(Untitled)

[nightrose83]

Hi all,

Had a scenario/some questions about Germany that I'd like some details on.

Comments

[janewilliams20]

One language mistake I've noticed from French and to some extent Germans is forming plurals where in English the singular and plural are identical. "Informations" is the one I tend to see most often. Could an actual German speaker confirm that, though?

[lied_ohne_worte]

Yes, it's a mistake people in school tended to make quite often, so people who weren't good English students or who didn't have many years of English might retain it.

[lizzardgirl]

Yes, definitely. In German, the word would have a plural and so this would be a common mistake.

Also, she would say 'the police is ...' if she didn't know any better.

Another thing might be mixing up where the definite article goes and where it is left out. I know that in some mangled versions of Germans speaking English, there is a 'ze' put in front of every, which exaggerates the matter, but there is some truth in it. In English, for example, you'd say 'in the school' if you meant in a specific building, but 'in school' if you talked about your time in school. In German, both would be 'in the school' so your character could be saying something like 'I learnt that in the school.'

In writing, a common mistake might be not making any difference between defining and non-defining relative clauses, because they both take a comma in German.

[ari_]

2 differences not mentioned yet:

Maternity leave: I was shocked to find out how short that is, and how different. In Germany, you can't be fired from the start of your pregnancy (well, in practice: from the moment you tell your employer you are pregnant) to about 4 months after giving birth. You also may not work for 8 weeks after giving birth, and usually also don't work starting some weeks before. Afterwards, you can elect to take one year off, where you also may not be terminated, and are paid money - you'd have to check for details if you want to mention that, I'm Austrian, and I don't know how similar rules are in Germany.

Cats: Declawing is considered cruelty against animals in much of Europe, only allowed if there is a medical problem (one case I saw once was a cat that persistently scratched their ears bloody, they had to have the claws in their back legs taken out, but that was after weeks or months of trying other solutions). I've met declawed cats, it's ... icky/weird.

[janewilliams20]

As a Brit who's visited both the USA and Germany, I can confirm the difference in bread quality, and the American tendency to make everything much too sweet. Also, Germany has possibly the best beer in the world, and America... doesn't.
A question for Americans and Germans, where I think there may be another difference - do you expect to live in a flat/apartment, or a house? Would you expect to own it, or to rent?

[vail_kagami]

I'm German, and in my experience, living in an apartment or a house is a matter of available finances and cnovenience. Also of the place: In big cities, there are few houses and plently of apartments, in small towns it's the opposite.
Houses are, I think, more often owned by the people living in them, though you can also rent them, of course. Though I think renting an apartment is more common, especially if you don't plan on staying in that place forever.

[lied_ohne_worte]

Depends mostly on location and on money. From what I read and saw on TV during the banking crisis, in the US the urge to live in a house is so great that people tried own them, no matter how hard the conditions for the mortgages were and how risky it turned out to be. Here, it's a pattern that once people are married/living together in a serious way, they might think about building or buying a house, but not owning one doesn't seem to have the associations of poverty it has in the US. On the other hand, houses in Germany are built quite differently from in the US; you get much more stone, less wood, insulation of windows, roofs, walls, more solid roofs... most US houses I've seen look very flimsy compared to what I'm used to, and when I see images of storm damage, I always wonder what would happen to German houses in the same conditions

[thekumquat]

I'm the relevant age and had German exchange partners when I was at school, from near Frankfurt

[feanna]

(I'm really late, I hope you'll not mind me posting still