain extent. It really depends on your profession and the area where you live. If you work at a global firm in a major citiy and possibly in a job that assumes a high level of qualification you can live in Germany for years without learning the language. Work in IT at the Telekom in Berlin for instance and no German is needed. Most IT projects include foreign (American, Hungarian, Spanish or Chech) experts and the common language is Englisch. Major German cities are so international, that half of the conversations you overhear in the streets are not held in German. Here in Berlin we have plenty of cafe's and restaurants - and not only ethnic ones - where the waiters don't even speak German and expect you to order in English. I do agree however with both Ashton and you, that it makes things soo much easier and just more interesting and rewarding if you speak the language of the country you live in.
PS. Germain, English, French
@@aautrata lol. With that many „if‘s“ I’d call the job specialized.
Hey I‘m a german native speaker and I do also speak English, French (learned in school), Spanish (I have relatives in Mexico) and Russian (my wife was born there). And I actually watch your videos because I like the way you give insights into everything around Germany that the Germans themselves often don’t see. Plus your explanations are so good that I actually understand better how my own country works :)
Vielen Dank fuer die Inhalte auf eurem Kanal! Meine Muttersprache ist Englisch, und meine Deutsch-Faehigkeit ist ungefaehr B1. Eines Tages lerne ich mehr Sprachen (Spanisch, Schwedisch, Platt, usw), aber zuerst muss es mehr Stunden in einem Tag geben :)
Hello 👋 how are you doing today??
Sehr gutes Deutsch
My first language is German, I moved to Canada when I was 5. I moved back to Germany in 2002 for work and was able to communicate in German but the primary language was English. My German background was very helpful with my accent as I was able to pronounce German words with more accuracy and became somewhat of an anomaly in our company with my German capability. It was a very unique experience for me to see employees from the UK and the USA struggling with German. I have also learned that language is very important to learn at a young age. My daughters have learned German, English, and Spanish, being born in Germany and now living in the USA as of 2015. This will be an advantage for them as they move forward in life. Please do not consider my next comment negative. Your German is very American. I do however love that you are learning and want to learn! This is very rare among Expatriates. I love this channel and watching your family discover all that is great in Germany! I only moved to the USA as I was transferred by my company to do big things.
Hello Ashton, hello Jonathan,
Congratulations again to your new family member! I hope you all are doing well?
I personally speak three languages, hochdeutsch, english and pfälzisch(our local dialect). 😀
In my opinion it crutial to start learning a second language as soon as possible.
Best regards Ralf
Hi Ralf! We are all at home and resting 💜
One of the big reasons why we enrolled Jack in Kita was so that he has exposure 5 days a week to native German speakers and can hopefully develop two "native languages" in tandem. When we were in the hospital with the newest little one, he spent one morning with our neighbor who has a son the same age as Jack and they spoke exclusively German together. Really cool to see. 💜💜
Great to hear that about the development of Jacks language skills! You made that absolutly right decision.
Hallo, I am a russian native speaker, but my German ist better than my russian today. I learned english in school and try to practice everywhere i can. Because of that i See you Chanel. Thank you for great content every time!
Another great video. Thank you! I do have one tip: The language called "Hochdeutsch" has - here in Hannover - a clear LONG "o" in the first syllable. Have a lovely Mother's Day! ☺
And if they say "here in Hannover", they actually mean "here, where we speak Hochdeutsch". 😉
@@patrickhanft Tun sie auch! 😂
Growing up in Germany with a canadian dad, made me a natural bilingual. In school I learned french, but I've forgotten like everything. At best I could order a coke in a restaurant. Then a friend taught me some of his norwegian. It was so good and great. He moved away sadyly. But if I'd find a norwegian course i'd really would think of taking it. As a hobby. And if you can talk one of the 3 scandinavian languages, you'd get by with the other 2 as well due to their similarity
Dear Ashton, the last few days I have watched some of your videos and want to thank you so much for your very informative and entertaining videos. The quality of your videos is far above the average standard of other „expat in Europe“ channels 👏🏻
Thank you for the comprehensive view.
One thing i like to mention is, that Americans often have Problems understanding the Englisch that is spoken globally.
I have done IT-Projects in a global Corporation, and in Phone or Video Conferences People from Brasil, France, Argentina, Italy could very well understand each other in english, while our American Co Workers often had to ask twice.
For your language statitics, German native, english on business level and resonable Spanish. For travelling i have a basic knoweledge of french, italian, portuguese and dutch.
Fantastic topic. I was born and raised in the US, came to Germany almost 40 years ago as a soldier, stayed, married a Turkish/ German woman, had 2 daughters, both are tri-lingual and are now learning Spanish and Latin in high school. I speak English with my daughters, German with my wife and at work, my wife speaks Turkish with our daughters. No one has really figured us out.
