ClanBase is an international site so please write your comments in English. Postings in another language are removed. yes Iwont to play with teams

??

without germany you would all eat shit nowadays. however it might be true regarding the languages! hail germany o/

Long live Germany !

We can't blame their but also we don't have to abide their ignorance. My point is - English is the most popular and common language in the whole network. If you want to interact with entire society of gamers you should make little effort on your own and get any knowledge about grammar, vocabulary etc. otherwise there is only one solution left - be quiet. I'm really happy that somebody finally start conversation about that.

P.S I'm Polish

I've experienced similar problems myself.
But in addition to frenchies and germans I find it very common among Brazilian players or portugese players...

Being dutch, I've encountered this problem every now and again. So I know what it's like and how annoying it can get. I'm not a big fan of the majority of the german community either.

Nevertheless. You're saying you learned English due to the games and television shows which were in English. Evidently. Better yet, I'm confused by the Dutch people who do not speak English as you basically get raised speaking both languages.

But in Germany, as you mentioned, they don't hear any English in their childhood. Not on tv, as you said the programs and movies are dubbed, not in games 'cause they've got their own language packs with, well pretty much every game.

So can you really blame them for their horrible English? I don't think so.

For all the history jabber, grow a pair already. No one gives a shit what your country has achieved or someone else's hasn't.

*n0se, I'm having trouble understanding how you manage to turn an international language into something racist. If I read your story correctly.

Good one agree with that in 100%...

Yeh u guys know alot or what ? The most German´s that doesnt talk english are like 11 - 16 years old just bunch of noobs without life just kidding around and playing 24/7 a day.


SO CARE


ENGLISH IS FOR NOOBS JUST 2EASY TBH

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Well said.

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I´m having a hughe laugh on some comments in this Blog! :-D
I am German, 49 Years of Age and i wonder what´s going on in your Minds? Why would i have to talk English where it´s not needed? Poor enough that we have a, so called, "Worlds Language" English. Spreaded out by Conquerers that call us "Nazis" (as the most don´t even have a Clue what a "Nazi" is). I experience that state of idiotism every Day in Funwars, especially from Brits and Dutchies. Did you Guys really forget what YOUR COUNTRIES have done in History? Did you forget about your "Colonies" and the slaughtering you´ve done there? This could turn in an endless Discussion. A Guy from Croatia saying: "Hitlers Ideas are still alive"
True....Ex-Jugoslavia is a very fine Example, please go pull your own Nose. Guantanamo is another good Example. I could keep listing up more and more. Just to tell: Fascism is NOT a German Monopole. Finally i come to the Conclusion, that a bunch of stupid Kids trying to be polite, repeating this "Nazi-Crap". No need for that. As we have a saying here: "First, clean your own House before you point at others Dirt".

Regards

Don't forget that Hitler's ideas are still ALIVE !

Ja,wo ist das Problem ?
Lernt ma lieber alle deutsch! Die Sprache der Dichter und Denker! Ne Frechheit,dass wir uns in einer anderen Sprache ausdrücken sollen....NE FRECHHEIT!!!

Now srsly:
u'r talking about all those 15-years-old 24/7 cs kiddies from germany,who are dumb like shit and can't speak english,even if they wanted to :P in germany we don't have english films, cause all of the hollywood movies are translated for us (i guess that wouldn't be lucrative in smaller countries). so the english of most germans is very bad. they feel ashamed to speak english ,because they don't have the heart to make mistakes. only gamers with a good education speak english here.

another point is,that germany has a very huge community. so most time germans play with germans and talk german. they're unaccustomed to play with intertanional teams, i guess.

i didn't read the posts above...just wanted to add one's two cents.

The same goes to Portuguese people, we get used to speak English 'cause is much more easier and also only the children programs get dubbed.

Btw, German and English are from the same language family, from "Saxons" I think =p

WIN

In England we are forced to learn French & German, though most of us would rather learn Dutch or Spanish as we tend to travel there more often on holidays and clan meetings :P

We cant see so many movies in other languages as much as english speaking ones so its even harder to pick up stuff i guess where as alot of non english speaking countries see movies and other stuff in english quite often.

You get idiot gamers from all countries it makes no difference what language they speak or which country they are in.

Also if your on a German server and your German then your gonna speak your own language i guess, at least others can pick it up evenually and get a few things :P

I've travelled europe and found that language aint so much of a barrier as it used to be years ago, as now you can use a phone or computer and type the words and others can understand what you mean then.

I'm learning some Dutch and Spanish atm and a little French German & Polish as i dont want tobe ignorant and would like to be able to speak other languages too.

You have just compared French to English..... that was smart!

Row row, fight da powah!
Well, I think it's good that English is selected as the "world language".

Here, in Finland, we start learning english as soon as we enter the damn school (1st or 2nd grade, atleast where I live), although I knew English before i entered school (thanks for the Amiga, Commodore and Nintendo game makers)

But yeah, I think English is pretty easy language to learn, IF you actually want to learn it. I know some people are just so lazy, they don't want to learn it.

That's not the same thing at all though, is it?

I'm also Dutch, but the fact that a lot of Dutch people speak English quite well can also be viewed from another angle. France, Germany, England, etc are all big enough countries that they can rely on their own country for everything...whereas The Netherlands are a small country, we absolutely NEED trade, and therefore people who know how to trade=learning other languages.
Dutch is also one of the hardest languages in the world, which makes it relatively easy for us to learn easier languages like English. German and Dutch are also part of the same language family as English, Spanish and French are not.
It is of course true that our English education starts at a very young age, and continues throughout all school levels. I'm in university here, and half my subjects are exclusively in English, so that kind of forces you to learn.

And last but not least (I've seen others say it here as well), in France, Spain, and especially Germany, almost all programs which are originally English get dubbed into the native language. This is not at all constructive to learning English, in The Netherlands only children programs get dubbed for as far I know.

What a topic lol ...
I would like to talk about lot's of prejudice against french community...
First, We begin to learn english at 6, 7 ... At primary school ... But it's not very constructive... We are learning lot's of useless songs etc... We continue at college with grammary vocabulary irregular verbs etc... But the real commencement of our apprentissage, is at "Lycée" The english equivalent is College i believe... We have 3 years of a real english teaching ... But it's also very poor... We have to work alone or travel in a foreign country to be like Bilingual.... IT'S NOT BECAUSE WE ARE LAZZY.... But we have an national education very poor and not very useful...
I'm in "Terminal Litteraire Option Theatre" and i have my bac ( for you it's to graduate...) It's our certificate to begin in the real adult life... For you in england i do my last year in a litterary section ...
When we pass our "bac", our english test is to read an extract of text, answer the questions about this text, do a traduction and we have to write a little story concerning the text ... (250 words... ) It's very easy ! And we are supposed to use english everyday ... But with our education, if we dont meet english people or talking in english on internet, we cant be autonomous later... We know, teacher are always repeating the same sentence... "English is the most important language of the world you have to learn it, it's an obligation" ... bla bla bla... And None of french say : " French is the best language ! We doesn't have to learn english, it's useless" No omg ! ... French are very open minded, but it's sure... In our school education, English is not a priority...
Sorry for my lot's of mistakes... I try to be understandable.
Hope i dont discredit french people with my explication.

Its not an only German Problem, its all aroudn the world, and problem No.1 is that anyone seems to be think like u.... the germans tell the same about french, poland.... etc. and other countries say it about germans, but the problem is that none realy wants to make the first step into a friendly conversation.
first thing is u start to pull all germans over one thing.... thats not correct ( and btw iam not german ) u can find guys like u explained in every country in any culture and so on... if u dont trust me, pls go to Berlin, Hamburg, Munich or any other German City and u will see that in evry city in germany are living more as 100 cultures....
pls u all mega NERDS show me one country on this planet where u can find this, and exspecicaly show me ONE COUTNRY where these people live without civil war ?? pls show me!!! isnt it more like so that u had a privat problem with some germans in your games where u play? this can happen because in germany u can find many idiots, can be that u forgot that in germany live 85 million people and in netherland not more as 10 million? and btw the same things u said here i heard from dutch friends about alot of peoples in your own country, because over hundreds of years u let the black peoples live like slaves in ur country and in places like South Afrika? pls before anyone here start thinkin the same like "Nyte" think about it and let it going through ur brain before start racism shit, like i saw here....
and its a form of racism! we must accepts that we are all humans, equal to the nation, coutry or culture we are! in first thing WE ARE ALL SAME!!! if we started to think like this, then we can talk about languages and more, but only to say hey germans are lame, or duthc are lame or whatever.... we need to search first our own faults and then let us come nearer to speak about our social problems aroudn all humans....

pls think about it ! peace !

ps. and before anyone flame agaisnt me, iam dizi from Berlin, my parents are Dutch and Ost Preussen and i lived for long time in Berlin Wedding, where u can find over 100 of different Nations, Cultures and more... a crime rate like near South Central Los Angeles and all but not friendly area, and there u realy feel ugly if u stand in school and u hear 20 or more different languages....
and btw u all the people around germany, wanted it, u all wanted that in germany so many different nations live... and now u all need to live with it, u all say germans suck, but u never knew if it was realy a german which flamed against u. think about it!


and btw if i see what bl1ng wrote ....omg... its a shame for germany, but he dont stand for all people in germany, he is only one who never understood whats going on @ planet earth.

fucking embarrassing for other germans

btw, i agree, also cba to watch dubbed movies

You should go on holliday in France and look at all the Dutchies trying to talk french ...
Same thing.

I'm french, and that's right, frenchies are really bad in english. The way we learn it at school is wrong. I've learned english for 10 years and I'm clearly not fluent, I read it easily, but I can barely understand spoken english or write it. We have to learn english on our own if we want to improve.
On TV we don't have any english shows, this is french or nothing. French people won't buy a game, a DVD, or anything else if it's not dubbed.

Most of french probably don't speak english because they simply can't.

i was in alot of shoutcast teams and did casts in english and german.. so there are some living examplars who can speak english flawlessly

but not in the world!

Who decided anyway to get English as world language. As far as i know their are more German/French people in west-europe than their are English people.. Not that I support the use of Deutch! ö It's just odd to force people speaking a language you want to hear..

windek (rx) 24 Mar 00:09 Reply
ok we was had alot fun from this match DD the best thing is that "u are so sad" DD sad is this u are lost and peoples like u never acceptating loses ;]] noobs


THATS POLISH ENGLISH....i think they talk/write english very well....thats just one example of millions..

Damn when I read which ppl want to defend Germany I just have to laugh (at least at most of them). My english isn't the best either but I'm still going to school and try to improve it. Whatever, no wonder why many ppl complain about Germans when I read the comments of some of them. Probably because the most smart Germans don't play computer games at all? :P

back to the topic: When I don't know if my opponent/teammate can speak german I just ask him. I mean even if your english sucks you still should be able to ask him if he's german or if he can speak german. When he's german then you can speak german with him if not just stfu :>

But why its about germans only? Imho russians are even worse. Everytime I meet one and I ask him something he answers me with his russian crap^^

I pretty much disagree with the blog.
The Majority of Germans ive ever played an online game with, have used perfectly reasonable English (And When i have visited Germany itself, and encountered a language barrier due to my lack of German fluency, I have been accepted openly with the English tounge).
I would say that the french definitely do not have a tendency to learn English - and alot of french gamers do have very limited English speaking, but then, I'd like to compare the amount of English speaking french/germans against the french/german speaking English - and see who is lacking.

Clanbase is an international site (with a rule for using internationally accepted languages) - however, dutch seems freely accepted on here due to the large number of dutch admins, and I wouldnt say dutch is an internationally spoken language. Infact, more people speak french or German so...logic?

Going back to the above point. Clanbase has language restrictions, but, games do not. If you play a game and your team m8's can not speak your language (or choose not to), then thats a personal choice and you have to live with it (OR LEARN THEIR LANGUAGE?!)

I agree with t/s

Ok, I didn't read the entire article all the way throught but I could already tell that you are working stereotypes left and right.

Not every German thinks that you should be able to speak his language. That's utter bullshit. And if you meet these people, then just live with it. Not everybody is able to speak and write English as proper as you do.

I'm not offended by this althought I'm German. I'm very well aware that my fellow countrymen don't know shit about the English language. This is mainly because we have dubbed television and we are somewhat not really exposed to the English language except songs, some minor ads on TV and school. I didn't learn English at school. I taught it somewhat myself and now I'm studying English and Danish in Denmark.

The point being here is that the French and German population have a disadvantage over the small countries who are "forced" to learn the their languages. It's simple as that. I hate dubbed movies. I don't watch German television and I can't stand the German population. I just love the English language. But it is obviosu that not everyone shares this with me.

So, next time, when you meet and idiotic German or French just ignore him or explain in very simple English that you don't speak their language. If they don't get that, well move on with our live and pray that maybe sometime they will learn it.

Who cares... There are people who dont want to speak languages other than their own in every country. Germany happens to have a much larger population so there are more people like that.
BTW, to all you fellow English people out there if you didnt get taught one or two foreign languages at school you must have gone to a pretty shit school. No wonder this country is so full of idiots.

Bumping!

