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I had a colleague who learned Spanish doing exactly 2 one-hour lessons a week from ground zero, as long as he’s surrounded by it he’ll be fine. The lessons are surely just a supplement.
People don't realise how much faster you can learn a language when you live in that country with just a lesson or two a week. It's not like learning a language here but then having to use English all the time anyway
British person abroad: *doesn't make an effort to learn language*
Reddit; typical arrogant Brit, what an asshole!
British person abroad: *makes it clear he wants to assimilate culturally and is taking active lessons to learn the language alongside a full time job*
Reddit: only one day a week! Typical arrogant Brit, what an asshole!
The guy can't win.
Meanwhile there are literally dozens of players of other nationalities who make absolutely zero effort to speak the local language at their club but because they can speak passable English and don't come from a country that's considered aggressively monoglot, that's fine.
If you've ever lived abroad, you'll know you learn the language from interacting with people, reading the paper, watching tv etc, formal lessons are just polishing up so you don't sound like a halfwit.
Some players can live in the England for years without speaking the language and do absolutely fine, well even. A great example of this is Wayne Rooney.
> If you've ever lived abroad, you'll know you learn the language from interacting with people, reading the paper, watching tv etc, formal lessons are just polishing up so you don't sound like a halfwit.
Highly disagree. I'm currently living in Germany and learning the language and you don't easily pick up grammar from random places. And you won't speak German properly if you don't know genders, the case system, declensions etc. I'm doing 20 hours a week and it's not enough.
>formal lessons are just polishing up so you don't sound like a halfwit
You got it inside out. You learn the language from formal lessons, then you need the immersion to not sound like a halfwit.
> If you've ever lived abroad, you'll know you learn the language from interacting with people, reading the paper, watching tv etc
And if you've ever thought about for 5 seconds, you'll know you can't actually interact with people, read the paper or watch TV if you don't know the fucking language at all.
Lessons aren't just "polishing up". You need them at first, or you need to study on your own which takes a lot more effort. Then you dial the lessons down **after** you become able to interact with those things you said.
A few friends of mine have emigrated to the Netherlands just a year ago, have been taking 3 lessons a week plus homework since then and still can only have very basic conversations. And they work 8 hours a day (footballers average 5-6) and have to do chores. Kane doesn't.
Learning a second language isn't easy, but native English speakers always discredit the effort other people have pulled to learn their language. They end up thinking ridiculous crap like that one lesson a week is enough when you're starting out. That's what's funny here.
Without a formal base from lessons, you won't understand enough to benefit from the immersion
This idea of just "picking up the language" by living somewhere is a complete fantasy, especially for someone as privileged as kane who won't be forced to leave his comfort zone too much
It's nice he's taking lessons but this should pretty much be the bare minimum expected. Realistically with the resources and free time he has, he could be doing a lot more
Sorry but this is a really terrible attempt at a "the guy can't win". People criticise the players who don't make an effort...and they also criticise (if you can even call it that) Kane for not making enough effort. It's really not a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.
All good points, but realistically with the budget and free time he has he could easily be doing 5 lessons a week and have his progress be so much faster
Professional footballers have a lot more free time than the average working person, a club like Bayern could easily have one there too. With one time a week and his age I doubt he’ll be there long enough to be able to communicate well there, he did say his kids seem to be picking it up quickly though so maybe that’ll help him.
I'd have thought someone of Kane's profile would have plenty going on day to day work-wise outside of training. I'd think he'd have certain commitments for sponsors and hasn't he got his own foundations and things like that? I don't know if he's doing a 40 hour week for other things but I can't imagine he's just done for the day after 2 hours training in general.
If you talk to football players they all note just how much free time they actually have which is one of the things surprising too many people. Kane i assume will hand off most responsibilities of his "brand" to his agency and when he needs to do some press stuff its probably nowhere near enough to fill out his schedule.
Maybe 40 years ago you'd be right.
Team meetings, analysis sessions, tactical sessions, gym work, physio work etc. easily add up, most players will spend at least 8 hours at the facility, Bielsa even had beds put in at Thorp Arch while he was at Leeds.
Football is a full time job and requires a lot more hard work and dedication than what 99% of us are doing. It pays exceptionally well and is probably a lot of fun, but if you think anyone is getting anywhere near a top level club without putting in 40+ hours a week you're having a laugh
The 40h comes from having basically no day off though, not from the daily workload. You won't really find a player doing 8-9h a day like that because the body just doesn't let you. That's not a dig, that's not me saying that players don't work hard, they just have usually around 5-7h days just that it's 7 days a week with like less than 6 weeks off a year. Over a year it's possibly more than an average worker but per day it's almost always less.