My daughters attend a German/ American school in Berlin and we spend our summers in Turkey.
The Turks have a wise saying that learning a new language is learning a new culture.
"Wir können alles, ausser Hochdeutsch" 🙂
("We can do everything except High German". A former Slogan of the state of Baden-Württemberg)
The funny thing about this slogan is that, their local dialect is High German. Even Austrian and Swiss dialects are High German. The only people not speaking High German are in the North, speaking Low German.
This confusion happens because colloquially we use the terms "Standard German" and "High German" interchangeably.
@@frankmeyer1473 : I agree. "High German" is imho a inappropriate translation of "Hochdeutsch". It just means standard German.
Well, I'm speaking the "High German" dialect Alemannic. :-) When I'm visiting northern Germany (ok, meaning: Every state northern to BW and Bavaria :-) = "Weisswurstäquator") and I'm really doing my best to speak "High German", I'm often get asked: "Are you from Switzerland?" Because accidentally I'm using some southern German words, phrases or it's just because of my grammar 🙂
Hi!
I'm a Venezuelan living in Spain, so my native language is Spanish. I speak English as a second language, and I watch this kind of videos to practice 👍🏽. I learned how to speak English over 20 years ago, so I use videos, movies, books, magazines... anything that can help me to maintain my level and (why not) keep learning, since languages are alive and they never stop evolving ☝🏽
I like the recommendation I read somewhere to learn four languages:
1) a lingua franca (English)
2) a language of historical importance (e.g. Latin, or in my case French)
3) a regional language (for me, that's Czech)
4) one just for fun (Swedish)
Except for English, I'm not really proficient in any of those, though... only basic communication.
Mine look like this (an American):
1. The Lingua Franca (Spanish) [I'm in Texas, Latin Americans often take the same attitude to English learning that Anglos do to Spanish learning.]
2. Historical Importance/Serious Hobby (German) [My intended 2nd language to learn, and very useful for understanding older works of English literature that took the bizarre sentence patterns anyway.]
3. The Blowoff Hobby/F*&k with Native Speakers of #1 and #2 that don't have the decency to not switch to English when I'm talking to them in their language dammit, and sorry the accent isn't 100% perfect! (Russian)
5. Auxiliary (What Else is needed in the moment)
Interesting as always. I'm American born and though my grandparents spoke other languages as well as english (German, Italian, Yiddish) we never spoke anything but english at home. I had French in high school, as did my wife and when we went to France 35 years ago we were completely lost and unable to understand what was spoken to us because they spoke so fast we couldn't even pick out words we knew and very little on the menus matched up with what we learned in school. It was also a time that the French weren't particularly fond of the US so absolutely no one would speak English to us except in the hotel in Paris. As we drove around France for a week we managed to find everything on our trip but we didn't find out that the US had bombed Libya until we were on our British Airways plane flying to London. Fast forward to more recent times and our more recent trips to France the locals were very friendly and many spoke english. My daughter is now fluent in German as she has lived there for a few years, but she says that the locals, in Mannheim speak a dialect of German that even many of her German friends can't figure out a lot of the time, because even though they learn Hochdeutsch in school they speak Mannheimer (Palatine German) at home and then rarely use the standard German. Actually so many Germans (at least younger ones) that she encountered speak english that she had a hard time using German because as soon as someone realized she wasn't German they switched to english.
I was raised with and speak Dutch, but my English is probably just as good and i use it extensively for work and consume most media in English.
Additionally I speak some German and can read and understand it well. My French is very very basic (though i can still read it).
I learned some ancient greek and Latin in high school as well and all that actually helps a lot with recognizing some words in some of the other languages in europe.
born in slovakia - thus i understand czech as well without any issues (but i don't really speak czech; they anyway understand slovak good enough)... learnt english and german in school, using english basically daily since i started working (i work for a german multinational corporation)... and now i live in germany (still working for the same german corporation, they have transfered me to germany) and speak german as well... basically i speak 3 languages, understand 4 (understand here means that i can read books/newspapers and watch videos/movies in these languages without any issues)
and no, i don't watch your videos to learn english - i watch them, because they are interesting, well researched and i always learn something new from your videos - just not english per se :)
In linguistics, bi- or multilingualism is defined by the languages that are aquired rather than learned or teached. A "second/third/n-th language" is one you get automatically by contact with native speakers (like parents, neighbors, friends, kindergardeners) during childhood, while languages you _actively_ learn are considered "foreign languages". In that regard, the Cencus Bureau's definition of multilingualism is actually a bit closer to the academic definition than simply counting what language you are able to understand and/or communicate with.
Ah that actually makes a lot of sense and is super interesting. I would wonder if the German definition then adopts this same standpoint.