I have met my share of Germand and French people aswell in real life and online.
The fact is that Germans online (at least the ones that i don't call my friends) are very cocky. They think they are the best and by thinking so they expect you to know their language.
As helpfull as i am i answer them in German but when i make small typing errors (for example : meinen instead of meine) they will start to laugh etc..
Well a good sign of respect that is! i am decent enought to let them speak their own language to me so they dont need to translate everything in bad englisch for me.
So that is the part that i hate about the germans i met online.
*AGAIN THIS DOES NOT CONCERN ALL GERMANS*

As for French people, the players that i met spoke very good englisch and being Dutch (as on the education of these 3 languages) i even understood some French.

lol who gives a rats ass ?!

"But why are Germans doing this?" - Because many people out of the netherlands can speak german (i am german )

We are dutch, we speak 4 languages and smoke marijuana. My point is that they should learn to speak ours....or english.
Did you read my entire post/comments?

wie sind die hollander wie komme mit sien alleuh!

Ich kann nicht so gute deutsch sprechen, but hey who care right? despite the way we speak we can get into servers where we speak are very own language... das ist nicht so bad right?
I'm actually trying to learn more languages to go on vacation but anyways it's also handy with games so.

Das ist super toll!

Thank you and goodnight!

NyteMyre, if u got a complain about languages of other country's that your problem and your problem only.

Go take a course and learn a language so that u can curse to them in there way of speaking. You have to give time and energy and ofcourse a positive mind to learn another countrys language besides your own.

As a Clanbase Crew member u should know this. right? or am i wrong?

PS: ich bin auch eine hollander...

....german is the most spoken leaguage in europe !

but u have to say that the most of the international players are talking in their native language in the net !?

If ur pissed of this native laguages just dont play on the net.
Or flame them ^^

+1 mate,
The germans would look suprised when we order some food in dutch @ their "IMBIS"
bb

<3 .de

i think that the BEST country to live in, is : BELGIUM.
WHY?
because here we are learning English , dutch and German at school, with this kind of gouvernment we all gonna be sociable in others countries :P btw i think languages are the base of all. And if everybody change a little bit and learn a foreign languages the life and the game, in this case, ll be better.

Ciao tutti, Au revoir, Tot zien , See you , tchuss , a dios chicos y chicas

best greetings WkD'

POWNED?!

.

Guess you are talking about 40+
Since younger generation gets german in high school. When I was on holiday in Germany, i tried to speak as much german as possible

(read: we used dutch words with a german-sounding-twist to it )

And look retarded aswell!

If you do not speak English made as me use a translator on the net ;D

Example #4. (non-game)

Hundred of redskinned dutchies speak dutch when they are on holliday in germany lol

WW2.... YEY \o/

You must be a retard. 'I live in germany, so no need to learn english'. Ye, with this attitude you dont need english no, cuz you wont accomplish shit in your life anyway. England and Germany were never friends? Name me one non-communistic country that was friends with Germany.

Gotti isn't wrong.. in germany u dont have to use english, just at school... if u rly wanna speak english u have to learn it by yourself... and if u never talked it rly and KNOW ur english is bad, why use it @ inet and blame yourself? I think nobody is perfect, i make alot of mistakes ofc, but i try to speak it, atleast coz i am playing with some eu guys... the German State didnt understand how important is english... u can live well without english... example Spain, Austria, Italia, croatia... they all understand german as well. So where is the reason for a german Guy to learn english... there is no reasen.. u dont need it so u dont wanna learn it... thats the problem... i live also in germany, thats why i know it...


so far...

And another one gets the joke

"although writhing was another thing."

I see.

It's all about the dubbing, if there would be films with subtitles instead of dubs, the skills of the most germans would raise like 3 times. I know it from myself, the english we learn at school is horrible, all who were able to finish school, can describe the way to the trainstation ... that's the english level they are teaching us. If i wouldn't play mmo´s with people from the US and play sometimes with guys from UK, i wouldn't be at this english level i am at the moment. In germany it's not about learning it, it's about using it, so if u got most friends outdoor u won't speak english alot.

So if they don't use it in theyr real life why should they do it while having fun at the PC playing a game with theyr german friends. Don't judge those guys bc of theyr bad english, ignore them if they behave like retards ...

I personally love to speak english and im interested in advancing it ... but every german got the decission to make himself if he wants to speak it or not, cause nobody in germany HAVE TO do it.

Think Nerdovic lol English is an International Language , Games are international und wann ein Deutscher mit seine bratwurts deutsch gehst sprechen ist immer nicht schön , allmost everybodys speaks english ( In holland ur learn it from ur 9th year )

So be pro , Talk English Yo!

cant see the point on this blog. i am german and my english is very bad. but hey, WHO THE FUCK CARES????

Like u said: we dont need to learn, because we live in germany and what a surprise we speak german in our country. so now give me just one reason why i should learn english? and btw england and germany was never good friends so just one reason more to NOT learn it

ALLER LES BLEUS

I doubt you based that statement on facts. The only Dutch people who aren't able to speak and write English properly are the kids younger than 12 and the foreigners who don't even bother going to school or learn the Dutch language.

I think this blog is very well written. A lot of Germans, French but also others like the Hungarians and the Polish. Though I feel like the Polish try more than the other three mentioned above.

Hungarians are the worst in my opinion. Noone but them understands their language. Their language is the hardest language to learn. Surely the English language should be a piece of cake for them.

I can understand the German and French language a little bit, but not everyone can so I think it's fair to choose a language that everyone can learn to speak and write. And that language is English, as it's one of the easiest languages to learn and it's already spoken alot all over the globe.

Got any numbers of that?

70% of The Netherlands is able to speak English.
67% of the German citizens claim to be able to communicate in at least one foreign language, 27% in at least two languages other than their own

There are so many Dutch people who can't even talk let along write English so what's your point? It all depends from person to person
Some people can just learn languages faster then other

Als ob's mich kümmern würde...

Hah!

yer pretty damn clueless if you think all germans are like that. most 'new generation' germans speak english very well and are willing to learn english and adapt to it, but i play cod4 which is much more active (competitively) than lets say bf2. in games like bf2 there are more funclans with like 30 30-year-olds playing together on public and always speaking german to eachother, they just cba to speak english, which is quite annoying.

ur just picking on a small group of germans from ur personal experience, while most of the more serious gamers almost master english and have learnt it throughout their gaming 'career'.

ik ben duitser maar prat ik nederlands. ik heb het niet geleerd, mijn vrienden hebben het me geleerd. hardest language, dunno where you got that from but thats bs soz. and yeah some germans are arrogant or ignorant and only speak german with everyone and dont care if the person understands it or not. but this blogs about nationalities and languages on cb are pathetic. stop it, or am I complaining about dutch whineskills in public? yeah I know I did it now but I guess you know what I'm on about.

omg germany is way bigger than the netherlands.
so there are many more german gamers around.
I am geman and everybody i played with was able to understand and to talk english. maybe there are some who are too stupid to learn it but every guy whos going to school got english-lessons after the elementary.
So i think the reason why you face so many german player who dont speak english or got german serverrules etc is that they just dont need to speak english they are too lazy they play with 90% germans.
its not correct that germans cant speak english they do it WAY better than france italian spain etc.
i think most germans are just some bad ass motherfuckers :>

wow...that's pretty......lame

First of all: I'm German and I also used to live in France.

I have read through half the commentaries, so I don't know if actually someone brought up an important fact about France.

They have laws to protect their "wonderful" language. Every new word that appears, gets a french word which most of the time sounds total different from the english word. In Germany for instance, english words are just adopted.

There alse exists a law that like 80% of the music in radio stations must be in French.

Ik grijp je in je lurven, schorriemorrie!

Even in child shows (those dutch-dubbed anime's) where it's very cool to translate power in...POWER!


-edit-
Wow, i said the same thing in some other comment on this blog

i remember being in germany, watching TV. The movie good morning vietnam was on, so robin williams shouted "GUTEN MORGENNNNN VIETNAMMM" and i laughed my ass off

lack of subtitles is one of the important reasons germans don't understand english, this goes for many other nationalities aswell.

On the other hand f.e. in dutch language, more and more english words replace authentic dutch words. Its 'cool' to use english in NL. Many dutchies feel their own language sounds corny

maybe true but i guess he is not talking about that its difficult to learn speaking dutch but to master dutch with all his grammar.

Learn to speak dutch is not that difficult. But fully understand the grammar is almost mission impossible. We have such strange rules how words need to be spelled etc etc. Moreover every rule has his exceptions.

cu

..

Hast du Probleme damit?

\o/

Yo. There are 3 languages with international circulation : english, german and french. U from all the ppl's (dutch) should understand all 3 coz ur language is a mix from those 3.

very nice blog : D

and its back in

And it happened guys....

This blog is FINALLY out of the hot blog section.
It's been there for almost a year...


thanks for the comments and the laughs

dutch is not hardest to learn u dont even have dual words if u see 2 guys u say they or them, only us and 1 other nation has that

Good god you should take a look in your history book again. The GDR (DDR) was a socialist country, not a communist one. And you were allowed to talk and learn english; you were just in need of the best possible marks in the russian language to be allowed to take part in an english course.

But back to the topic:
The "problem" is, the german population is the biggest in europe (82 mio) with a lot of gamers, so it's quite obvious that someone will understand you, if you're talking german on a server - no matter which game.
I agree, they shouldn't talk german since every game on clanbase is a multinational game and therefore you should use english and I don't get how someone can refuse this.
I don't think it's because of the lack of education, I learn english since the 3rd grade (and still I'm not really good, but who cares) and it's usual to germans from saxony (dno how it is in other german federal states).

Oh, not to mention that germans and frenchs aren't the only nations, there are a lot of dutchs, swedish, italian,... who primarily talk there own language.


edit:
I forgot to mention that the so beloved english language (same as dutch and some other languages as well) wouldn't exist without germans, since it once was a "western germanic language" :P

gosh, most of you obviously dislike germans. shame on you! and the dutchies are not always talking english either when playing (or in irc or idk). it just goes POKJE OP JE OOG or like that. and you can't deny this.
period.

Annanin amini sikim oruspunun evladin ,götveren sunun bunun cocugu pislik

Hört sich fast so an als wenn du die deutschen diskriminierst, dass sie deutsch sprechen

please translate...

Thank you for taking your time and read the other comments.

''Why do all Germans have this crazy idea that the entire world speaks and understands the German language?''

How dare you stereotype, when you've played moh:aa. You should know full well, that dutchies aren't any different. 8 out of 10 speak horrible english and only whine at you with:''kanker this, kanker that'' and the usual get aids, cancer, nigga comments. See, I can stereotype too and it's sadly the truth.

''You won't find any English words on German Television.''

Shows how little you know, infact, our language is falling apart.
Either way I couldn't give 2 shits about it. I prefer english at any given time.

However, I agree on the ''germans on vacation example''.

btw. O shit, I write fancy english and I'm german, BLASPHEMY!

I have to agree with you there. Even on Call Of Duty 4 we have got Germans refusing to speak english on UK servers, then we join a 24/7 crash server (Germans love Crash on CoD 4) the server rules are in ... Do I need to say it? Then they start babbling about you using "terminator" and other CoD 4 terms only the germans have in their game... Last Stand is too hard for them to understand I think...

Lets face it, Germans are ignorant when it comes down to language...

PS: My grandparrents are German... So no offence intended...

Tbh I think English is probably the easiest language to learn because it doesn't have loads of rules and if you try to speak it and make a few errors an English speaking person will be able to understand it a lot easier, unlike an English person attempting to say a German phrase where they could say something that means the exact opposite of what they meant it to because of the way the 2 differing languages work.

Also in most games I play, most of the people that type in English don't 'actually' type in English if you know what i mean They usually type in an almost texting format which is very simple so is very easy to pick up on. I dont think any other language has a shorthand, easy way of speaking/typing it, do they?

-edit-

Double post

No, off course my English is not perfect. But at least I use it, and people usually understand me, even if it's grammatically incorrect. That's different then not using English at all.

And don't forget about the "second law of Jinx":




(and also his first law
)

i dont want to bash, but nyte, ur english isnt nearly as good as you think it is... and i think that this is the case with most dutchies.

they might be good COMPARED to the germans and the french, but they hardly ever really master the english language, especially since most dutch gamers have a vmbo background (easiest form of college/high school)

What I think is the problem, is that Spain, Italy, Germany and France, are such big countries that they can manage on their own very well. Spanish/Italians can't speak English either, it's certainly not only the Germans. They just feel they don't need different languages as much there. The Netherlands on the other hand is a small country that depends on the outside, and the most important facilities we have would be Schiphol Airport and the Docks in Rotterdam. Those are both international.

Another thing is of course what you mentioned in your blog, that Dutch is one of the most difficult languages (behind Chinese and Hungarian?), and thus it would be natural to assume that we can learn less difficult languages easier than for example the Germans.

But bottom line is, that we try and they don't. They don't have English on the TV, and everything gets translated into their language, so they never have to learn the hard way like we did (I'm also Dutch). This blog is a bit of a generalization though, because it is not so for everyone... Though I must say a bigger part than in The Netherlands.

If they would just put more English on the TV in those countries it would do miracles!

They are just stubbern idiots. Can't stand it.
My reaction when they start in German?

E N GLISH
ENGLISH!!

If they don't respond in English, (which they NEVER do), they get a flame.

ofcourse we have to stop generalising but yet i gree many Germans tend to speak in their own language.. I live in the Netherlands myself and often a German comes to me and asks me something in German.. I think wtf? you're in non-german speaking country and you just asume we talk German? I am not really annoyed by it or anything but i wanna know "why?" I study International Communications and 60 % of my class consists of people from Germany. These people speak English fluently but that logical otherwise they would not have chosen a international study.