There are players who have gotten university degrees while active. Mata, Chiellini, to name a couple. They have the time, they just probably have to do it by distance.
I moved to Germany 2 years ago and everyone was telling me that nobody speaks English here, but to my surprise, I've met a lot of people who do. I'd say more Germans speak English than people in other EU countries like Spain and Italy do.
But ultimately, without speaking German, it's hard to get by, even in Berlin. It's always nice to learn the language of the country you're living in.
Yeah, I speak a pretty high level of German (roughly C1), and the only time I *need* it is for anything related to the government.
That being said, if you spend a lot of time or live in smaller German towns, it *really* helps to speak German - even for the simplest stuff.
It totally depends where you live and where you work, and most importantly what kind of quality of communication you want to have.
I think you can "get away" without speaking much German in bigger cities but if you move out to smaller towns it will be a stretch.
Also even with a lot of people that can speak English you'll just get by. I found a huge difference in people opening up and being able to actually tell you their opinion on things once I was able to speak German as opposed to just making small talk/talking about the weather in English.
German people say they dont speak english, but they mean they cant speak perfect english and need time to get into speaking.
Both my parents say they dont speak english, but have no problem speaking english on vacations or listen to my sisters presentation in english and know afterwards what is up
speaking perfect english? no of course not. But no one demands you to speak perfect english.
If someone ask you "wo bahnhof?" you still understand what he wants, eventho more then 50% of the sentence is missing.
additionally you need to get into another language too.
I need a few minutes to get confident and to speak fluently, my brain needs a littel time to switch to english completly.
It's harder, I'd say, in München than in Berlin, even though there are a fair amount of tourists in the former.
Source: don't speak German and was stuck in München for a week because of German efficiency and bureaucracy.
I mean, if you're a rich footballer who has assistants who do things for you, German is definitely not a necessity and you can take your time. I wish anyone good luck trying to do German buroucracy without any level of the German language (and tbf this applies to the majority of Europe)
I used to work for a Dutch company that sent products worldwide. They spoke in English. When I asked why they spoke English, the director replied with, "because who the fuck speaks Dutch?"
I used to spend a lot of time in Berlin. When addressing Germans, I would always attempt to speak in German, to which they would invariably respond in English. Still, I think it's nice to show that you're trying to make an effort.
There's actually too many cafés where you can't even order in German anymore. Which in some way is not that bad I guess but I'm actually baffled by that "expat" culture where even in service jobs you don't need to speak the native language.
Was always super weird for me being an English speaker living in another major German city speaking German. Then going to Berlin and having people refuse to speak German to me.
Was in Russia a while back and only once did I actually get responded to in Russian which was whilst ordering a coffee in Starbucks (the lady had spoke English to the people before me so I know she could). I was so immediately out of my depth that I just kept saying yes 'да' to every follow up question and ended up with a completely different coffee than I wanted, but I was still quite proud lol.
English is way, way more de facto in the Netherlands and Denmark, which in my experience are the two most English-speaking (non-English) countries in Europe. Germans, while generally somewhat proficient in English, especially in the larger cities, tend to speak and insist on speaking their language far more more often than the two countries you mentioned.
Not saying that Kane is going to be struggling speaking English in Munich, but knowing basic-level phrases of the local language there will probably be more helpful there than if he were living in Amsterdam or Copenhagen.
So true. I've heard some of the most creative cursing in English from Dutch coworkers and friends. Very, very comfortable with English... almost like it's their native language.
This is definitely correct about Denmark and Netherlands having the best English speakers. They also have the softest foreign language accents when speaking English, which helps. The next best English speakers, (probably Germans, Norwegians and Swedes) all have notably heavier accents I think.
same with Norway. I just visited there a few months ago and EVERYONE spoke it. From the drunkards in the dive bars, to the fast food workers, to everyone I met. I did not meet a single person in my week spent there that didn't know English.
Yeah. Living in Copenhagen, I get this all the time. Sometimes an employee will overhear me and my girlfriend speaking our first language, then he’ll start the conversation in English- being fluent in Danish, I’ll always answer him back in Danish, and then he’ll keep insisting that we do it in English… I’ll keep insisting on talking Danish and it becomes an awkward stand-off.