@@TypeAshton I work as a language service provider and no one in my field considers themselves bilingual when they haven't aquired the language on native or near-native level as a child. I would never call myself multilingual although I speak several languages.
Native German. Learned English in school and from American relatives. My wife is half French, learned bits n pieces of French in school as well. Also I now got relatives in France, so that's a no brainer to just be able to speak it.
I like the positive tone of your videos, find it interesting to see, how your life in Germany goes, what you experience and how you feel as Americans. The YT algorithm seems to understand quite well, which languages I understand in order to provide refommendations; which I also find kinda interesting.
Keep up the good work.
First, congrats on your newborn! 🎉
Second, I speak quite a few languages: my native Slovak, and - as born and raised in Czechoslovakia before it split - Czech as well (not only understand, but also speak and write on C2 level). My third language is Polish, as I grew up on the Polish border, where I am somewhere on C1 level. And I'd say I am around C1 in English, too, though I don't have any official exam.
Where I do have an exam and a certificate is German, for the B2 level, which I needed for my Swiss permanent residence permit. Speaking of Switzerland, I understand Swiss German, particularly Basel/Baselbieterdütsch quite well now, but don't dare to speak it (to not endanger my neighbors with death from laughing 😂).
And there is a bunch of languages I speak on a touristy level (to greet people, ask/thank for something, order in a restaurant, ask for directions,...), in particular Russian (which I learnt in primary school, as it was mandatory at my time), French (which is an obvious choice, living in the Dreiländerecke), and - as as long time karate practicioner - Japanese (though I haven't been to Japan yet).
similar situation here ... born Slovak, I can use Czech to a decent degree, learned German and English. I can understand most German dialects and also quite a bit of Polish since it is a similar language to Slovak/Czech.
It is the situation with small countries/nations that they have to learn the languages of their neighbors to function properly :-) But that was mentioned in the video. If you are an American from the middle of the country, you'll most likely never meet a person that does not speak English.
Not gonna lie. This hits close to home because more than almost anything, I try so hard not so much to not have an American accent, but to speak well out of respect.
Hope all is going well with the newest black forest family member and everyone is getting enough rest and bonding time!!
In the Netherlands the benefits of speaking a second language is well understood and if im not mistaken both Dutch and English are mandatory with French and German optional.
Also they start at a much younger age then when i was in school (many many moons ago 😂) granted kids nowadays are way more exposed to other languages then we ever where (like through music etc).
Dutch and at least one modern foreign language are mandatory, the latter usually defaults to English, but French, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese and Arabic are also allowed. There may be even more allowed languages, but it is very rare to encounter those at school in the Netherlands.
Hej , I am from Québec and now live in Danmark . My first language is of course French , I had to learn English at school but got really fluent when I went to an English speaking university.. Later after two years of teaching , I went back to university to do a bachelor in Spanish. My last sessions was in Salamanca ( Spain ) and I got fluent there. Before leaving Europe and go back to Canada , I went to Murnau (Bayern ) and took 5 months of German in the Goethe institut,. I am still speaking German pretty good even after more than 35 years.. From there I came to Danmark and got Married ,I speak Danish as a native with a little accent. With the help of my danish , I can easily read Swedish and Norvegian and understand the most of what people say but , I have never tried to speak those languages. living in Danmark and having lots of vacation I travelled to Italy 5 - 6 times and now speaks Italian easily but still makes a few mistakes and I am missing some vocabulary. I also went twice to Portugal ( 3 months in all ) , when I am there I only speak Portuguese with the people and get by quite easily .
To learn languages is like everything else , you have to want to learn , use a lot of time and dedication and practice every time you have the opportunity..
Great video as usual! Being from India and now lived Germany and Switzerland, I was already tetralingual, if that’s a word i.e. 4 languages (English, Hindi, Bangla, Odia) and now German. Yes! English is our native language as well 😂 In India it is actually expected to know more than one language. It’s funny ‘cause here in Europe people are impressed by that but Indians are not usually impressed 😂 Such an interesting phenomenon.
You’re from Orissa? Just wondering, since my family is from there.
I am from Kolkata but my parents are from Odisha 😊 I am a hybrid of Bengali and Odia 😄
@@sudipdas9389 cool 😎; it is very rare that I encounter another Indian with Oriya ancestry unless it is through my parents/relatives
@@abinashmishra329 Glad to hear that man, cheers!
"Quadrilingual" is the correct word.
I am Dutch, and speak English as a second language. I also learned German and French at school, and at work I deal with a lot of Portugese truck-drivers, so I started learning Portugese as well. It's fun to learn new skills, but it's a must for me to have the language playground, to test my skills on native-speakers of that language, otherwise I won't know if I learned correctly.
Frisian is not german.
It is not hard to measure if a people or person is bilanguage or understand a language. You measure how well a person understand the words and vocabulary.