I asked my German class mates why do Germans tend to always speak in their own language? they said it was complicated ( gosh, like that wasn't obvious..) They told me that for a huge part it had to do with the way they were raised by their parents. My German friend said: "We grow up with german language only, ofcourse that's the same in holland but many things are in english in the Netherlands like : advertisements, movies, many words, etc etc. In Germany most things are dubbed and german" ," Furthermore because everything around us is german we tend to think like everyone can speak german. Ofcourse at a later age we know better but this way of thinking is injected deep and deep in our head"

But from my perspective it seems strange.. When i visit a other country and they cant understand my language i speak english so they can understand me. Thats some form of respect. So Germans dont have any Respect? or are they lazy? arrogant? think they are better?

I really dont know. maybe some sort of nationalism? protectionism? so ye maybe it has to do with how german kids are raised.
If the german government would sub english programmes/movies etc and make Germany more english friendly, than Germans would be able and more willing to speak english in future.

I am 19 years old right now but i know when i get kids ill raise them trilangual. Dutch, English and Chinese. ( cant speak a single word chinese right now but ok.) Why chinese? because i think they are the country of the future. English became the world language because The U.S had worldpower. I see china becoming one and therefore i want to teach my kids that language. To be succesful and to have more possibilities than others.
This is also one of the reasons why i love speaking english. It gives me opportunities: For doing business abroad or making friends from all over the world.

These seem to be good arguments for me. Do most Germans dont want these opportunities? for a business deal in Japan you will never succeed in speaking German. Or is it that you guys dont need this? Germany provides everything?

For me getting to know different cultures and learn about them is one of the most important things. Learning about other cultures while talking Dutch in those countries would turn into a failure.

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.

quote: "There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication.... Try the experiment of communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing."

You forget spanish, the most talked around the world behind Chinese and english ofc ...

I´m german and working in a golfclub next to scandinavia, and most of the scandinavians are speaking very good english. But there are also plenty of people coming in and starting in their language. I dont blame then! We want to make buisiness with them so we are speaking danish, swedish ...!

I think there is nothing special about this blog! Just a personal feeling.

But here a very funny thing which fits perfectly here! Dont mention the war!



Oh, you are german, i thought there is something wrong with you!

I'm dutch as well at tbh the dutch can be just as horrible at it. I often pretend I'm english just so they don't add me to their friendslist and bug me for games 24/7 because they finally found someone that understands their gibberish.

just a few points from a german (that have probably been stated before, but i don't have time to read the whole blog, sry):

- you do have a point, many germans tend to speak german first and other languages afterwards. but there are reasons for this:

one of them probably is that many germans travel, they bring money to other countries. they like to stay at the hotel pretty often, too. and hotel personnel actually pretty often knows at least some basic words not only in english but in german (and french), too. on arrival you're not too rarely welcomed in german, what makes speaking german even more appealing.

germany is also a pretty rich and big european country and therefore an attractive market. translating products for that market pays off. thus, that's happening very often. translated movies are just one example of many.

- you're dutch, and the netherlands are our neighbours. germans travel very often to the netherlands, and many germans do think dutch ppl can understand german. i don't know if they think so because they guess you learn it in school, or because german and dutch sound kind of similar (probably a mixture of both). but anyway, in that sense the netherlands are a 'special case'. you'll find a lot more germans trying to speak german in the netherlands than you'll find germans trying to speak german in france, for example.

- i think there are quite some germans (mostly older ppl) that can't even talk in english (for historical reasons)

- you can find official german servers for a lot of games. as a german you can choose german versions of games and servers almost all the time. having to speak english happens less often for germans than for, lets say: dutch ppl.

- on the internet there are many young germans to be found who didn't have english in school for a longer time, yet.

- i'm pretty sure you can find many servers with non-english server rules and messages in any country in the world

- your disclaimer says "no offense to germans in general", yet you're making generalizing statements before:





don't contradict yourself ;>


anyway, i'll do my best to make more germans speak english first on international occasions ^^

it's just because we don't like you! =p

You got a point there. It's German attitude in some way. Most Germans can't be bothered to speak anything else. I made it my front and foremost rule to use English as much as possible while online. I'm dealing with lots of people from various countries and it won't get my anywhere if I insisted on my native language.

Well this blog can't be a coincident. I said this for ages. I couldn't agree more.

The french are really bad at English!

Man...

I play(ed) on many different servers and I know how the things are.

Dutch ppl write dutch messages, French ppl always talk to much on UT2003 and 99,5% in french

And other countries-players do the same

added a video

What if the guy says: "There's a enemy around the corner, don't go".... or: "Do you have any nades left"...or: "I have [something]...if you go [something]...we can [something]".

It's just that it's annoying they instantly assume you are talking their language.

Really, who cares, if someone talks in a language i don't understand then i don't respond, you need to learn to just enjoy the game and stop getting hung up on these completely irrelevant issues.

english > german

i think germans are always talking to you in german, because you are dutch and they think you can understand many parts of it. maye because dutch and "plattdeutsch" sounds similar =)

Not everyone has a talent for languages.

je had gewoon HAVO moeten doen had je frans en duits :P

ban mrs. Merkel then! <no offense>

<3 being Belgian!

wie wat jetzt ihr versteht uns garnicht?

jesus and that are all you'r problems?

cmon i know that not all germans are good in English... i have a lot of friends who have probs with that language... my english isn't perfect either as you can see...

there are a lot who suffer under bad education... our three way education system fuck up a lot of people... in Huptschule (basic school just 9 Years then you drop out) you learn english only 4 years and that on a base which other countrys are done with after 2 Years...

after all i speak sometimes German on int server too but thats most the times like...

"hi might how are you? you gonna play l8er some fw or stuff like that?" so most the times some personal stuff about l8ter planing... but everybody thinks after a "Hey x-man wie schauts spielst du später noch oder biste gleich weg" they all think i insulted every other country and want to start world war 3...

cmon get seriouse...

everyone call the germans racists but all i read here is more racism then anything i hered back home in the little racist bar (which gets every weekend bashed from some Turkish and russian guys)

get over it that there are a lot of germans who are just not able to learn other languages because they have lost all confidence in our education system..

im from germany. young german people can speak english very much and do this also. most older germans cant speak english because in school they were teached in russian language. there scared to make mistakes (like me oO).

the unification of east and westgermany. in eastgermany it wasnt allowed to get more information of western things, like tv, politics and more. eastgermany (before unification eastgermany was communist) only had contact with russia and so most ppl cant speak english / dont want to speak.

hope it helps to understand you. and BIG sry for bad english

Achterlijken aap... Jongen toch
--------------------------------------
Retarded monkey... Boy oh boy


I'm from Belgium, and I'll list you the languages I speak:
- Dutch
- French
- German
- English
I understand Latin (reading texts etc)
I can talk a bit of Spanish
I can make people understand me in Swedish (Jag talar lite svenska och jag ska studerar svenska : ))

You should just learn English - French - German, which isn't hard at all... Seriously, if you're Dutch you have the privilege on learning atleast those 3 languages, also DO it then.

hmmmmm.....

im a german and i know that some german mean they must speak german on international servers but not all germans are so stupid!
i dont know why they do that but perhaps they think its cool to speak german ?????
I learned my english at scool and have some english friends in GB were i train that language.

Thats not an apologize but if i was join some english server or international server at the first time i was blamed as NAZI.

Normaly i had ignorated so stupid people but sometimes it is nerving.

But u are right if u say that the language on international servers are most english!!!

so Merry Christmas @ All

In German Translation

Fröhliche Weihnachten )

And coming to the point of this blog, there's something that's very annoying that's going on in the gaming public world. I'm talking about Germans!


Its not only in the game world its also irl :P

To be fair that must be due to lack of teaching of a high level or alternatively the stupidity of the pupils

Considering that according to the pretty recent Easiest Language to Learn -survey Dutch is in the top 5 of the easiest languages to learn: consequently it's supposed to be pretty easy to learn, innit?

I've studied plenty of languages during the past ten years (Finnish, Swedish, English, German, French & Russian) and I must say that English, Swedish, French and German are by far the easiest of those.

On top of that it's easy to learn one of those four languages if you're already aware of some other. For instance if you speak English as your native language it's easy to learn Swedish or at least it should be considering that they're connected to each other: same kind of grammar, borrowed words etc. And Dutch is also part of this family so I don't wonder why it should be easy to get the hang of it.

That is to say Finnish & Russian are a lot harder due to their some sort of uniqueness.

But I also agree on the argument that English should be kept as the "official" gaming language if you pay regard to its global position.

Ich bin nicht einverstanden! Ich glaube, die Deutschen sind so hochwertig, daher jeder in der Welt sollte Deutsch sprechen. Englisch ist Müll. Deutsch sprechen ..

joke! i agree, we should keep one language and i dont see why they think german is best..

meant we don't dub over here of course, just sub

We used too. In my child-days, i used to watch cartoons with English voices and Dutch subs. But for some unknown reason, they decided to dub cartoons. It's very hard nowadays to find a cartoon with the original voices in The Netherlands.

(really a shame, EEK the CAT ruled, but when they dubbed it...it's sucked)

-edit-

200th comment \o/

quite honestly it's just a combination.

Dutch, Belgian and Scandinavian are by far the best linguists in Europe, and i know both the Netherlands and Belgium don't sub their TV shows, which makes kids grow up with other languages (mainly English of course).

In quite a few countries language education is also lacking a lot. Over here (Belgium), there's no way around learning French, English and German even if your studying Science-Math.

There's the genes...
English speaking people deem themselves too important and don't even bother learning other languages.
French people are way too proud about their elite language (thing of the past) to get into English very deeply.
No idea what the deal with German people is, they're actually pretty good with English, but seem to think their language is understood everywhere as well.

Lastly there's just the difficulty of learning languages. It's easy to learn other languages as long as they seem familiar. But moving outside that family (slavic, germanic, roman) is a very hard thing to do.

and until you get countries to change their education, it's not going to improve

Mate, I'm just saying that if all EU languages are all similiar.. Check out finnish.. It's tough for a foreigner from most other countries (not counting Estonia etc. with the similiar languages, or China/Korea (I've heard that the way they pronounce is about the way that finns pronounce.). It's just that the order of the words in a sentence differs so much, though, it's in a way easy to understand. Also, words have so many cases and they're combined alot to make new words etc.. It's tough, ain't saying it's the toughest though. It depends on the person and their nationality. Some get it easy, others don't get it at all.

Dude, I salute you for not being a dick but a really considerant guy. Thank you, this is what France should be all about!

No ... i think all other european languages are closer then they are too english i think if you master dutch or are dutch it should be much easier to leatrn english then if an english person were to learn dutch...

For example all you people speak about subjects like 'house big' in your language is actually supposed to be 'big house ' that kind of thing so it can confuse people since you speak about things the wrong way around

Also isnt dutch more like german so yeh well .
And in france they are just dislike all other languages you tell them in french you dont speak french and they are insulted ...

Also i did have the feeling that online playing games was quite worrying on certian games (like warcraft 3 or UT) you ask where are you from and they were 'French, German or russian' im not sure if this shows something but germany must have the largest gaming community in europe

BTW not russian on ut ... that was warcraft 3

But then again im english and if you ask most of the english people in my school if they would learn another language they would say 'no what is the point' so there is a downside i suppose to everyone speaking and knowning one language .. One of my mates from yes i must say 'germany' gets pissed off at my school since they drop languages at year 10 onwards unless over 20 pick whatever language ... But thats because in my year of 250 student only 3 people actually wanted to carry on a language and 1 or 2 were foreign in the first place

But then again i dont think he should have been allowed to take a german test in england since its automatic 100% lol

Also i think if you can learn one european language you can learn them all they are quite similar . Asian what is that though flipping heiroglphics (not) ...

I totally approve of your theory even though I'm French.
I can explain you why "frenchies" lack so much skills in english:
First of all, we start to study english seriously when we reach 12 years old.
Then, we have like one teacher for 30 pupils, we never pratice oral, what we only do is to learn some english sentences.

Third reason, english and dutch are very close. It's a lot easier for dutch to learn english than french. French is a latin language, not a roman one.
However, even if we are not " high skilled" in english, some of us still manage to understand and be understood, like me, even if i make many mistakes. Why does the german all speak german? I think the mentioned reasons down are the right ones.

EDIT: my parents didnt put me in an english nursery, i just got better because of my " native abilities" in foreign languages.

You Sir, just won the internet.

/golfclap.

First of all, frenchie, we could start off by the spelling of the word 'retard'. It's not redtard, obviously. Neither is it ritard. It's retard, retard and, yet again, retard.. Dipshit.

And for the record, does it matter if french is the worlds 3rd most spoken language, when even the ones without fluent skills in the language count? English is the language most used in international affairs, transactions, business, everyday life, gaming, communities, general discussion etc.. So, if the majority of the content is in english, why the heck should we start to speak french instead? And by the way, you can stop people from speaking their own language on your server/forum/community, just by banning them.. But we're not looking for means, but a reason for the idiocracy of people not willing to board the 'being polite' -train and just being ignorant.