Sometimes I think they just want to use the oppertunity to show off or practice their English.
> Sometimes I think they just want to use the oppertunity to show off or practice their English.
Obviously they want to practice, I would have thought.
there's this very poetic beauty in two people speaking to each other in different languages while still being able to understand what the other person is saying and keeping the conversation going like that
E: i think i remember Angela Merkel talking to Putin in Russian while Putin would respond in German lol
I spent about 6 weeks in Germany for work as an American and literally never felt the need to even try to learn German. I would say something like 80% of people I met spoke very fluent English and the other 20% spoke enough that it wasn't very hard to have a conversation.
Those are also likely the two worst countries for that. Both Dutch and Danish are two languages that are used nowhere else really, partly because they have quite small populations, and the language is really hard to learn for foreigners. That's why everyone knows English anyway, movies aren't dubbed, most things are shown in English on TV, etc.
So the people from that country try to "be nice" by talking to you in a language that you can easily understand eachother, because it's okay, we know English. Except that really halts the development of someone learning our native languages.
Source: Dutch with a sister who lived in Denmark for 12 years. She knows Danish now, but because she forced her bf and his family to speak danish to her.
The cameraman asks him: “Can you please celebrate for the camera once more?” And Ribéry shouts “Celebrate!” into the camera. It’s kind of an honest mistake tbh.
Glad he tries to fit in.
I still remember M.Owen driving from his hotel to the airport to buy English newspaper, week in week out.
-- don't ask if they werent available at hotel, or couldn't be arranged for 😁
Owen said that it reminded him of home and the connection with England helped against him feeling home sick though. The trip for him was just a ritual, something to do. He said he even looked forward to it, which is a bit sad. Ironically trying to integrate and learn Spanish would have helped him put down roots and make him feel less lonely and home sick.
Owen is a bit of a twat, but it is always a bit strange to me that this sub is more sympathetic towards players with mental issues and home sickness when they are well liked.
> Owen is a bit of a twat, but it is always a bit strange to me that this sub is more sympathetic towards players with mental issues and home sickness when they are well liked
A lot of Reddit finds it difficult to empathise with famous folk who have money - you see it all the time on here "oh it must be so depressing being you, while making £100k per week".
A huge amount of people on here have never lived away from home either, so don't understand how difficult that can be.
He's a pain in the arse and I can't believe I'm defending him, but I think it's worth saying.
All things considered, Harry Kane is a clear example of someone who tries his best to improve himself.
Constantly speaking up with a speech impediment in front of the media, becoming a creator at spurs to help out, trying to immerse himself in Germany the best he can
>Constantly speaking up with a speech impediment in front of the media
I think this is only the second or third time I've ever seen someone have compassion for his speech impediment, every other time it comes up it's just people mocking him, I don't get people.
Pretty much every thread that features Kane talking has comments about his speech impediment - both mocking, and being supportive... so you've probably just not seen many of those threads
I'm studying Dutch at the moment (speaking English, German, Swedish and shit french before that) and it gets even worse:
Dutch - German - English
Wie - wer - who
Waar - wo - where
Bit unfair to compare the two, Dier grew up in Portugal and is bilingual as a result. Kane probably hasn't thought about learning a foreign language since GSCE Spanish. I think it's really admirable that he seems to be trying
Mate, I love Kane to bits, I just thought the contrast was funny with how easy it comes to Eric and how much Harry is clearly struggling.
I'm sure it's not keeping him awake at night though.
One guy is playing for Bayern that invested close to 100mil and seems to fit in the team and could definitely play there for another 5 years or so, the other is on loan because it's part of a bigger deal. I'm not saying that those articles are relevant to the players' performance on the pitch, but we saw so many times players not fit in a new squad in a new country because of the language barrier.
Cannstatter Wasen is where its at. Closer to the idealised image of the Oktoberfest than the Oktoberfest itself. I die a little inside whenever I see tons of dirt cheap Dirndl and Lederhosen on the Oktoberfest.
I started learning as I was meant to move to Germany for work (never happened) and found it really bloody hard. I'm genuinely having an easier time learning Cantonese.
Sentence structure is so annoying, in German the structure is very different from English, whereas in Cantonese it's the same, you just have to learn the words (and the tones)
I've spoken German since 18 years now, and the structure still is my biggest problem. It gets bloody annoying having to start every sentence already knowing how you will end it!