Sweden didn't have a official language since it was was just viewed that we speak swedish and it wasn't viewed necessary, until 1 july 2009. Swedish was the language was out of as we say of hävd/Usucaption.
The Louisiana Creole or French was really mistread in the USA the same with swedish speakers.
Youl talk about how large the hispanic is in USA. But you call yourself american bet say that your an estor is from germany are you really a american. And not all american are not amercan bet french dusch. And can't be a one part something.
Texas was once spanish Florida was once spanish. New Orleans was french New Amsterdam was dusch.
I was born and raised in the south of Moldova in the region called Gagauzia. I speak Gagauz (native), Russian (second native), English (not fluent, but confident intermediate level, i work in IT so English is indeed one of my working languages), some Romanian (official language in Republic of Moldova), some Turkish (because i studied in Turkish liceum and because Gagauz is similar to Turkish (and other Turkic languages)) and now i am learning German, since i moved on to München :)
Gagauzia is a monoethnic region, where mostly live Gagauzians. Majority (majority but not all) of us speak Gagauz at home as a first language. Some Gagauz people speak Russian as a first language, though they still know Gagauz at some level. Russian is one of the official languages in Gagauz autonomy (together with Gagauz and Romanian/Moldavian). Russian is a language of municipal authorities, education, local TV and press, most books i've red in my live are Russian, most movies we, Gagauzians, watch in Russian. Linguists would call Gagauzian vernacular/colloquial/spoken while Russian official/high/written/prestigious. And there is a tendency to prefer Russian instead of Gagauz as a first language; even in our family for me and my older brother Gagauz was native and first language, whereas for my younger brother and sister their native and first language is Russian, though they also know Gagauz.
Thank your for your video! With all the details, facts and numbers, as i like. I wish you and your family all the best! :)
Languages open doors that you otherwise could not enter. I would have never be able to work in Canada if i would not have improved my English skills or could not even follow your Videos. Also i think that learning another language also means respecting another culture on a Personal level. Also here in Germany we love to See that people at least try it out. Language and Music are the corner Stones of Personal Interaktion. On the other Hand i think it is a life long process until auf Grab all the fine nuances a language has to express yourself in it❤
I wish there was greater foreign language opportunities both in and out of the classroom in the US. I grew up in a VERY rural part of the US and German wasn't even offered to us as an option (not enough students or teachers to make a class useful).
I didn't take my first German class until my late 20s and my brain already felt like a dried sponge.
@@TypeAshton But living in a country where you need the language is a great help and speaking it casually 'all the time' is much more helpful than class learning only.
@@TypeAshton The other thing is: Why would you possibly learn a foreign language in the rural USA? There is basically no need for that, unless you want to leave (for the great great outside world)...🤷♂
@@TypeAshton That was the case before Internet. Nowadays it's easy to take private lessons with a native speaker anywhere in the world, no matter where you live. It's just a matter of dedication and available time.
At school, I learnt English, Latin and French - later on, I had a boyfriend from Latin America and decided to learn Spanish. When I was a small girl, my family went on holiday to Italy, where I got to know an Italian girl my age and we kept the connection, thus I have a passing understanding of Italian (of course facilitated by Latin, French and Spanish.
The reason I watch your channel is I find the outsider's view on my country interesting - and I very much appreciate the well researched content. So please keep going!
Defining "bilingual" as "speaking a non-English language at home" isn't just misleading, it's as wrong as it gets. It doesn't even include the most fundamental requirement of knowing more than one language. By that definition a Mexican immigrant who speaks exactly one language, Spanish, is counted as "bilingual". But of course only a cynic would accuse the US government of attempting to sell the results of uncontrolled mass migration as an improvement in national education. After all, governments never lie.
I am German by birth and came to Canada as at the age of 13. I had taken minimal English classes in school in Germany, but learned Canadian English growing up. We continued to speak Pfalzisch or Plattdeutsch at home, but I heard and read German books in Hochdeutsch. Although I lost complete fluency due to German magazines adopting a lot of English terms and tech words, I continue to be "fluent" in German, even though the German speaking part of my family has now passed away. I love your show, because my youngest so;n and I would love to go to live in Germany or Europe in general. You have inspired his interest in learning about European culture and their social and economical ideals. Thank you, Vielen Dank.
I can’t really relate to the idea of feeling privilege because everybody would address me in my first language. I’ve always enjoyed listening to, and trying to speak, foreign languages. When I travel, I’ll prefer going abroad for this very reason. I will prefer going to countries where I do speak and understand the language, because the feeling of immersion is so good. But I also enjoy the Internet because it enables me to practice my foreign languages, and I will use at least two of them every day.