In my personal opinion, which doesn't consider every single inhabitant of France, not probably even the majority, but the ones being in the spotlight by being as ignorant as they are - should really consider the behavior code of the site/server they're at. Why make things hard for others, and make yourself seem like a dick, when you can just give in a bit and help yourself and the others?

For a good example,

http://www.sk-gaming.com -site, which is the portal I myself get most of my newsfeed on what's happening on various game scenes and international events, gets its fair share of the frenchies whom will not speak the official language of the site which is to be spoken because of: 1. The server rules tell you to do so and 2. It's polite, considerant and nice.

Why the heck is it so hard to blend in and do as everyone, without an exception, is asked to do?

I agree, every country has it's share, but you guys - along with the germans - just overwhelm the petty competition set by the other countries.

And once more, before I end my really messy and unorganized post, I would like to ask you all viewers to remember, that it's not every single french/german/insert country heres inhabitants fault that these people do exist, I just ask for them to not take this as an insult against them because it's not. Only appointed to those ignorant idiots.

P.S. Somebody said that the education system has forced english lessons at the second, and forced swedish at the 7th grade in Finland, which is not true. School systems have indepent rights to choose that at which point do they start to have linguistic education, and in what languages do they have it, for the kids. For example, I'm finnish but since kindergarden I've been studying english, and my forced swedish lessons lasted from the 2nd to the 9th grade. Now, in highschool, I can choose wether to continue studying english and/or swedish.

Gn, sleep tight.

- End of the friggin long post -

oh yes, another "bash the germans" blog item, i'm loving those.
but well, you got a point, most of the germans on irc ain't able to speak proper english, even my eyes start to bleed when i see their attempts to write a flawless english sentence :P
blame the german schools / teachers, i dont give shit \o

I've also noticed that Germans are ignorant when it comes to language, I'm probably speaking out my arse but I think it stems from the old days, you know, when a giant dick head convinces an entire country that they are a superior race (or whatever that lunatic told you guys) its going to have a lasting effect.

I will add though, Its certainly not Germans alone that are guilty of refusal to speak English. I have seen many many others including the Dutch. Germans seem to be the main ones though.

"ClanBase is an international site so please write your comments in English. Postings in another language are removed."

That's a good example right there, there's a reason why international games and sites use English and that is because it is the most widely spoken language in the developed world (1.8 billion). I run a very popular cod4 zombie server and have done for nearly a year now and I find the most common ignorant people are the French, Polish, and Germans. They ignore the server rules which state that it is an international server and therefore they should use English, and even ignore me when I tell them to speak English, yet miraculously as soon as I threaten to ban or kick them, all of a sudden they know what I'm saying and start talking English. Very frustrating! The dutch are generally really good as are the Belgians, but it seems there's a reluctance and almost refusal to use English. German isn't that different, I studied it in school and English is in itself a West Germanic-Frisian language that has routes in Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia and also Latin, it's almost like a Mongrel language with influences from lots of areas of Europe, if anything, I would say German is the closest language to it, so why the ignorance? Perhaps it's part of that eternal arrogance that Germans, French and Polish seem to have. Some might say the English are arrogant because we expect everyone else to speak it but hey, you've seen the figures, it's a damn sight easier! Imagine if every international game or website was in German, that'd be pretty hard.

first!

i believe it's mandarin china

i'm from northern germany, far away from the most imigrated ppl and here, we got a quiet good knowleadge of english. It's better then in southern germany and all big citys. We have many "foreigners" in our country and most of them aren't good in school, thats the only way to learn it here. In television we got some tv shows like mtv with english language, also with german subtitle, but its not a way to learn it. The most ppl in germany who didn't learn it in school, won't learn it after anymore. Also it's not much important to have a good english knowledge here as u don't really need it your later job. I learned the most via online gaming and i'm far away from good english as u maybe can see

I can't identify with your post f.e. But in my old school class there were also many ppl who couldn't be arsed with english language, cuz we really don't need it. I always wanted to learn it, but not many germans think like me and they are selfish enough to be like that.

But i would also say that you shouldn't talk bad about germany, there are many other countries in europe who are talking english much worser then us. Sweden, Norway have to learn it much harder then us, cuz they got english tv channels etc?!

also many german ppl getting angry in the online gaming scene, cuz you can hear it every day, the word "nazi" . I can't be arsed to get called like that from a polish guy for example, if i hear that it makes me a nazi tbh, i really get a hate to those ppl. Germany is so much far away to be a nazi country that it's sad. I leave quiet far away from all those imigrated ppl and i can really be happy. Cuz they're destroying us and i'm against every nazi, if u think that now. Many guys in our country can't even talk correct german with 18 years, so why do you expect they can speak english?

i believe the hardest language to learn is islandic(?).

"I've read somewhere that dutch is one of the hardest languages to learn in the world. That seems pretty obvious since most of the dutch can't even write/speak it perfectly themselves."

lol.. dutch doesnt differ much from english or german.. belongs in the same group of 'germanian' languages (not sure of the word). hardest languages in europe are hungarian and finnish..

silly ppl in portugal^^

lmfao
half of Afrika :')))))))))))

dude... in portugal cinema + tv is in english aswell... and they can´t speak english at all... so that point doesn`t count...

In the netherlands the stuff in TV and many other things are in english. So english is just a language they have to speak.
In germany ppl have everything in german... tv,radio,cinema just everything.
I agree to the part that germany is one of the best english speaking countrys in europe. But i think its just a little barrier to talk english for most of the ppl cause besides the "gaming" you dont rly have to talk english in germany at all. Even if we have it since the 5th class in school.
So in my oppinion thats the main reason why most germans just dont do it ,even if they could.
I am german and i try to talk english whenever its needed.

These countries should give up their silly languages and embrace English, the language spoken by the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Half of Africa and some Indians too.

Just don't bother with your languages you silly people. They have no worth.

kno exactly what u mean,
can't stand the ppl in GW even on english districts talking
foreign languages, some ppl just can't adjust

--- german comment ---


Well, what can I say about this. I live and I was born in Germany. But my herritage is portuguese, both of my parents imigrated to Germany quite a lot of years ago.
And if there is one thing I can say, than it is that Germans are one of Europes best speaking english, except for the UK... obviously.
Did you ever hear a portuguese, spanish, french or italian trying to speak or write english? It´s hilarious I can tell you. And don`t let me talk about the eastern countries of Europe, they are just as bad or worse.
But I also got to admit that dutch people can indeed speak english very well. I don`t really know why but I´ve got an idea. If you look into the dutch language, it won´t take you much time to figure out that it´s basically a mix of english and german. Don´t say it`s not because I can understand most dutch sentences because of similarities in the vocabulary. If a word doesn`t seem to be 'german-like' it´s 'english-like'. Ofcourse there might be exceptions in single words.

And now to your point in german gamers not speaking english with dutch people. Most dutch people I 'met' so far, are able to understand german. I even know a dutch guy personally and he speaks german perfectly. Also it is known that german is tought in dutch schools.

And no, germans don´t think that german is the only language. We are all aware about english being THE international language in the world.


---Why are there servers with german rules or whatsoever---

My question is why not? If it´s a german server it can have german texts. Why should everybody write everything in english if it´s not their native language. And that you talked to somebody in english and you didn`t even notice that he is dutch is shocking to me to be honest. I´m a lot of things but if there´s one thing I´m not than it´s being nationalistic. I just think that preservation of the different amount of languages is important for the culture...

And I also made worser experiences with english and dutch servers. You are getting FORCED to speak english or dutch only. I mean.. what the hell... what if you can´t speak english and you are on a server with a mate and you want to chat a bit. You´re getting kicked for not talking/writing english.

You`ll get a word in german for that: "lächerlich".



**Edit**
I just saw the screenshot you posted, Nyte. But do you seriously think that that person writing that was any older than 13? I highly doubt it.
I could post a hundred screenshots of english people writing the same stuff about english, so don`t come up with stuff like that and take it as an example... it makes you look bad.

Indeed...though the most germans aren't interested of speaking english when they play against non-germans as well. And if they get killed, they offend their opponent in german, while knowing that they won't understand it...I asked them if they could talk in English, but they didn't want to. They just said everybody has to talk in german...mournful. I'm german and yesterday I played on a polish server, there was a german guy who talked to me, so I did answer him in German. Then one polish guy immediately said, fuckin NAZI talk in english! I apologized for talking in german but asked him, why he has called me a nazi. He then said: "Every German is a nazi"


So Germany is very unpopular and I dislike to be a German. I prefere to move to another country like the UK in future...

i just hate german retards saying own-made words like lowbob(just pathetic) and trottel(do you mean someone that lives a cave or watafak)

i disnt know that germans were afraid of non-germans

maybe there lots of stupid people around in the games u play

now seriuosly:

"You won't find any English words on German Television"

dude...i am german...and i daily watch tv...theres evry fckn third word english...all these advertising is full of english; crap like

"we love to entertain you"...in germany its not a "ereignis" its a fckn "special event"

and... please dont take guys with nicks like "i am a noob" too seriously

"Example #3. (non-game)
Even Germans on holiday in The Netherlands, digging holes on our beaches, they refuse to talk English (or dutch) and continue to talk German."

I think you have minority complexes, but I dont see the point why. German tourists, just like any other nationalities, (more or less) behaving like the above example (I mean disturbing), when they feel free. Yeah, maybe more, but who cares? Go and drink a cola and lets swim..

Secondary I've found ridicoulus that people from different countries are blaming eachother, and blaming their school system (even if this is true), with forgeting the main part of the thread, which is a simple unpolite behaviour in my eyes toward other gamers on the server, what you cant stand at all.

I think everybody agrees on that fact, that you can find bastards on each servers.

Maybe you will find a lot of german-bastard on a german, hungarian-bastard on hungarian, and dutch-bastard on dutch servers etc. Thats it. And nothing to do with language-skills, if yes (bad school system), then stay tolerant to them.

If your minority complex still pops-up, then leave, and dont cry, and stay proud of your abilities (spoken languages).

I am from germany and I know this problem too. I hate it that everythin here is dubbed (really everything, even the bullshit reallive-shows on mtv and the whole stuff). If you want to learn english here in germany you really have to do something for it, because you wont learn it from television or games or whatever.
Also the schoolsystem kinda sucks, because we learn english not until 12 years. (at least i did, dont know if its still like this).
I think the problem is, that everything is dubbed, because everybody thinks, that nobody understands english. This causes the problem, that everybody thinks "i dont have to learn english, everything is german"...
Its like a vicious circle.
So the problem is not, that the germans are proud of themselfs or their language. They just cant speak english (or if they can, mostly very weak).
(i know my english is also not the best: dont forget, im from germany )

Hi there

I've just read your article, which is very interesting for it's launching the debate about the English language in European countries

I'm French, and I have to admit that warenbe is right. The school system in France is completly outdated, and we begin to learn English way too late at school. We are not speaking English very well, not because we are lazy, but because we don't even learn enough at school to understand a book with easy English words, or to understand the lyrics of a song on the TV or on the radio. We are kinda stuck in our own mediocrity, and the only way to be good in English here is to work hard and to be curious.

My parents decided to put me in an English speaking nursery school, and then in a highschool with reinforced English lessons. I know my English isn't perfect, and that's why I'd like to go to England next year, for a whole year, in order to erase the mistakes I'm still doing when speaking or writing. By the way, I have an horrible French accent when speaking, but I have the opportunity to talk with alot of people around the world for my work, and what I can say today is that the French accent is not the worse accent in the world xD

lol...

Like all germans are talking german only.
Like all dutchies talk english...

In mohaa there are always those leet binds:

"gepakt, gepakted..." and those guys talk dutch on non dutch servers. That's not a problem as soon as you want to understand most are willing to translate or write in english. You encounter that behaviour from everywhere. Btw dutch and german writing is quite similar, i often get what those dutchies are trying to say . My problem with this Post is that it seems to be too much in general. I didnt even want to care but it was funny somehow. Would have been better if you had kept the nationalities out of it.

greetz from germany

Don't use the BACK button

fucking bug.... multiple post

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yeah lol...
i'm french. as you'll see i'm not expert in english. but i try to speak english when needed
your post is funny coz i was in spain for hollidays, and i talked with 2 spanish . the first told me "french ppl usually speak spanish in spain and it's cool."
the other one (and i beleive this one) told me "french ppl never try to speak anything else than french..."

i trust the later coz i see lot of friend who, even if they know english, don't speak english

well it's not beacause of waterloo or anything else, but i think only beacause french ppl are really proud of themselve, and if they speak english like a cow, they will be ashamed.
i've experienced this sometimes while talking (not writing) to english ppl, was very hard to keep calm while talking.

btw, you know, french ppl are very.... special
always crying or laming or screaming for anythings
so don't aks us too much
and don't worry, even if we don't speak very well foreign languages, we are fun and friendly... sometime

btw i hope my post was readable i'm a bit tired so perhaps sometimes it was funny to read me

are you talking about me?

You can bring as many arguments as you want...the author has one opinion and does not change it, nhe is a narrowminded guy.

I'm french and my english sucks a lot ...
In France our system is really outdated, we can't speak in a proper english since our method is the shit.
See, in 2-3 lines I make some mistakes (grammatical, etc.) and I don't know it because I just can't correct myself.
Yes you can understand what I'm saying but it's not perfect ... and since my french is perfect I hate it.