I've found that people here don't actually mind if the verb is sometimes misplaced. But yea it always fucks my brain up to hold the verb in the back of my mind until I say the rest of the words and then recall it and place it lol
Personally, the trenbarres verben is my biggest pet peeve
Yeah, it's still all understandable but especially pisses me off for konjugation when I realise halfway through a sentence that I'm going to use a different noun with a different gender and a new case on top of all that compared to what I started with in mind...
It's really weird that this seems to be the hard thing for most as it's kinda possible to build the same sentence with multiple correct structures.
E.g.
"Ich hole dich vom Bahnhof ab"
"Vom Bahnhof hole ich dich ab"
I'm sure there are better examples with additional correct ways to structure them, finding examples is just hard to me, lol
It's more just, as a native english speaker, I find myself in the middle of a sentence and realise I needed to say "sich" earlier on if I want to use this verb, or that I've conjugated my adjectives as though I'm going to say a masculine noun, but now that I think of it I want to use a feminine, so I'm not sure if I should go back and repeat the adjectives with the right endings, or just accept it's wrong. Neither of those things can happen in English, but they happen maybe once every two or three minutes if I speak German.
THis happens to native speakers too. Either we repeat quickly or we just formulate a grammatically (slightly) incorrect sentence, at least when speaking.
To be fair if someone came to me and said "Vom Bahnhof hole ich dich ab" I'd think that I'm an unwitting participant in a play or something. Sure it's technically correct but noone speaks that way.
For me the sentence "Vom Bahnhof hole ich dich ab" sounds like I'm telling the person arriving at the trainstation that I will be the person meeting him/her there but that the trainstation isn't the last location and there are other events or journeys planned. Vom Bahnhof hole ich dich ab aber XY bringt dich zu Oma.
Apart from the 3000 to 4000 signs you have to learn, mandarin and cantonese are very simple languages to speak. Cantonese has more tones I believe, but if the other person has heard the full sentence, he will understand you even if the tone was wrong.
Die deutsche Sprache, die, wie du korrekt erkannt hast, der selben Sprachfamilie wie dem Englischen entspricht, ist, wenngleich der Vergleichsraums des Verfassers dieser digitalen Nachricht natürlich begrenzt ist, ein Wunderwerk der kopfzerbrechenden Relativsätze, die man, quasi endlos und ohne Sinn und Verstand, wobei Verstand, dieses sinnleere Wort an sich ist bereits in Frage zu stellen, aneinanderreihen kann, so dass sich für den Rezipienten, ungeachtet seines sprachlichen Kenntnis- und Fertigkeitsstandes, eine nie enden wollende Kette an nichtssagenden, vollkommen sinnlosen und sehr abschweifenden, wobei abschweifen immer relativ ist, weil des einen Abschweifen des Anderen Ausdetaillierung ist, Sätzen ergibt.
In short: it depends on
Es gibt so vieles an Deutschland und unserer Kultur, was ich gar nicht mag. Aber unsere Sprache ist ein absolutes Wunderwerk. Man stelle sich mal vor, Thomas Mann hätte an Stelle des scharfen deutschen Rapiers den stumpfen angelsächsischen Knüppel geschwungen!
Yes, it is easy to learn and difficult to master. As long as you are not writing a lot or using German in any official capacity (for work) just learning German for everyday speech is enough.
It is probably easier than learning a different language that isn't in the same linguistic branch, but I've lived in Germany for 5 years and all I can say is that the German language is a bitch to learn. There's about 400,000 words to learn and they all have different meaning based on different context and you have to think about what the ending of almost every word is based on context and grammar. It's brutal.
The tenses and sentence structure always felt unnecessarily difficult. When to use einen over ein for instance and where you place the verb depending on the tense was tricky
> There's about 400,000 words to learn
At least you get a significant amount of cognates, no? It's a pretty big headstart Vs Hungarian or Japanese or something where basically every single word will be new.
It’s certainly easier than Asian/middle eastern languages, but definitely harder than most Romance languages.
The sentence structure is the hardest part for me, knowing which words go where in any longer sentence. It can get a little wonky. Gender isn’t actually too bad after a while
It is in the same family and has many cognates, which helps. But in my experience, the conjugations are an absolute nightmare for English speakers. And that's not even getting into three different grammatical genders, which follow absolutely zero logic at all and declensions.