The benefits of multilingualism go far beyond practical application, and I’m sorry for people who only see the utilitarian perspective. Practicing multiple languages is good for your brain, and getting used to making extra efforts to understand another human being certainly has psychological benefits as well. There is a quote attributed to Charlemagne that to possess another language is to possess another soul, and I would subscribe to that. When I started working for a company where most of the work got done in French, for a few months it felt like someone else was doing the work for me - no kidding. The extra effort that I had to make was more than compensated by learning new expressions and vocabulary every day.
the reason im watching your channel: i do have alot of friends in america, and also in the usa. it is fascinating for me to see how you approach and think about things we have, i do have the feeling i get a deeper understanding of what makes my american and us friends tick.
There is an American journalist named Erik Kirschbaum who is on German TV quite a bit. He has been living in Germany since the late 80s but still speaks German with a heavy American accent, as if he were chewing gum while speaking. I'm like, dude, what's up with that?! When I moved to the U.S. as a non-native English speaker, my accent was largely gone after a year or so.
As always a very informative video.
But it is not yet certain that english will remain the lingua franca. E.g. in African countries that speak French, the population is increasing and could displace English as the most spoken language on the African continent.
English and Russian. Watch your channel because of the fascination of your journey. The fact that you fully assemilated into the German culture and persevered through the difficulties of German, continues to inspire me to keep learning Russian.
Some people (on a certain island) would add english to the list :P
Maybe even only a certain part of that certain island.
Kind regards Christiaan
I am Brazilian, so, my first language is Portuguese. Then, I learned English as a child, French, as an adolescent, and Spanish and Italian, as an adult. I speak these languages fluently, but my French and Italian are rusty since I don't use them often. Finally, I have been trying to learn Korean. It's been 3 years and I can barely say I am at an intermediate level. By the way, I have been living in the US for 22 years, so, I do not see your content to improve my English, but, because I like to see how people live in other countries, and you make wonderful videos.
I'm 78. I took German for 3 years in American High School in the early 60's. I took 2 more years in college. In all that time I never met a German speaking person other than 3 teachers. No internet, so I slowly lost what German I had learned. I might add the city I live in sent a busload of students - 4 high schools' worth - to a competition in a nearby university. I got the highest score for my city, so I wasn't bad at learning. So, where I live in Illinois is a longer trip to the next closest state, Indiana than it is from Berlin to Poland. Face it, America is big. You could fit most of Europe in the Dakotas. They compare Germany to the size of Texas. So it isn't Americans' fault they don't speak multiple languages. We just don't have the opportunity Europeans have.
My native language is Dutch, I speak English fluently, I’m near fluent in German, Danish and Swedish and can manage in French, Italian and Spanish. Let’s say I just love languages :)
I am Danish, so I speak Danish, English, a little German & i understand Norwegian & Swedish. I read Danish, English, Swedish, Norwegian & a little German.
Most norwegian & Swedish people that a have ever met, understand me when I speak Danish.
My main reason for following your channel is that your channel is VERRY informative about the diffrence between the US & the EU, & GERMANY in general. The more i can get to know about my neighbors to the south the better.
SIDE NOTE. : IF you speak the local dialect of SOUTH JUTLAND (sønderjysk), & you meet someone from SLEISWIEG (the northern most part of Germany), who also speaks his/her local dialect, you will be able to understand one another, whiteout speaking German. Because you have a common local dialect.
A bonus that i don't need, but never the less derive from following your channel is that a am maintaining my level of understanding of the English language.
In short the Black Forrest Family, is keeping me relatively well informed about a lot of diffrent subjects.
I also believe that little Jack is a lot better of living in Germany, whit a set of parents, who are happy working in jobs they love, in an employment market, that affords you the time & other resources, you need to be good parents. + when Jack is old enough to do so, he will be attending school whiteout getting shot for the trouble of doing so. In Jacks future is also dual EU/US citizenship. I have met a lot of people that would sell VITAL parts of their own ANATOMY to be in Jacks position.
Thanks for the great content. I am going to keep watching.
I was born to a family of German, English and Polish descent, learning French and Castilian (aka Spanish) later in school with an interest in (at least trying) to understand and speak different languages aswell. To the Franco-German Friendship Treaty I would also like to point out that some school even allow not only to make the Abitur but also the Baccalauréat which is its French equivalent which requires having subjects that are tought in both German and French (in my case History and Politics & Economics).
A couple of years ago I was in North Carolina for 9 month to work there. An American colleague told me a joke:
What do you call people who speak 3 languages? --> trilingual
What do you call people who speak 2 languages? --> bilingual
What do you call people who speak 1 language? --> Americans
American from Georgia. Left the USA in 1990 and have never been back (not even to visit). I lived in Germany for 8 yrs as a US soldier, but took advantage of University of Maryland courses on the American installations where I was stationed. These were full, language from the basic grammar up courses, lots of verb conjugations, vocabulary memorisation etc. The first grounding course in this overall German study was 4 days a week, everyday after work for 90 mins. After that course, it was usually 2 times weekly but 2 hours. The teacher was a German who lived locally. So, not only did we learn the language in a university speed course with full scope of grammar, we learned from a native who spoke with the local accent. PLUS, after the class was over, I could go out into the local environment and begin using what I had learned immediately.