Back to the topic, I never had a problem with a german when I must talk to one of them (to arrange a war for example). With me they always spoke in english ... and sometimes in french ! ;p

This is the german mentality I dislike. This german guy seems to be a kid, just learning english at school, but he won't ever learn it...cos he is proud to be german and he only accepts germans (the reason why he wanted you to speak in german). This boy thinks germany is the most important country in the world. Not every german does the same...but there are many germans suiting to him. This guy incorporates germany as a bad country. He doesn't mind. The majority of germans is simalar to him...this is one of the reasons why I would like to live in another country. When I was in England 2 months ago, I was called a nazi by kids that haven't got in touch with me...These prejudices are awful, but these teenagers will always use them, I'm sure....

What about Italy btw?
When I was in Italy, they could only understand Italian or German.


-edit-

Never mind, you said Italy too....didn't see that.

Just my idea on the subject.

The problem about Germany, France, Italy and maybe Spain, in my opinion is just one: in these countries every Movie, Show and whatever kind of shit you can see on TV/Cinema is completely translated. This means no english practice at all for kids, aside school. And you know, if you don't practice somehow, you'll forget it, no matter what.

Talked to the guy again...And he's the PROTOTYPE of the kind of Germans I dislike.

Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff owned deluxe man, Kindergarten is correct English, just like Blitzkrieg is.

Please, go back to school, come back and get owned again.

BTW: The reason why I picked the word >>superior<< was to see your reaction, and you reacted exactly the way I expected.

As the guy below said, you have an idealistic problem.

lol

wel i'am from Belgium , and if you look close enough to the words in dutch and then to the same word in german most of them look very alike , i learned german just by listening en trying to talk it , i only find this blog is true about the french ,
i have alot of german game buddies and they all talk english without a problem i think this guy has a hearing prob or so or just an idealist wo cant stand germans either way

well still funny blog to read

Perfect example

Someone called me a noob in GW. (I died pretty quick, can happen). So I asked him why he called me a noob.

Oh that's it, you feel superior right? German is a "superior language" you are the "superior race" and so on. That's why I have always hated people that thinks like you.
Russian is a nice language.
English is a nice language.
I think that every person thinks that his own country language is far better than the others, unfortunately German is not.
So dirty, so rude, so plain.
Now you can stop your anti-dutch campaign, milk-aged kid.
I am not even dutch, so next time investigate before talking.

"Kindergarten-level".
"lough"

I have to add, write in English, PLEASE.

When did I say German is an International language?
It is just a fact that Netherlands and Germany, at least where I live, are only 10-20 minutes away from each other by car.

Ah, and...Sorry but I have to lough, seems that you like to make friends on Kindergarten-level.

And, German is just a superior language, so over and out crazy angry Dutchman.

German is not an International Language.
English is. So stop bitching around, I agree with the thread starter.
Never had an issue to understand\talk with a Dutch and get in touch with their girls talking in english. Can't say the same for what concerns german people. I can't even get in touch with boys on topics like football. And I am not generalizing. Every single German I encountered in my whole life wasn't able to speak english properly.

Oh boy, what happens when strange, stupid people are allowed to offer a blog here?
Correct answer: something like this

After 2 sentences I did not go on reading this crap, did a German guy take your girlfriend away or what happened?

Poor guy, go back playing online and stop writing!

Ah, in addition: Its np that most Dutch people are supposed to learn German, but they refuse as Germans do as well.
When i enter a shop in the Netherlands, many employees speak German on a Basic level, so why should people avoid to give it a try when it is easier for them.

Ironic, you're English isn't that good either! And the way this item was written is questionable as well. Just an example:



OMG?! NO! I didn't know there were French people on this world?! Well, thanks for letting us know

Lastly, I think your post is rather flammatory even though you say in the "disclaimer" you don't want to offend people. The few personal experiences you had do not account for everyone. If I'm allowed to give my own personal anecdote... I'm Dutch (yes, you use a capital D for that word) like you are, Dennis. However, unlike you, I do have postive experiences with German customers in my store. Notwithstanding a few Germans who refuse (or just aren't able to speak our language), most of them try to speak Dutch with me. If not, they'll continue the conversation in English, which is in some occasions even better. When you go to Turkey or whatever country you want to go, these people don't expect you to speak their language either. do they? As you've said in your post, it's entirely reasonable to speak English in that case, as it's regarded as an international method of speaking/communication/making oneself clear. Therefore, I have to agree with you on that point. However, it doesn't take away that your item is extremely racist and discriminatory towards foreigners who read your post.

You aren't xenophobic, are you?

Well from my experience it aint just Germans that do it , its all Nationalities , if 2 guys meet or happen to already know they are from the same country they will naturally speak their language to eachother if the convo only concern's them, they will find it quicker and easier to type and read and understand ofc.
You cant just pick on germans and say i hate them for that when others do it too , it was only last month i was reading a similar topic about Polish players doing this , but i've seen Scandinavians do it and English players too, they speak with their own slang that alot of other players wouldnt understand , we English have to think before we type also to put it in words that other players will understand but we are lucky and we have it easy and we do feel bad about it too sometimes , most of us only know our own language and no other =/

If we all have already decided English is the Main Language all will evenually use then so be it , if a server only has a language you cant understand then you know that aint the server for you

But dont alieninate one country and call them names here like this please it really aint right or fair.

ps: when i was at school lol over 20 years ago they only would teach us French and German , i would have much prefered and found it more useful to me if they learnt us Spanish and Dutch as their the 2 places i visit the most.

i havent encountered that many germans that wont speak english. not really shure what are you talking about there, but i come across a lot of french that dont speak(or dont wont) to speak english. m8 of my was on trip in paris and nobody wouldnt speak to them in english evan the taxi drivers.
i am not german my self but i see a lot of this for othere language. i dont understand why you picked germans? spanish people have theyer server in spanish, french in french, english in english, etc. what do you think if german was world language that english would have theyer server in german!!! pls...

Well, I'm german...and I hate to be a german!
Because of the facts u pointed out!
Nearly every german guy/girl uses german instead of talking in english...I´m playing all CoD parts at the moment and if I got connected to a server that isn't german, there are sometimes some germans who know they are at a foreign server...but as u said, they use the german language! I don't know why, but it depends on that the majority of germans can't speak english, they got a mix of the german and english language. In Germany, it is called "Denglisch" -> Genglish (german english)! Though german people are proud to be a german and won't use english as it is a foreign language for them. "Why shall I use English if I can speak german?" This is the german mentality. Espacially german gamers are bad in English! My english isn't the best...I know, but I immediately realize, if a german is talking in english...because he is speaking "denglisch" (german english ;D) As I mentioned at the beginning of my post, I hate to be a german...In the future, I won't live in Germany anymore, living in the UK or in the Netherlands would be great =)!
ps: All germans are getting tought English by the end of primary school!

Germany sucks
They think they are everything, that they are the center of everything!
When I have german people at the restaurant I work, they ALWAYS talk german to me.. I refuse to speak german to them, I talk in english to them. Don't ask them if they can speak english. Just do it like they do it without using their brains.. I hate germany

I think there are more Germans than French people who can speak English. But you hear more French people (try to) talk English than Germans. I've encountered this many times myself.

''Before I learned English on school, i could speak and understand it very well, although writhing was another thing.''

amen

Limburg alein mine beste maan. Dat es now nog es e schuun toalke wat ve hubbe. En lot de res mer kalle. Vee verstwun os tenminste. Ne goeiendoag oet Bels limburg.

Bow to the German empire! xD

ohhh Eric
<3

nice

Just be happy to learn and be skilled with other languages cause the system in your country is develop on that point which is not the case in France. Our Government is aware of that problem but , you can't blame all the guys who dont have the opportunities to learn some other languages .
We know frenchies are not that skilled but also u have to keep in mind we are mainly learning english at school but right afterwards you find the spanish and the skill there is erm.. average aswell .
The main thing is that just our Government was really static on all extra languages , i might be able to say obsolete on the way they want frenchies to learn other languages .
So plz get a grip , I know this can piss you off but most of the time this is not voluntarily ment to be offending .

ps: ofc there will be some frenchies who keep talk in french without pay attention if everybody is gettin the meaning of it ... but for the rest blame our system :/ , and i guess this is the same in many countries ..

frenchspeaker from Belgium has same problem as frenchies... School language lessons are too easy and we don't really learn smth :< We need to learn it most by ourself and a lot of ppl are lazy (or lazies? dunno)

I actually have no problem with either germans or frenchies. I'm from belgium and dutch is my native language. Somehow I have no problem in understanding french or german. (French & english is tought in school but i never had any german).

Yes they have the right to do that. But if they have a rule something like. ES IST VERBOTEN MIT WAFFEN ZU SCHIESEN, ALLEINE MESSER (or something like that), they shouldnt whine if I break that rule because I can't understand it.




As a matter of fact I do, or try to. I was in Germany this year and 2 years ago, and we rented a house from a family. And we tried to talk as much German as possible to be polite. (we found out later they could understand dutch pretty well to though )



You do that, so far you haven't come with any good argument at all.

Example #2:
A lot of German servers in various games have server messages in German. Some servers even have the server rules in German.

-> THEY have the right to do it? Why writing the rules in ENGLISH? If the rules are in German, they want to attract people that are German or speak the German language... In our servers (Dutch servers), most of the time the rules are also in main language? So why do you whine now? Aggression against Germs?

Example #3. (non-game)
Even Germans on holiday in The Netherlands, digging holes on our beaches, they refuse to talk English (or dutch) and continue to talk German.

-> Do you talk German when you are in Germany? I was in a park in Kronenburg, and the Dutch people were just laughing with the Germans. They just speaked Dutch and no ENGLISH at all, so why do you cry now about Germans speak German in your country?

Next time, I make a blog about the arrogance of Dutch people and the whine of French people...

yes
certainly
in general, germans are intolerant, narrow-minded f*cks who only talk in their language to offend foreign people.

#generalisation - idle and trivialize

I came back from south france about 2 weeks ago and you are completely right. I think I saw one english family the whole entire week. They was rude when serving the english at restaurants and they got too emotional about things (maybe because the french show their feelings more). Anyway I was glad to get home and hear just english again, I'm sick of the french language. So they expected me to talk french when english is the international language. I won't be going there again :x

Did my last comment make any sense? I was kinda tired from the day.

Well good sir, if you feel offended, go ahead and feel that way and whine about it. But you can also give your opinion about it like I do.

I'm generalizing to make my blog a bit more interesting and make the "problem" look a bit bigger. If I write "some germans", then the issue seems minor, and not really worth defending. Like I said, i know there are many Germans that are capable of speaking English, and that they will speak English in international games/websites. Well since you're one of them, you shouldn't be offended by it.

... Why do all Germans ...
But why are Germans doing this?
... because Germans take their language ...

some quotes of your article.
You're generalizing, you're not saying 'why do some Germans'.

With my "disclaimer" i mean that i'm targeting German people who do it exactly what i say in my blog.
There are plenty of Germans that do speak English, but usually you don't know that they are Germans, right?

Why do all the Dutchies jam our freeways with their camping vans?

--- Disclaimer ---
No offense to stupid blog authors generalizing in their whole article, thinking a senseless disclaimer below it makes it any better
--- /Disclaimer ---

Portuguese.

and the dutch are the totaly oposit we know, dutch comes from deutsch im sure, you are german and you cant deney it

I'm german myself and I propably know why most germans don't like to speak english, it's because they never learned it properly since education in our schools is one of the worst you can find in europe.

I am not sure why germans & frenchies are the only ones mentioned though, I even know belgium/dutch players who can't speak english at all.

Personally I hate the german TV syncs, most of them are just crap. But then again I am so much used to the german voices of popular actors that I don't see a reason to listen to the english one which is totally different normally.

For Example Eddy Murphy has a squeaky voice in german translation while in english original he has a deep strong voice.

Hey dumbo, are you retarded or something? Who wrote something about "german world language"? Read the discussion (can you read?), it was just an explanation why you see more people talking German on servers than Polish, Spanish or Latvian o_O In case of your comment it just seems that you are an inhibited racist.

totaly agree.
French guys are just thesame.
and they gave shit reg @ fps games, bot lets not go there

but uhm, ye, indeed, germans think that they are superb, but they are kinda .. not

If some1 says german is a world language like english, plz uninstall your windows (that is prolly in german).

Im from belgium, my mother tongue is also dutch.
i speak, write, curse in english every single day of my life since i was like 7y old.

What i also hate about germans and the frenchies to, is the fact (already said) that they have to fuck up every soap / movie / cartoon on tv by dubbing it
damn wtf, here in belgium we also have some french channels, ROFL ROFL ROFL i say.