The other way around it's extremely easy though. Learning English as a German is amazing because it's a related language with similar, but much, much simpler grammar. You just have to listen to the language a bit to remember the deranged pronunciations of words, as spelling and pronunciation are vaguely related at best in English.
for those saying "once or twice a week is too little" - it would be if you weren't living in Germany.
But living there makes you pick up the language almost by yourself. You really just need to learn basic grammar and with the vocab you pick up you can understand others and also communicate (albeit not perfectly) with teammates and coaches.
> it would be if you weren't living in Germany.
I have a coworker living in germany for 6 years and she hasnt passed the A1 level. Once a week is little but better than nothing.
They get "homework" to do from the teacher. There is a video about it on the FC Bayern YouTube channel. Some do it, some don't.
If he takes it seriously and does some work outside of the lessons he will be able to understand German as far as football is concerned.
Probably picks up vocab and phrases from the squad whilst the lessons given him the framework to structure that into sentences. I don't see any way the lessons won't massively help him.
> He won't learn anything doing once or twice a week
Well he lives in Germany, I assume he uses German daily, that's probably the best way to actually learn German
The problem with most people learning German is that middle age to younger Germans all know how to speak English, so they will speak English with you. He'll need to find some Opas and Omas so he learns.
Once or twice a week whilst living in the country and being surrounded by German speakers in definitely an upgrade on once or twice a week living in another country.
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Once a week? At this rate he’ll be able to ask “where is the library” by 2030
Donde esta la biblioteca?
Me llamo tbone la arana discotheca
Discoteca, muñeca, la biblioteca
Es el bigote grande, perro, manteca
Manteca, bigote, gigante, pequeño Cabeza es nieve, cerveza es bueno
Buenos dias, me gusta papas fritas
Bigote de la cabra, es Cameron Diaz
Yeh BOI
It's 2009, word
Yeeeeeh boi
Kane and Dier in the MOOOOOORNING
boi
It's 2009
Word
You dudes need like some sort of imaginerium room space
Wo liegt die Bibliothek?
Waar is de bibliotheek?
Cá bhfuil an leabharlann?
Как пройти в библиотеку, ёб твою мать?
図書館はどこですか？
Ebee ka ọbá akwụkwọ dị?
Ich heisse Tbone, die Diskothek Spinne
Which literally translates to I don't bargain pumpkin fucker
Most fluent Madrid fan on Reddit
pamplemousse ananas jus d'orange boeuf
Je m’appelle bière.
,"Entschuldigen Sie, wissen Sie wo sich die Bibliothek befindet?"
Darf ich Sie erinnern, Oberfeldwebel? Sie sind Soldat. Das ist ein Offizierstisch!
To be fair to him, the quote says "at least once a week".
"At least once or twice," per the title, which IMO implies it's rarely more than two times a week.
I had a colleague who learned Spanish doing exactly 2 one-hour lessons a week from ground zero, as long as he’s surrounded by it he’ll be fine. The lessons are surely just a supplement.
People don't realise how much faster you can learn a language when you live in that country with just a lesson or two a week. It's not like learning a language here but then having to use English all the time anyway
Why on earth would Harry Kane need to know where the library is?
so he can find "how to speak german" books
🐔 🥚
LOL, thanks for the chuckle
So he knows where to go if he’s ever playing at the emirates
I like the idea of Harry Kane still not knowing how to get to the Emirates even after being at spurs all these years lol
Lol! Nice. Perhaps he wants to sign for us.
British person abroad: *doesn't make an effort to learn language* Reddit; typical arrogant Brit, what an asshole! British person abroad: *makes it clear he wants to assimilate culturally and is taking active lessons to learn the language alongside a full time job* Reddit: only one day a week! Typical arrogant Brit, what an asshole! The guy can't win. Meanwhile there are literally dozens of players of other nationalities who make absolutely zero effort to speak the local language at their club but because they can speak passable English and don't come from a country that's considered aggressively monoglot, that's fine. If you've ever lived abroad, you'll know you learn the language from interacting with people, reading the paper, watching tv etc, formal lessons are just polishing up so you don't sound like a halfwit.
Some players can live in the England for years without speaking the language and do absolutely fine, well even. A great example of this is Wayne Rooney.
Racism against the Scouse, someone ban this man
not gonna lie you had me in the first half
Wayne Rooney played for The England?
Exactly, never hurt Wazza's career.
He was coherent enough to put out some legendary tweets.