And I DID. I spoke German every chance I got. I studied vocabulary rigorously daily, going over entire pages of new words. I paid special attention to gaining new verbs, because this allowed me to say a wider variety of things. And when I got to the more complex levels of German sentence structure- like when the verb order gets split, or when a subordinate clause's word order gets reversed- I would spend hours saying these phrases and sentences out loud over and over, so they would come naturally when I had to do it in a real conversation.
Anyway, I wound up marrying a German woman who was a medical student, and after 8 years of living in Germany, I could go to German cinema and watch a film, read German novels, magazines, watch German television and converse in about any situation with no problems (technical situations where I simply didn't know the words for things that I rarely encountered would still trip me up sometimes). We eventually moved to Scotland and I've been here for 25 years now and as we're divorced, I rarely get the opportunity to speak German any more. I do dream in it, from time to time, and I don't consider the time and effort in learning and studying German to have been wasted. I learned a great deal about my own language from learning a second one, and speaking and understanding German vastly improved my experience of living there, and I look back on that time now with great fondness and nostalgia.
I also studied Spanish for a couple of years here in Edinburgh. And although I never put in the all out effort with Spanish as I did with German, I did still take local university courses that taught the language the same way: from the basic grammar up, and I did put quite a bit of effort into amassing a respectable vocabulary. At the height of my Spanish studies, I was reading Spanish novels written for teens, able to follow the plot of Pedro Almodovar films ;-) and I was ordering television series in Spanish and watching them. Plus, it helps to be able to take a relatively cheap holiday down to Spain and put the language to use. Every now and again, I run into Spanish tourists in the Edinburgh city centre who are quite clearly lost, and I can help them out and give them directions in Spanish, and although this is still a small pay-off for the effort of learning the language, it is still satisfying to be able to do so. I enjoy seeing their faces light up when they realise they've run into someone who can communicate with them in their own tongue.
And that's what learning language is all about, reaching out to others and not demanding that all communication be done on your own terms. We might usually speak a common official language, but I feel like if others know that you've taken the effort to learn about their language and culture, this makes for a deeper understanding and trust between people.
Hey Ashton. Informative Video as usual. To answer your question at the end. I am a native German but I like the English language a lot. I consume a lot of English media just to maintain my listening comprehention. I used to be in a relationship with a guy from North Carolina and tipped my toe into the American culture back than, liked it and miss it now. Following you guys is part of my way to not forget.
First, congrats on your newborn! 🎉 I learned english in school, but using that skill a lot it get lost over the years. The reason why i watch and more importantly understand videos like this here today is i decided years ago to stay away from german TV and watch most stuff i like online/streaming in english. At first with german subtitles, but after a while i turned them off. Of course listing is not the same as speaking a language, but a few years ago a had the chance to test my english with a guy from australia and he was pretty impressed by my english skills and the desent conversation we had that day. so, yes beside online classes to learn english, it will took it liitle longer, but watching your every day tv shows in english will help to improve your skills.
Native German, started English in the 5th grade, French in the 7th grade and Spanish in High-School. Later in some evening-class Italian at the "Volkshochschule" to prepare for a six month sabbatical in Italy. I love learning other languages.
And most important, congratulations and all the best for your growing family❤
I'm a Spaniard born in the German part of Switzerland, to immigrant parents who spent their first couple of years in the French part of Switzerland and were in close contact with their Italian neighbors throughout their years in Switzerland.
So I have both Spanish and German as mother tongues, French was spoken once a week at home (and studied in school); Italian was spoken with a large portion of neighbors, family friends and some classmates.
I started learning English at age 14 in school and that lead me to now almost exclusively using English for entertainment (books, Series, movies).
Argentinian here, obviously native Spanish speaker and would say bilingual in English which you start learning early at elementary schools here as mandatory, although more language oriented schools have the option of French, Portuguese and lately also native languages like Guaraní and Quechua. Always found weird Portuguese wasn't mandatory here seeing Brazil is our biggest and closest neighbor so I'm it teaching myself nowadays. Your incredibly in depth videos about life in Germany is what I love most about this channel!
I am German, employed in a French company where the official language for communication with colleagues is English.
I came to this channel because I want to practice the English language. You make it easy for me because you speak very clearly. Thanks very much! I recently saw a video in which an English-speaking man from India with a severe speech impediment (with the letter S) explained something. That was tough!