Everybody knows CSI:Miami or just the CSI series right ?
well, they have it

1. Dubbed in french
2. (big fucking LOL @ this) They changed the name to : Les Experts.... LOLOLOLOL and they also use it in canada wtf.

so,

Hi, i'm gregg, i'm dutch and i say ENGLISH WORLD LANGUAGE

Nicely written and I totally agree, other than extremely laggy polish germans are the worst

the dutch speak dutch in my experience, and because i understand a lot of dutch i respond in english and they respond consequently in dutch. So along the conversation continues in mutual inteligibilty, it's still slight ignorance imo.

this is why i hate most germans lol, i doubt u are and if so, cg_caremeter 0 chump

*german world language? im sorry m8, ppl are not retarded to learn the fucking language lal

1st: its shit to speak
2nd: its shit to write
3rd: its even shittier to learn it
4th: deutsch = stupid lol

TRUE! After it went dark outside and lights have been switched off, we light our torches and start marching through the streets singing our songs on world domination ... but dont tell anyone, cause then well come after you and teach you how to "marsch, marsch"! Kinda ridiculous discussion, as it just confirms what seems to be in a lot of heads ... always the most boring blogs that get most responses. Oh almost forgot: NO we aint got humor and YES we are very, very effective . So marsch marsch everyone and pray we wont make german the world language :P

As a British person just come out of formal education I always found the language teaching here to be very bad, so barely anyone comes out of school knowing any other languages, as we all know everyone else in the world is taught much better english than we are taught of their languages (mostly french and german), but as many others have said it is very easy to guess what people who speak bad english are trying to say, but we do tend to be quite understanding when people struggle with english, mainly because the large amounts of immirants, and communities in the uk who speak no english at all (such as people in some parts of wales), whereas in my experience the french are not very forgiving for language errors, and will not understand anything you say if your french is poor.

Also here in Britain you can get games, forms, DVDs etc in about 35 different languages, but I am told by my clanleader (who is an Englishman living in France) that in France you can only get anything in french, so really what I'm trying to say is yes, the English don't bother to learn other languages, but we are very accepting that not everyone does speak english, however the french (i have no experiance of germans) seem to think that if you speak any french you should be able to speak it perfectly and seem to get offended if you cant.

It helps in the gaming community for everyone to speak the same language, and as most people seem to speak english better than most other languages, rightly or wrongly it makes sense that the language everyone uses on the internet is english

Its really simple .. its in there mentality .. there head still says .. germany uber alles thats how i think about it

And don't tell me thats not true since i do have 2 german friends in the netherlands .. these guys are really really proud to be one.. its really the pride i think.. and when it comes to games.. you can see that they never blame themselves for losing a match... its allways the server or the others. but in that case it happens everywhere though..

That's right! But don't forget the scandinavians, I don't think people who don't speak english take their language as granted, they just don't speak english at all...

ClanBase is an international site so please write your comments in English. HINT !

In defense of the so called Lazy English by someone & he has a point since English is the second/third most spoken language & is the official the international language for commerce etc it is hard to learn another language when its not in every day use like English is aboard. ie if we had Dutch/German cartoons/adverts/music etc on a daily basis we would have a 2nd language.
As for French who gives a toss "REMEMBER AGINCOURT"

Keep up the good work Dennis & spread the word !

whats your name in guildwars? and guild?

Ich weiß gar nicht was ihr gegen uns Deutsche habt, nur weil wir euch seit fast tausend jahren in sämtlichen Situationen schlagen...

As a lazy Englishman I feel I should expand on this statement somewhat. Our language education is poor in the UK, with our first exposure to foreign languages at 11 years old and above. Rarely anything prior to that. We also have little popular culture exposure to foreign languages, as everything is in English and is already an established international language.

So it is not a case of not wanting to learn, it's a case of not being taught/exposed at a young enough age, which is hugely influential when gaining a proficiency in a language.

As for not talking properly, that is entirely true as English in the UK is a very broad language with lots of local dialects. If you're talking to an English person you can't understand, chances are that person is hardly an international ambassador for that community.

Also, we have chavs, pikeys, scousers (Liverpool), geordies (Newcastle), cockneys (twats from London), the Welsh and Irish, and South Westerners (oo-ar). Then on top of that you just have stupid people.



Well put.



The benefits of learning a language properly, and I heartily agree. I enjoy talking to people who's native language isn't English. I swear even English as language (not literature) isn't taught properly or effectively in the UK, and then you have the television/popular culture slang that gets picked up on top of this.

http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/which-most-difficult-language.html

"The second hardest is Japanese, which probably comes as no surprise to many, but the language that they have found to be the most difficult to learn is Hungarian, which has 35 cases (forms of a nouns according to whether it is subject, object, genitive, etc)."

The problem is that apart from the netherlands and belgium, everything on tv\movies\radio is dubbed in their own language. You will NEVER find a tv show or movie in germany\france\italy\spain in English, they simply dub everything in their own language.
In the Netherlands however, everything is in english with subtitles, which imo is much better since you can learn English easy that way.

But you don't get the point do you?

German = Dutch

I can easily understand the instructions on packages which are written in dutch

(at battery-packages for example)

(DE) Gebrauchsanleitung (another word for this : Gebrauchsanweisung)

• Die Batterie gemäß + und - im Gerät richtig einlegen.
• Die Batterie nicht aufladen oder öffnen
• Nicht ins Feuer werfen

(NL) Gebruiksaanwijzing (sounds like Gebrauchsanweisung )

• Plaats (Platzieren) de (die) batterijen (Batterien) op de juiste manier (+ en (und) -)
• Deze batterijen zijn niet (nicht) heroplaadbaar.
Probeer (Probieren) ze (sie) niet (nicht) te openen (öffnen)
• Werp (Werfen) de batterijen niet in het vuur (feuer)

100 comments \o/

Germs.

Hungary barely has proper schools, why even discuss there language?

Good read, and I totally agree.

this is stupid. it just depend what is your native language.

I think I love you.

I'm german too and only 15 years old, but i watch all my DVDs, and play all my PC games in english, as long as english language is included.
I dont speak in german if I dont know the other one is german/does speak german too.

But most germans dont speak english very well, even those who learn it in school are not really good, I some of my clanmates do the same mistakes now as they did 3 years ago.
And I think they dont want to learn it, because EVERYTHING is dubbed.

My problem about joining international teams is, that I am scared of making mistakes so my mates cant understand me.

The reason why everyone speaks english is because we (britain) owned 75% of the world at one point. Britain is also the financial capital of the world (at the moment).

In my school in the uk we had to learn atleast 2 other languages.

Offically ? source pls

Offically Hungarian is the hardest language to learn.

- I've read somewhere that dutch is one of the hardest languages to learn in the world.
• I think, that it's Russian language)

bash the germans is the sport where dutchis and englishmans can shine !

french people want french to be the BIG language going around. it wont happen though i like the french language. sick of germans. good read, i love it! ive always appreciated scandinavians and dutch peoples english language fluency and never took it for granted since UK education is so bad they dont even make you learn another language now

Also mir ist das Problem jetzt noch nicht wirklich aufgefallen und ehrlich gesagt bin ich mir auch nicht ganz sicher, ob das wirklich so ist.

I recognize the 'problem' with players not speaking English, but as some people allready said before me: try learning a language when you don't see or hear it anywhere except at school.

It's like us Dutchees learning French, we hear, speak and see French things at school but outside school you hardly see it. Therefor most Dutchees don't speak French or just a very little bit.
I think you can compare this to the situation with german children learning the english language, they don't see it enough outside school to make the language truely their own.

hitla

Don't criticize people because you can't understand what they are talking about but be the smartest by learning their language.

English people only talks english and you're flamming because germans and french are lazy to learn english better...at least they DO learn it at the contrary of UK people who learn nothing.

Some of them can't even talk english properly.

I guess it's just a matter of fact that the most powerful countries don't learn another language as good as the smallest which need it. (ex : China, India, USA/UK, Spain/South America, Germany and France.)
If you check it right, almost nobody from thoses countries/continents can speak another language fluently except their native one.

Dutchies or Norwegian/Swedish obviously can't go anywhere because no one talk their language and their country population represent the population of Paris and their suburbs or München and their suburbs..it's a minority and they HAVE to talk at least another language.

If you're noticing Germans and French, it's because you're actually playing with germans and french community but if it was Chinese or Brazilian community, it would be the same.

I've been studying english in USA with students from all over the world and trust me, the only ones who could already speak a good english were people from small countries.

As a French English teacher, I have to say I quite agree here.

To begin with, let’s not forget that not too long ago, the international diplomatic language was French, this left traces... Never noticed that in the Olympics, everything is repeated in French? Do you think that it is because it sounds nice? If you ever did some fencing, you’ll also notice that everything is said in French. Same as for Judo, everything is said in Japanese... English only recently became the international language for some reasons that have been well explained, among which: it is composed of many languages and its grammar is the easiest to use for basic communication. Moreover, it is flexible and allows the creation of words and most important verbs out of sounds for example, which helps communication a lot!
In France, I would say that there are three main problems:
1) People get lazy because everything is dubbed on TV for example. But kids have access to a lot of music in English, why they do not even try to understand the words they listen to is beyond my understanding.
2) Parents do not think English is important. They think that because they do not need it in their everyday life, their children will not need it too, even if it is obvious their children will not live in the same world as they did. And even if EVERYTHING around them proves them wrong. As a result some even encourage (and come to meet me and tell me so...) their children to not study English and concentrate on Maths for example.
3) It is highly fashionable in France to pretend you are a retard. On the radio or on TV, people are proud to say they were bad at school, that they never studied. Pupils are proud of their bad marks, they force their bad accent and speak with a forced bad grammar to pretend, even if they can totally speak. Call it self conciousness or low self-esteem, or mere stupidity... A great professional mystery for me
4) The educational system .. Well in France it is MANDATORY to learn 3 languages. French, English and a third one, usually, German or Spanish, sometimes Italian, Russian etc... They start with English (or German) as a second language usually around 8 years old as a "discovery". They then study the basics at 11-12 for 4 hours a week. Then they start the third language when they are 13/14 years old. And they will keep the 3 languages until the end of their high school education ( except for technical studies, but they will keep their second language till the end, even if they drop the third one). So they will learn a first language for 7 years minimum and a third for 5 years minimum.
Now, I agree that the hours are ridiculous, they decrease untill there are only two hours a week left of English in the last year before the final exam. An exam that is a real joke. Nothing to do with communication skills. With national instructions that force the teacher to accept as correct an answer that bares few or no ressemblance with English. The student can then be happy about his/her 12/20 mark in English whereas in terms of communication, he/she is worth 7/20... at best. Moreover, English does not count as much as Maths for example so students do not study and they tell you stupid teacher who knows nothing that “NOBODY uses English anyway” (I sadly quote).
HOWEVER, after 7 years of English, when a student pretends that he/she does not understand “what’s you’re name” he/she is either a total retard or he/she is lying. No other possibility. And the bad teacher he/she had (how amazingly unlucky students can be, they always had the worst teacher in the whole school, if not whole town...) can’t be as bad as being unable to teach “ I am, you are, he is” for 7 years in a row...

altijd die mensen die in hun eigen taal praten, zo iritant ;(

u are dutch, ofc german is piss easy for u, doh...the languages are very similar.
dutch is piss easy from a germans point of view if its someone who really tries.
dont worry, being german i can still make all the right sounds and know the words even if there are different meanings for 1 word...english has the same u know
u really dont have to defend dutch, its a crappy language alright but not that difficult :P

I dislike some frenchies, because of their arrogance =)

Probably because back in the days there only was german television to watch, dutch TV didn't really excist yet.

I like the blog, I usually just switch to english to anyone I talk to, on IRC or in-game. Because english is usually the language that can connect you.

Most frenchies and germans I've spoken to nearly always try to contact or talk to me in english. If they do start talking to me in german or french I usually make clear that I don't understand either language and hope for the best.

I've had quite a few hard conversations as broken english is hard to follow, but never had any real problems. English on schools is quite new on French schools as far as I know. Most germans I know try their best to talk english, and most succeed.

And you're the one to decide that? Ridiculous.

I am German and currently am studying English and Dutch at University.
It is a fact that German is the most spoken native language in Europe with roughly 100 Million native speakers. So smaller countries like the Netherlands or Sweden should not compare their standards to ours. I agree that English is the most important language these days to communicate on an international level. However, most Germans do not even feel the slightest urge to have contacts outside their own country.

My game of choice is Enemy Territory so I can only share my experiences about this one community.
When I started playing the game I naturally visited the German community sites first, and also found my first clan within this community. There are a huge load of Germans who prefer playing in a German speaking team, whereas in other parts of the ET community most teams are internationally mixed. After playing in my first team for a while I decided to try other, international, community pages (e.g. Crossfire) who were nearer to the reality and pulse of the game. With the community I also changed my team, which now consisted of a German, two Frenchman, a Finn, a Portugese and an Isreali. Everyone in that team was able to speak English more or less.
I kept playing in international teams for a while until I sled into a German team by coincidence (I did not specifically search for one). It went well for some months until I realized that I do not want to mix with the German community, which is really full of flamewars and retards. I guess other communities are not that much different, but at least I do not have to listen to that crap in my native language, which I really dislike.

Yes, I dislike German. Modern German is an ugly language, far away from its poetic past. I dislike dubbing, literature translations and even more the poor attempts of the German TV stations to convert successful British/American TV formats into German shows. Whenever possible I try to watch a piece of art as it was meant by its creator, be it movies or books.

And I even more dislike Germans who think that the German language is a good that has to be saved for all times. It is not.
Languages are developing without real control. If you watch movies from the 40's or 50's you will realize how much different it sounds compared to today.

To conclude my short comment (:P):
I have been playing ET with people from all over Europe and have also met a great portion of those people in real life. There are lots of Germans and French who speak a really decent English as well as Swedish or Dutch people whose English will make you wanna be cry (and not for the beauty of it).

The real question would be, was he still awake or just got up? :P

You're awake at 5:27 ?

I live 500 metres near the german border I speak german like 3-4 times a week and our dialect like the whole week. (South part of the Netherlands called Limburg) is very similar.
And then Iam not even talking about the 7 years on school.