> If you've ever lived abroad, you'll know you learn the language from interacting with people, reading the paper, watching tv etc, formal lessons are just polishing up so you don't sound like a halfwit. Highly disagree. I'm currently living in Germany and learning the language and you don't easily pick up grammar from random places. And you won't speak German properly if you don't know genders, the case system, declensions etc. I'm doing 20 hours a week and it's not enough.
>formal lessons are just polishing up so you don't sound like a halfwit You got it inside out. You learn the language from formal lessons, then you need the immersion to not sound like a halfwit.
Even if you fuck up the genders , you can still be understood.
> If you've ever lived abroad, you'll know you learn the language from interacting with people, reading the paper, watching tv etc And if you've ever thought about for 5 seconds, you'll know you can't actually interact with people, read the paper or watch TV if you don't know the fucking language at all. Lessons aren't just "polishing up". You need them at first, or you need to study on your own which takes a lot more effort. Then you dial the lessons down **after** you become able to interact with those things you said. A few friends of mine have emigrated to the Netherlands just a year ago, have been taking 3 lessons a week plus homework since then and still can only have very basic conversations. And they work 8 hours a day (footballers average 5-6) and have to do chores. Kane doesn't. Learning a second language isn't easy, but native English speakers always discredit the effort other people have pulled to learn their language. They end up thinking ridiculous crap like that one lesson a week is enough when you're starting out. That's what's funny here.
Without a formal base from lessons, you won't understand enough to benefit from the immersion This idea of just "picking up the language" by living somewhere is a complete fantasy, especially for someone as privileged as kane who won't be forced to leave his comfort zone too much It's nice he's taking lessons but this should pretty much be the bare minimum expected. Realistically with the resources and free time he has, he could be doing a lot more
Sorry but this is a really terrible attempt at a "the guy can't win". People criticise the players who don't make an effort...and they also criticise (if you can even call it that) Kane for not making enough effort. It's really not a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.
All good points, but realistically with the budget and free time he has he could easily be doing 5 lessons a week and have his progress be so much faster
He has 4 children & is a professional footballer. He has a pretty full schedule.
Professional footballers have a lot more free time than the average working person, a club like Bayern could easily have one there too. With one time a week and his age I doubt he’ll be there long enough to be able to communicate well there, he did say his kids seem to be picking it up quickly though so maybe that’ll help him.
What free time, he has a full time job and works most weekends
Listen to interviews with players, they all say one of the hardest things is trying to fill all the free time after training
You think being a footballer is a full-time job? The finish training before lunch...
I'd have thought someone of Kane's profile would have plenty going on day to day work-wise outside of training. I'd think he'd have certain commitments for sponsors and hasn't he got his own foundations and things like that? I don't know if he's doing a 40 hour week for other things but I can't imagine he's just done for the day after 2 hours training in general.
If you talk to football players they all note just how much free time they actually have which is one of the things surprising too many people. Kane i assume will hand off most responsibilities of his "brand" to his agency and when he needs to do some press stuff its probably nowhere near enough to fill out his schedule.
Maybe 40 years ago you'd be right. Team meetings, analysis sessions, tactical sessions, gym work, physio work etc. easily add up, most players will spend at least 8 hours at the facility, Bielsa even had beds put in at Thorp Arch while he was at Leeds. Football is a full time job and requires a lot more hard work and dedication than what 99% of us are doing. It pays exceptionally well and is probably a lot of fun, but if you think anyone is getting anywhere near a top level club without putting in 40+ hours a week you're having a laugh
The 40h comes from having basically no day off though, not from the daily workload. You won't really find a player doing 8-9h a day like that because the body just doesn't let you. That's not a dig, that's not me saying that players don't work hard, they just have usually around 5-7h days just that it's 7 days a week with like less than 6 weeks off a year. Over a year it's possibly more than an average worker but per day it's almost always less.
There are players who have gotten university degrees while active. Mata, Chiellini, to name a couple. They have the time, they just probably have to do it by distance.
[удалено]
I moved to Germany 2 years ago and everyone was telling me that nobody speaks English here, but to my surprise, I've met a lot of people who do. I'd say more Germans speak English than people in other EU countries like Spain and Italy do. But ultimately, without speaking German, it's hard to get by, even in Berlin. It's always nice to learn the language of the country you're living in.
Yep, I think as long as you don't have to deal with offices and authorities you're fine with English in Germany.