But the English language is already spreading in German. There are so many English words that we naturally incorporate into our German sentences. "Cool", isn't it? Sometimes there are English terms here that are just made up. Which non-German already knows what a "Handy" is? It only sounds english. The term for a mobile phone, invented by a German marketing department. In all other countries we have to explain what we actually mean by that. The sentence formation itself also changes. Example: "Das macht Sinn" for "That makes sense.". This is now used in literal translation, although that is actually wrong. It should be "Das ergibt Sinn," but hardly anyone here knows that anymore. In France, attempts are made to keep their own language "pure". But honestly - they might delay it, but not prevent it.
A matter of opinion is just not a question of time, in which so-called world languages do not last forever. Latin is also extinct and was practically the world language in Europe in the past
I grew up with both German and French as my native languages. Then in school I learned English (9 years), Latin (4 years), ancient Greek (5 years) and Russian (2 years). Later, I taught myself and/or took classes in several other languages. I now consider myself more of less fluent in Polish and Spanish, but i also have some "survival knowledge" in a bunch of other languages like Italian, Finnish, Estonian, Czech, Croatian, Chinese etc,
I never watched TH-cam videos with the explicit intention to learn English, but they definitely helped me in keeping up and refreshing my English.
Ashton, we missed you last week. I figured you must have delivered. Herzliche Glückwunsch zu dir und Jonathan. Auch Jack. Außerdem Glücklichen Muttertag! (I don’t know the proper expression)
Great video 😊 As a Norwegian I have studied English in school since the age of 10 (since 1994 Norwegian kids have English as a compulsory subject from the age of 6, 1st grade) but I did start learning on my own before I was 10 because I’ve always been a bit of a language buff 😊 I ended up studying English at uni and now teach it in high school 🤓 So I watch your videos not to learn but because I enjoy many of the topics you address (genealogy, city planning, languages). As for other languages, I did two years of French in middle school (only remember bits of it), three years of German in high school (can read and understand about 90% of spoken, but do not speak it because grammar), started learning Spanish at 35 (I’m 46 now and teach Spanish as well) and started learning Italian at 42 (am totally in ❤ with it, and am probably at about a B1. I take at least two online conversation lessons a week to keep progressing) So, four and a half languages I would say 😊 Also, you are never to old to learn a new language!
I'm German and over the course of my school education, I learned English, French and Latin. Yet I'm not very well versed in the latter two due to lack of practice, whereas English has been a constant companion in my life. An important factor with that is also media consumption. Naturally we watch a lot of American (and British) Movies and TV shows, so we are familiar with these foreign cultures from a young age and often like to learn more about them. Then there is pop music, computer games and of course the internet. German kids sure have a high motivation to learn English and teachers have all the tools to make it interesting. For example at my school it was customary for substitute class that the teacher would simply bring an undubbed movie for us to watch.
today i noticed the first time that the " Black Forest Family " has changed and it has split , and you Ashton have your own "show"and i understand why. Your own contribution is
very academic and i think you are doing a great job collecting a lot of information first before going "on air "I am always enthusiastic seeing your point of view on all sorts of topics.
keep on digging !!!
Thank you so much!
My parents are Chinese so I learned Mandarin Chinese. I was Born in Germany and started learning German in kindergarten.
I started learning English in 3 grade and French in 5 grade
I’m from the US…took Spanish and German for 3 years in high school. Joined the US Army to be a Spanish linguist and was sent to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey CA. A few years later married an Ecuadorian army sent me back to school to learn Indonesian; then a few years later to learn French. I still speak Spanish fluently, my French is a bit rusty, but can read and understand fairly well, for Indonesian, can still read a bit, but can barely speak/understand it when spoken.
I am 67 years old and an American. I studied French starting in the 8th grade through 11th grade. When I was in 10th grade, my high school French teacher organized a trip to France, which I went on. Loved the experience. My French accent improved significantly as a result. I still study it, but am not fluent.
I wish schools would start foreign language study in elementary school instead of high school for middle school.
I grew up bilingual, English and German. My husband is English, so he only speaks English, and our baby boys will hopefully speak both languages well too one day. We will move to Germany (Geldern, bordering the Netherlands) next year after I complete my PhD and I can’t wait to watch my poor husband learn German then. Especially “der, die, das”. It’s so mean that there is no rule to the articles and they influence so many other words connected to them. Both your and our little boys will be so good in both languages one day 🤗🙌🏻🫶🏻
Being Russian, who lived in the US, Germany and now in Switzerland, I started to learn English at the age of 10. Learning German was an obligation when I moved with my ex to Deutschland. They make you to take Itegrazionskurs and pass a test in order to give you an Aufenthaltsbewilligung. When I moved to Switzerland after I have faced the same thing with French, because I lived in Wallis both French and German canton, but in a mostly French part so even I had my German test they made me to take a French test as well to give me my permis de sejours. So I had no choice. Now I am finishing my study in Lugano, in Ticino which is an Italian speaking canton, and it is completely in Italian. So in the end of the day I speak 5 languages: Russian, English, German, French and Italian.