I go to the german shops Kaufland, EXTRA, Real (I think the germans know what Iam talking about) so now and then and they expect me to talk German of course its their country and their language..
Then when Iam at my work and we got german customers...
I never ever had someone who did not talk german, with other words noone ever tried to speak dutch or english.
Sometimes my colleagues who do not speak the dialect that often or they who just do not speak german that well, the german customer keeps talking german
And most of the time they are astonished > Kannst du das nicht?

I got some other examples but Iam tired right now.

tbh germans is piss easy even tho i sucked cock at that but thats cus i never did a shit for it cus i knew i didnt had germans anymore next year so couldnt give a fuck about that class :P

russ i obviously dont know

dutch i know u germans cant say "Sch" but that aint it
we got tons of words which are exactly the same but mean something completly diff its just u gotta figure out what it means by readin whats infront of the word lots of countrys got 1 word and thats it

i mean like weer = weather but also means again
like whats the weathers and are we going again..

that means wat is het weer and gaan we al weer?
see the diff go figure it out lol and their probally tons of more words like this which are written the same but mean something diff and not just 1 word has 2 meanins probally up to 10 :P

English people dont have to learn other languages lol ...

Of course it does help but when the next biggest language is Mandarin or French i think almost everybody would need to start a fresh

Since no one bothers to learn them too... lol joking

Also in Eng its mainly grammar schools that teach languages well and i go to a typical highschool so i dont need to !

True but not all holidays/vacations are spend on beaches

Didnt know this one either. Nice to get educted on clanbase.

LOL

We use certain words in a certain language to make other people know what we are saying. If someone talks german and you understand it, no problem. If they refuse to speak english (or just cant) and you cant understand german. Thats when the problems arise. If both parties dont make an effort to make the other understand what they're saying......

So to solve the problem, you could also make an effort by studying German.

german language is easy to understand, most of the time they talk german to me and i talk english back. it works :P

and most french who play online games also know english, only when you go there on holiday you might encounter problems. besides, their accent is funny to listen to

No dutch will go to Germany to get on their beaches.. They are far to north

Now I'm laughing at the fact that if that happends they are obvisiously on holiday there, if they actually live there I agree with you otherwise this is a dumb argument.

You probably went to a camping somewhere in the south of France and met some low-educated girls.
Our basic education should be improved a lot so our girls can hang out with youths from abroad How fabulous ? !!

The fact that most of the games on SNES/NES were in English was the main reason for me to start learning English early. I couldn´t imagine playing a game where i don´t understand what the story is about / what characters are saying

Its not all about the tv, i agree, having movies and games in english helped me A LOT learning decent english. But atleast the impression I had when i was in France was that the french socieity actually didnt want or didnt care about learing english. Many people might think knowing one 'big' language like french is enough but obviously they're wrong.

In Sweden we start to learn english in the 4th grade we have no dubbing in our movies what so ever so it's quite natural for us swedes to be good at english.

"although writhing was another thing." yep there it was..

Thanks for the comment
And btw rdy, don't lie germany has no beaches foreigners would want to go to

Oh man, you got me wrong, we start a lot earlier in 6th grade but we spent like 4 years doing basics. And when we get into the real things we don't have enough hours to study them correctly =/.

.

ROFL what the fuck is polonia? its called poland u fkin cunt

lol, in Sweden we start in first grade(6-7 years old)
And the Swedish government thinks that our school system sucks:S

Germans are noobs who think they are the best country in europe,
then ofcourse they got the bigger population so the probability of seeing some progamers in the german population is higher than the one in the Lichenstein or whatever....
French are the 2nd noob country and hate english since decades...
It's always been like that, and now with the new countries, Polonia, Hungary and all this east lands it's getting even more crazy

You join a server and you see 4 people saying stuff that looks like
"òfaszòfd è ajdsjxklxla ksdjdw ujfaluz"
OH YEAH !!!

keep it english noobs, and if you can't talk english then don't talk at all on text-chat.

Hey guys! I guess it's about time some french (or at least some non-retard french - right polow? - ) makes a comment even though some important parts of the explanation as to why french barely use english have already been stated.

First of all, i must confirm that french foreign languages teaching suck. There's too few hours (no more than two hours a week after 16) and those subjects are not the most important. I mean they have less weight than mathematics, physics or biology for example. That's why a lot of french students don't focus on english, german, spanish or whatever language they're supposed to be learning in order to have more time to focus on "more important" things. Things that are gonna help them graduate more than foreign languages would.

[There are some "cursus" (i don't know if that word is correct in english, sorry ) which give more weight to foreign languages tho but they're less chosen because they don't lead to many jobs unfortunately.]

That's why in France the only people able to write (because oral lessons are really rare, the teaching underlines grammar and not pronunciation; thus the infamous french accent.) a decent english are usually the skilled students who get good marks everywhere. Usually.

Another point that has already been mentioned is the "dubbing" of everything. In France everything is dubbed. And this is freaking annoying because subtitled movies or even cartoons are way cooler to watch. Some TV providers are beginning to offer the choice between dubbed or subtitled versions though. Still most french are used to watch dubbed movies and will stick to it because of laziness or whatever. Ergo, most people don't have any alternative other than school to learn english. And i already pointed out the problems encountered at school. Too few hours, too little weight. Ergo, pupils don't really care.

Example 1... LOL this happend to me with dutchis french english Spanish and all other too....

Example 2... You got it? German Server... you don't like it that they talk german there? go to a dutch server o_O they pay for the server so they can do what they want

Example 3... ok i laughed here realy hard... i met a lot of Dutch english spanisch french and so on people on OUR Beacheas and talk there languages... it's all about the pov.

Dude realy in Germany hour school system sucks and a lot of the people can't speak or write english. And the TV shows are all synced... you know what i mean..
you will find this people everywhere...

and whats for you the germans are for us the French... most of them won't learn a forign language if they wouldn't be forced to do so in school... and i met a lot of them during Student exchange... you always say Germans are so arrogant... maybe we are but so are alot of other countrys too...

ahh and if you think dutch is difficult because a lot of dutch people can't read or write it... come to germany there is the same problem...
ah and 2003 worldwide there were 862 Milion illiterates...

what ever you won't care

-most germans who are older than 40 just cant speak english
-we have millions of non germans here who can only speak there native language and a little bit german
-i think 50% of the germans who have recently finished school are not able to speak english except some standard sentences

at least thats what my experience has shown

and in games like wow/gw
there are alot germans so they talk german
dno about gw but on wow testrealms (which are international)
is always german party

i guess the reason is a mixture of all i have said

hey guy...don`t get upset!

back to topic.

dude you don´t get the point. I´m getting sick when I read your posts.. please stop posting if it´s senseless stuff anyway.

I am from Germany. What shall I do? Writing in typical French-English??

Ya, OK Sweden is faster

Greetings from the middle .... ahh central of Europe

You may have forgotten that Sweden have the world’s fastest broadband. I'm not really sure but I think Sweden also have better and faster servers than Germany.

So plz dont come and say that u r the central of the internet.

Greetings from the north=)

Eric Cartman, South Park, Episode 144 - The Passion of the Jew
And it is: Es ist Zeit für Rache!

says the guy that types in typical German-English :<

Why English, why not Chinese?

If you count all dutch, english and swedish backbones together, could be

I`dont know what you mean with your Jews flame. Pls use next time a better translation progi

Ya, you are right, of course. I posted my 3 comments with (British) ironic

hRhR

1. Im dutch and I tell you, DONT LEARN DUTCH. It sucks as a language and its used by only 17 million people in whole the world.

2. Most people, most part in money. I'll give you that.

3. Not true, dutch english and swedish backbones are waaay bigger than the german one. Sorry, not giving you this one.

Wir mussen die juden aufroschen!

cu

I never said you should learn dutch.
I said you should talk english when you know there are non-german players in the game

hahaha

not german, or:

"All joke "

erm you´re not serious are you?

Ok, I will explain why germans speak only german:

1. In Germany lives 83 Mio peepz. Why learning dutch? For these 16 Mio guys?

2. We pay the biggest part in EU cash-box. So pls learn our language, if we pay for you.

3. If we turn off Frankfurt backbone, your servers all lags.

Everything OK?

All joke

Einen schönen Tag noch!

cu

I'm sorry, did you just call me a racist?

a german person told me why they always speak in german and nothing else but i couldn't understand it. it was in german :<

care ? thats so true idd and don't forgot my "(extrem but true)" but nvm this topic has been open but a retard racist who has some time to waste on a useless debat and there is only a few regular guys here so bye
Go touch your self racist people enjoy your internet vacances. See you on the beach .

WHALES AND GLOBAL WARMING ARE MUCH MORE IMPORTANT

Haha, nice one.
Never heard of it, but it's oh so true

Great, a new record. Only 30 responses and you already proved Godwin's law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Thank you for proving my point Polow, much appreciated!

____

Anyway, also a funny thing I forgot to mention is when for example in Guild Wars, people are rage-quiting, i often PM them with something like: "That's not nice" or something like that... and then frenchies/german often reply in French/German.
And I can understand that they mainly will say something like: "Fuck you, I do what i want", but to insult me in french/german is like yelling to a dog.

_____

Btw vacuum. A few years back, the dubbing of shows has reached The Netherlands too. Mainly for kid shows. Alot of cartoons i used to watch (Eek! The Cat was one of my favorite) is translated so kids have more fun watching it in dutch.

Also, a lot of the anime series that are shown on kid-networks are usually translated, but they forcefully don't translate words like: "Power" and "Activate", which sounds really stupid.

"Hij heeft veel meer POWER dan ons"

mir total egal!

or only for you: I don`t care...

ok, i dont care much about ppl speaking whatever language they care for in games like trackmania but take a team game.
take tf2 where most people speak/type in english and a few of frenchies get on and start speaking french only. its not helping the team at all unless you count 2 frenchies out of 24 people from all over the place as the team.
thats just silly and at least in tf2 i've never heard this from germans :P

but ofc there are others as well, we have a frenchie in my clan and his english is far from great BUT he tries to make himself understood and I think that's all most of us ask for...an effort.

i personally mix 3 languages in my daily life and I'll speak dutch to the dutch, german to the germans and english to those whose language I dont speak but I'll give my italian colleague a buongiorno and the frenchies get a merci or whatever i can remember.
it's the little things, the effort, that counts, not people speaking the language perfectly imo.

So we are ok.
But if they want to speak together french they can speak whatever they want , they won't stop only cuz you want to know what they talking about... Imo I don't care if german speak their language on my french server or something like that , its just hard to understand them if they want to communicat with us.. Then they can use english.

btw with that 75% i meant that 75% of ALL ppl on ALL servers are french. Sure it is totally to communicate in the native language if it´s a server where like 75% are French

English is the main language now buddy and I totaly get the biggest point of this topic. One advice m8 go learn chinese... cuz in 20 years maybe the rules would have changed. Btw I never said that me (as a FRENCH GNAGNA) want everyone to learn my language, its just that ..when I read those kind of shit:

"I want to them to stop speaking french even if they are 75% of them on the server" <= That totaly fucking tard.

I first start laughing then I become a bit angry...

That´s exactly what I am talking about. You French guys want everyone to learn your language! Why? I don´t know any other country that wants other ppl to learn their language. This Topic has nothing to do with racism , you got it totally wrong. English is the main language countries communicate in and it has been like this for a long time

How dare you ask to a french to stop speaking their native language lmao (moreover 75% of the players are french(trackmania ofc) ? SO LEARN FRENCH ?). Even on their server, they speak whatever they want. Lmao. French is the 3rd language used in the world after english and spanish. (excepted indian and chinese people in their own countries.)
I can understand that its annoy you to not understand what everyone is speaking about, but you can't force people to avoid speaking what they want.. Only redtardz like Hitler or these kind of shitters had those thoughts. (extrem but true...)
Just don't read or leave the server. geez

Topics like this one makes me sick, useless, kindda racist and useless!!!! I'm talking about the french people but I think its the same for german and others ...

Leave them alone and do something useful for once, go on a forum to talk about the global warming or something like that.. whales hunting is a problem too...


ps: SORRY FOR MY INTERNATIONAL GRAMMAR I'M JUST A REDTARD.

Here´s a real German response

I myself loved to learn English as i always saw it as "The Language". Reason for this is that the language is easy to learn because of it´s rare irregularities. The German language has many stuff that´s hard to learn, examples are that we don´t handle all things as "its" but as male and female
+ We have many situations where we split verbs into 2 words which is also totally irregular and dows not follow any logical rules. In English you can build almost every phrase the same way. +English simply sounds good
That´s why i think it´s good that English is "the language".

OT:

Well Nytemire sure you´re right , it also bugs me that so many Germans think that everyone else can speak German. But seriously it´s not that many ppl. Compare Germans to the French guys. They are even worse. They write like everything in their native language and think everyone can speak French. Maybe you haven´t met to many Frenchies but it is true. f.e I played trackmania nations/united for over 1.5 years and the developer team is French. 75% of the guys on the servers were French and they didn´t care speaking international even on Servers from German/NL/UK teams , even when you told them to stop speaking French.

I know this may be seen as a stupid thing and many guys will think: I don´t care if other ppl don´t understand me or if I don´t understand them, I just wanna play. But that has always been a problem of mine. I want to learn and understand as much of other cultures as I can and I´m also having fun to see what similarities the languages have etc.

