I have lived in Germany for a total of about 18 years, and, let me tell you, Germans overestimate their knowledge of English.
I will elaborate on this, grow this post, in the course of time. But here’s two examples from the last 24 hours:
(1) I just received an e-mail from amazon.de. They want to sell me a book by Gianni Vattimo called “The Responsability of Philosophy.” The only problem is that the correct spelling of the word is: responsibility.
They want to make money selling books to people in Germany who read books in English, but they can’t even take the responsibility to learn how to spell.
I find it very insulting.
(2) There was a wonderful cinema in Frankfurt for at least 20 years, the Turmpalast Kino, which showed Hollywood films in English. Now they have gone out of business, mainly because a huge “Consumer Palace” (as the Germans would say) cinema complex called the Metropolis, about the length of a football field away from the Turmpalast Kino, has taken away much of their business. Now the Metropolis has started to show a few films in English (without the usual lazy and ridiculous dubbing into German), and they have gone public with their new advertising slogan: “FRANKFURT’S NEW HOME FOR ENGLISH CINEMA.”
The only trouble is: their advertising phrase is very poor English. It is terrible writing. It makes no sense, because of the ambivalence of whether “English” refers to the language or the nationality. It could be referring to the English nationality, in which case Hollywood films would be totally unwelcome in this new “home”.
The slogan was obviously written by a German who overestimates his English. The phrase doesn’t mean what its mediocre writer intended it to mean.
The Metropolis Kino doesn’t want to spend 200 Euro to hire a native speaker copywriter to develop a slogan for them.
It would be more correct to say: “FRANKFURT’S NEW HOME FOR ENGLISH-LANGUAGE CINEMA.”
My choice would be: “FRANKFURT’S NEW HOME FOR FILMS IN ENGLISH.”
Yes, that would be a good choice.
I find their brazenness quite insulting.
Yesterday I discussed this topic with my friend Steve Valk, another American who has lived a long time in Germany. Steve said that his experience is that Germans underestimate their knowledge of English. They are more shy about speaking English than they need to be. I think that Steve is also right. So this is some kind of complex double-reality of both over- and under-estimation.
I think that Germany is, on the whole, a more Enlightened and more democratic society than America. Morally, Germany is in a slump right now, but I will put that observation aside for a moment. The development of Western democracy could benefit a lot from better communication between Germans and Americans. More Enlightened Germans could offer something of value to the essentially barbaric America. But this exchange cannot take place if Germans don’t speak and understand American English well enough to really communicate with Americans. (Don’t expect Americans to start learning German, unless it’s a Philip K. Dick novel.) This is why it is such a shame that Hollywood films and Hollywood TV shows are routinely dubbed (“synchronized”) into German, rather than being shown in the so-called “original language” with subtitles. In the Netherlands, in Switzerland, and in the Scandinavian countries, the films and TV shows are usually shown in American English (and British English). As a consequence, the Dutch, the Swiss, the Swedes, the Norwegians, and the Finnish people speak much better English than the Germans. You can really have a conversation with them, almost as if they were Americans or native speakers. Usually with a German, even with a businessperson or intellectual, you have to consciously simplify the discourse to make communication possible. Only a person who is aware of the reality of language can practice this helpful simplification of discourse, and most Americans are not even aware of the reality of language.
I think that it would help Germany economically and culturally, in every way, enormously, in the era of globalization, if Germans would strive to become bilingual in English.
They might also try to learn a bit of Turkish.