Not perfect, but fluent enough to communicate with people, feeling myself comfortable and work which is the most important. And of course I keep on learning all of them. I can say that learning every next language gets a bit easier, because your brain understands the process and the things that are important at the beginning. The most funny thing is to see how the words distort and moreover analyzing their origins helps to learn vocabulary.
I can definitely admit that the complex grammar of my mother tongue helps me as well, so I have no issues with cases for example.
However to be honest the environment is among the most crucial factors. And living in Switzerland in my case is a great opportunity to practice all my languages almost on a daily basis.
Fantastic video! English native speaker, learned German and French in school but retain only a tourist-level proficiency, and Thai at home with my husband.
Hello, I'm English but I've lived in five countries. With varying levels of fluency I speak English, French, Danish, Italian and Portuguese.I've managed to live in both Switzerland and Germany with very limited German because I work in international finance. I can also understand/read pretty well related languages like Norwegian, Dutch, Spanish, etc. but definitely not attempt to speak them. Next on my list is Swahili, and possibly Arabic, although that's more of a challenge because of the alphabet. I'm not a natural linguist, basically a techie, but if you put in the time it comes to you. At home I mostly speak English, Danish and French because the cats don't care.
I'm German and those are the languages I speak:
German (native speaker)
English
Basic French
Super basic Spanish
Polish (just started learning it after reconnecting with the Polish side of my family)
And I understand a lot of Lauenburger Platt.
i am from Sweden so I speak Swedish and have learnt English, German and French in school. I like your channel because you are from the US living in Germany and i like to follow your life in Germany.
Hello! South African here! Mother-tongue English-speaker. I also speak Afrikaans well, as well as not-very-good Xitsonga, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Siswati, isiNdebele, German, Italian, Portuguese, Nederlands, and French. I can also speak, read and write Latin and read and write Koine Greek, although I don’t get the chance to speak to many Ancient Romans or Greeks.
I think growing up in a multilingual country makes learning additional languages easier because you are exposed to sounds which are not normally heard in your mother tongue; for example, the ‘click’ sounds of the Southern Bantu Languages. I could recognise and make these sounds long before I formally learnt the languages. And much of my German was picked up from playing with my German-speaking friends when I was in kindergarten.
I recommend watching "Sesamstraße" and "Die Sendung mit der Maus" with your son (soon sons) and any other TV Programs that the kids watch. I learned a huge amount when I watched these and others with my son when he was at that age.
When I first arrived here, and after my morning German lessons at University, I spent many an afternoon watching children's programmes. Also, took out children's books from the library and spent most weekends with my husband's nieces and nephews.
The 2nd son was born a few days ago.
@@conniebruckner8190 Yes! I also read a lot of children's books. They're great for learning and the good ones are written with adults as much in mind as with children in mind. After all, if adults are reading to kids, the adults have to enjoy it too. :-) Back then, I wrote translations of words in the page (not in library books), and I saw the number of words decrease with the number of pages! That alone was encouraging! One of the books was "Eine Woche Voller Samstage", and the sequels were also great. One thing that was so fun about it was how much it made fun of "typical German" (and many other) things. I later read that book and the sequels to my son, and when he learned to read, he read them repeatedly himself.
@TheBlackForestFamily Herzlichen Glückwunsch zur Geburt eures Sohnes! Ich wünsche euch allen angemessene Ruhe (ich weiß, dass es nicht nur Ruhe sein soll ;-) ) und viel Freude.
@@arnodobler1096 Thanks
Watching to see Germany from US perspective, enjoy the good content plus the unique topics you cover in such a high quality
I'm from Belgium and I'm bilingual, flemish and french. My dad is flemish, my mom walloon, so I grew up with both languages from birth.
When it comes to english I started watching the BBC at a very young age, and I would also translate song lyrics with my dictionary (I was born in 1972, so no internet yet growing up) because I wanted to know what they meant. By the time I had English in school at 12 (we started french when I was 9) I could understand most english words, and speak and write it pretty well. Then at 14 we got German but I could already speak German quite well at that point because a few years after my grandpa died, my grandma married a german guy when I was 12. I'm not as fluent in German anymore, in fact speaking is quite hard now because I never speak it anymore (both my grandma and 2nd husband have died years ago) but I can still understand most of it.
You really forget a language if you don't use it. Even though french was a natural for me to speak as flemish, because I never speak it anymore after my mom died, the times I have to speak french I really have to search for my words. I still understand it as well as flemish. I'm pretty sure if I spoke it regularly again it would all come back to me.