I´m in German forums often and there are often topics where a guy asks something me or another guy gives him a link (to a FAQ/wiki etc.) that´s written in English and then he replies like: "i don´t know any english" or "why don´t you have it in German? We are Germans!")
And thats the point where I´m just like OMG.

I mean hey, if the guys are older and lived in the east of germany , it´s almost fine for me because at the times they were at school they had to study russian instead of english because of the circumstances in that time.
But when I take a look at todays youth (I´m 21) I´m upset , embaressed and wondering myself what´s going on because most of todays teens (I mean those guys from like 12 to 17) are so dumb they can´t even write their own language correctly. They do so many mistakes ... And when it comes to english it´s even worse. Trying to mix up the German grimmar with the English vocabs they learned. It´s ridiculous. BUT there are also many Germans that speak English well. I know like 20 German guys i often have contact with (cod4 related) and they are all able to write and speak english good, or at least good enough to communicate with guys from other countries.

One more thing about that TV thing someone mentioned:

I´m really jealous about the thing that f.e dutch television is not dubbed. Most stuff on TV is way better in original then dubbed. I´m watching TV Shows in English since I´m 14 as it´s just so much better. I then started to understand why Dutch guys are so good at English. I was 13, on vacation to Spain and there were also many Dutchies and i hung around pretty often with them. One evening I went to pick up another guy and went into his room and we drank a lil to warm up for the evening. He was watching TV and i was like wtf you only got subtitles? And then I realised it all because there were like 11 year old kids that spoke english pretty well :s


So what about the future of English Speaking Germans?
well when i was a kid we started learning english at 5th grade ( most guys are 11 or 12 yrs old then) but as far as i remember they added English from the 2nd or 3rd grade on a few years ago which is a good thing imo because the younger you are the better you learn.

I could write like 10 more pages about this topic but I´m gonna stop here.

Fact is: There are many Germans that don´t want to speak English/can´t speak English and that SUX. BUT Mr. Nytemire I think those guys exist in every Country. You got a really good example with the Germans but also the Frenchies are really good in not speaking English, I think even worse. I was in France (like you) trying to talk to ppl : impossible. If you talk to a German guy here he will at least try to help you because almost every German can speak at least a bit English but in France it´s often Z E R O

We get off the track slowly but surely...


As I said before, I like it to watch selected movies or series in English - but optional! I don't like to be patronised. We (and other countries) have our own language not for nothing, it has a millennial history so we're proud of it and of course we use it. Germany has a population of more than 80 million people; Norway has less than 5 million. No offense, but I don't wonder why you haven't dubbed movies - it would just be a bad cost-benefit ratio. But that's not a reason why all countries should do so.

Ok, maybe the Germans, French or whatever people speak bad English (I still think that generalisation, or do you have any statistical evidence?). It's still understandable, and just because of the accent I'm sure no nation will dismiss its own linguistical culture.

"English natives... yes, I also wonder why they don't speak any foreign language. Also, why is english oh, so the best and genuine language for everyone to speak? And don't tell me because it's the easiest language to learn. It is not (see above; also, for example, esperanto grammar is way easier)."

Firstly, that's poor logic and a stupid generalisation. Citing Esperanto just shows how pedantic you're willing to be. Grammar is only one part of language and English is significantly better, trust me.

Reasons for English spreading and becoming the dominant language even among the other Lingua franca (the UN use five or six official languages as far as I remember), include religion, political influence and colonisation. These are a means to an end, they're not however the only reason.

English itself is a 'foreign' language to the 'English' people. We're an Island and the language has Germanic roots and was brought to the Island by foreigners shortly before the Romans left. In modern Britain there are still people who speak the 'native' languages of the Isle, though partly the reason why English become the dominant language is because they were not the same! Even on such a small Island there were as many as 12 different languages at one point.

English became dominant for a number of reasons, some of which I've mentioned. From a linguistic point of view, modular word order and a lack of inflection is probably one of the strongest points. It's very hard to produce bad (non-standard) English once you've got the grasp of it, it's very flexible and even if you're wrong the likelihood of getting your meaning across is quite large. Minimal 'agreement' and a lack of grammatical gender are other reasons why the language are easier to learn.

English unlike other languages didn't try to stop other languages, but it made them redundant by incorporating the best bits from other languages. Our vocabulary is immense and probably the largest of any modern language, most of it originated from other languages and people.

Application solidifies the position of a language on an international level and there's numerous reasons why English is used over others.

As for the 'English' ourselves, as I already mentioned there are a number of reasons why our language is great, but at the same time it puts us a significant disadvantage when learning other more 'complex' languages. Our foreign language teaching is quite poor and lacks significant funding in the public school system. I'm not sure how often the majority of you've lessons in English, but at GCSE level (14-16 - at 16 you can leave full time education), we only have two hours a week of either German or French (most likely, there was Latin at my school as well).

right, I should have said "some of the hardest languages" I had just gotten up, so maybe I shouldnt have posted at all at that time :P
however, any language will be hard to learn if you dont bring either talent or the will to really learn with you

As a norwegian, my experience is that of the people having another language than english as mother tongue, Norwegians and Swedes got the best pronounciation. Then the dutch will follow after a small gap. After that it will probably be the danish. That is, on the edge, where the list ends. Germans may speak understandable, but they tend to stick with german if possible. The people of France, Portugal and Spain barely speak the language at all. When approaching eastern europe, it gets even worse, though exceptions may exist.

The conclusion must be that some countries need to put more weight on English in the educational system. In countries like Germany and France where dubbing is a popular way of making movies understandable for the common germans/frenchies, this should have been replaced by subtitling, as we are used to in scandinavia.

In gaming english is the "only" language, and I'm often left in despair speaking with germans, frenchies or others that may have problems understanding english. Their english can be so horrible that they have difficulties understanding which server to play on, and other factors that is to be decided upon a match in any game.

My written english may contain several spelling errors, due to the fact that it is four o'clock after midnight. Sorry!

lolol

Well the question you ask why english should be 'the' language is ofcourse rightly placed but I just think it 'came to be' that english is the most used language on the net, maybe somebody who knows more of languages could tell me but it just grown into it i guess...

When I was 8 I still pronounced 'ui' as 'au' :P

I advice you not saying THE hardest, as I'm sure you can't figure out which of the many (around 3000 if i'm not mistaken) languages in the world is the hardest. Also it varies, one language may be simple for some people, but very hard for others.
Oh, and about 7 cases in russian. Most other slavic languages have 7 cases, not just russian (slovenian has 6 cases, but also has dual, next to singular and plural) and finnish has 15 cases, estonian even more. But anyway, I believe you can't say for sure, as mentioned above.
English natives... yes, I also wonder why they don't speak any foreign language. Also, why is english oh, so the best and genuine language for everyone to speak? And don't tell me because it's the easiest language to learn. It is not (see above; also, for example, esperanto grammar is way easier). Why couldn't it be some other language or maybe a few languages? And then people complain about french, italians, etc. being bad at languages, because many don't speak english (well). What about native english speakers? what do they speak besides english? Too many speak only english. but that's ok, because english is THE language? C'mon..

Reading your post i encountered a few mistakes which i'm not going to comment on. I just want to tell you and those people who share your point that there's actually a lot of germans who do speak other languages, like myself.
I speak english and french, both very fluent, even though i have to admit that my english is a lot better when it comes to vocabulary.
You're right, there are in fact a lot of germans who behave like cockroaches and they're neither capable nor willing to speak another language. People like myself though are always mistaken to be english, but we don't get as much attention as these dickheaded germans do. And that is why everyone tends to thinks we suck at foreign languages, while i can assure you that most of us don't! And by the way, it's just like that with every other country in the world.

hehe idd, you are dutch, so you wouldnt know about the sounds but believe me, the "g" and "ui" sounds are friggin hard to get right for most foreigners
there are a few things in dutch grammar that are confusing or stupid as you say, especially for me as a german but because the grammar is more simple than german in most cases, I've messed up a lot of sentences in the beginning coz it just seemd too "easy" to build a sentence lol
now obviously I wouldnt know how hard it really is to learn german since it came natural to me but I've been told by a lot of people that it's one of the hardest languages to learn right after russian.
russian with its 7 cases...im just glad they never made me learn it :P

You sure, I've looked into grammar of several languages and find dutch (even tho it's my native language) the most stupid of all, there are more exceptions to grammar rules than actual rules...

As for the sounds you have to make, I wouldn't know because it's normal to me

Rest of your reply I really agree with

Nyte, why do you have the idea that "all Germans have this crazy idea that the entire world speaks and understands the German language"? there is a difference between all and some or most , you know...and not all germans do believe what you think they do.

and just to clear a little mistake up, german and russian are the hardest languages to learn when it comes to getting the grammar right, dutch just sux in terms of the sounds you have to make lol.

now coming to the original topic if your blog, I am german and my english is fluid, spoken as well as written. I also speak dutch fluidly and my writing isn't too shabby either.
This already proves you wrong because not ALL germans...blablabla.

germans learn english in school at the age of 11 or 12, depending on when they enter school but try practicing your english when there is no opportunity to do so.
no english movies or tv shows with subtitles that they can watch on tv every day, nobody speaking english to them like it happens in holland a lot because the country is full of non dutch speakers...
i did well in school when it came to english and french even had one of my final exams in english but after school both lanuages went to waste until I joined english forums because of a band i liked...thats where I learned to really write in english and later when gaming and ts came into my life, I learned to speak it.
my french is rudimentary now because...yep, I had no opportunity to practice.

now the thing is, I don't like a lot of german gamers either, I just dont like their attitude especially the stupid teenies and I suppose if they didnt have such easy access to all german communities so they dont need the english speaking community, they would have to learn english eventually.

In any way, you cannot compare people who grow up with english on tv and in the cinema to those who first get access to it in school where it's forced upon them and later maybe on the internet.
its like telling you to speak german because you had it in school or probably at least had the possibility to learn it and there's loads of german speakers on the net.

btw whats with the native english speakers? I know only 2 out of the many I know on the net, who even try to learn a foreign language...

I agree with Nyte and that happens almost in every online game for example at finnish counter-strike server, when there are no other germans. To me it's bit cocky to ignore other languages but I also know that they are very proud of their language.
In finland we are tought english from 3rd grade (9-11 year old) and our second official language swedish in 7th grade, appearently most of finns doesn't speak good swedish.

Both French and German cultures are very introvert when it comes to their language. It's almost a show of defiance or arrogance with their refusal to adhere to international protocol. Laziness can only be used as an excuse for so much.

Many will say English spread for the wrong reasons, but it's technically one of the easiest languages to learn because of its modular system.

I'm English, I study English at university and know why English is a good language, structurally. But, since I don't speak any foreign languages myself, at least not fluently, I tend to overlook the issue.

For an Englishman to learn another language, it's quite difficult, an example in German:

'Ich werde Deutsch lernen' (might not be correct as my German is quite bad, ironically enough).

To an Englishman, I read that as 'I will German learn', which makes no sense. You can thank inflection for that and that's a real reason why someone might struggle to use another language.

Interesting blog, which makes a change. If you're interested in reading more about language, English in particular, then I suggest either of the following.

The Adventure of English (Bragg)
The Language Instinct (Pinker)

Children start visiting school at the age of 5 or 6 here, and every year signifies a grade. So you're aged 9 or 10 when visiting the 5th grade.


Well, I still think you can't lump it together. There is no reason at all why French or Germans should talk poorer English than Italians or Spaniards

And regarding the tv-criterion: Ok, maybe there is less English content on German television, but there are still enough citizens who love to watch movies and series in English (say hello to the DVD), for example Sopranos, 24, Battlestar Galactica and so on

Maybe the online-flamers and -kiddies are just to young to talk respectively write in English.

Well they may be learning english at school however I can surely say for myself most english words I learned by watching movies on tv and later on by using the internet aswell, it really does help ones vocabulairy when being confronted with a language alot on the tv, my mother for instance learned excelent german because her parent watched german television all day long (dunno why but appearently they did).

So this does come back to the fact that about everything is translated in germany (well not translated but I don't know the english word for "na synchroniseren" ).

The other point you have seems fair enough, I wouldn't know if they are one of the biggest gamers country but it seems logical if they are that you see more people speak german then.

My mom teaches Dutch to foreign students, she uses english for that. Shes always surprised at the sucky english of german and french students while there aren't more of them or anything. There are even chinese students, so.
Also, how old is the '5th grade' in Germany? Both countries have different systems so it doesnt really mean anything. I was in 6th grade when I got first got English and I was 10. But it was easy because I already knew simple grammatical stuff and numbers etc from tv.

YES!!!!

I knew it !!!
I remembered that I learned something about Frenchies and why they refuse to speak English. But i wasn't sure if I learned that on school, or from a drunk hobo

So I didn't add it to the blog

Typo's can happen =)

"In The Netherlands, children officially learn English on their 7th year of primary school"

In Germany, most pupil start learning English on their 5th school year. So you can't argue that they can't speak English just because there are few English television shows I think you magnify the problem. Germans are just statistically the biggest gamer-community in Europe. So it's obvious that you see more players talking German as Polish, for example. It just catch one's eye more often.

And concerning the Frech-English problem: If you paid attention to your history lessons, you should know the reason why French people refuse to talk English.

Im not having a pop because i cant speak another language but this made me laugh, i hope you see the funny side of it too


They may know you.. k?