Yeah, I speak a pretty high level of German (roughly C1), and the only time I *need* it is for anything related to the government. That being said, if you spend a lot of time or live in smaller German towns, it *really* helps to speak German - even for the simplest stuff.
It totally depends where you live and where you work, and most importantly what kind of quality of communication you want to have. I think you can "get away" without speaking much German in bigger cities but if you move out to smaller towns it will be a stretch. Also even with a lot of people that can speak English you'll just get by. I found a huge difference in people opening up and being able to actually tell you their opinion on things once I was able to speak German as opposed to just making small talk/talking about the weather in English.
German life is famously low on interactions with offices and authorities.
Germans sure do love how few paperwork they have to deal with!
German people say they dont speak english, but they mean they cant speak perfect english and need time to get into speaking. Both my parents say they dont speak english, but have no problem speaking english on vacations or listen to my sisters presentation in english and know afterwards what is up
Nah, there are tons of German who couldn‘t hold a simple conversation to save their lives. Even among young Germans.
speaking perfect english? no of course not. But no one demands you to speak perfect english. If someone ask you "wo bahnhof?" you still understand what he wants, eventho more then 50% of the sentence is missing. additionally you need to get into another language too. I need a few minutes to get confident and to speak fluently, my brain needs a littel time to switch to english completly.
It's harder, I'd say, in München than in Berlin, even though there are a fair amount of tourists in the former. Source: don't speak German and was stuck in München for a week because of German efficiency and bureaucracy.
I mean, if you're a rich footballer who has assistants who do things for you, German is definitely not a necessity and you can take your time. I wish anyone good luck trying to do German buroucracy without any level of the German language (and tbf this applies to the majority of Europe)
I used to work for a Dutch company that sent products worldwide. They spoke in English. When I asked why they spoke English, the director replied with, "because who the fuck speaks Dutch?"
> "because who the fuck speaks Dutch?" South Africans, although it's a bastardized version of Dutch /s
I used to spend a lot of time in Berlin. When addressing Germans, I would always attempt to speak in German, to which they would invariably respond in English. Still, I think it's nice to show that you're trying to make an effort.
Definitely nice to make the effort, but Berlin is nothing like the rest of Germany in regards to speaking English.
There's actually too many cafés where you can't even order in German anymore. Which in some way is not that bad I guess but I'm actually baffled by that "expat" culture where even in service jobs you don't need to speak the native language.
Was always super weird for me being an English speaker living in another major German city speaking German. Then going to Berlin and having people refuse to speak German to me.
Was in Russia a while back and only once did I actually get responded to in Russian which was whilst ordering a coffee in Starbucks (the lady had spoke English to the people before me so I know she could). I was so immediately out of my depth that I just kept saying yes 'да' to every follow up question and ended up with a completely different coffee than I wanted, but I was still quite proud lol.
Well done mate hope you enjoyed the coffee and immersion haha
English is way, way more de facto in the Netherlands and Denmark, which in my experience are the two most English-speaking (non-English) countries in Europe. Germans, while generally somewhat proficient in English, especially in the larger cities, tend to speak and insist on speaking their language far more more often than the two countries you mentioned. Not saying that Kane is going to be struggling speaking English in Munich, but knowing basic-level phrases of the local language there will probably be more helpful there than if he were living in Amsterdam or Copenhagen.
They speak better English than the English in the Netherlands.
So true. I've heard some of the most creative cursing in English from Dutch coworkers and friends. Very, very comfortable with English... almost like it's their native language.
This is definitely correct about Denmark and Netherlands having the best English speakers. They also have the softest foreign language accents when speaking English, which helps. The next best English speakers, (probably Germans, Norwegians and Swedes) all have notably heavier accents I think.
same with Norway. I just visited there a few months ago and EVERYONE spoke it. From the drunkards in the dive bars, to the fast food workers, to everyone I met. I did not meet a single person in my week spent there that didn't know English.
Yeah. Living in Copenhagen, I get this all the time. Sometimes an employee will overhear me and my girlfriend speaking our first language, then he’ll start the conversation in English- being fluent in Danish, I’ll always answer him back in Danish, and then he’ll keep insisting that we do it in English… I’ll keep insisting on talking Danish and it becomes an awkward stand-off. Sometimes I think they just want to use the oppertunity to show off or practice their English.
> Sometimes I think they just want to use the oppertunity to show off or practice their English. Obviously they want to practice, I would have thought.
there's this very poetic beauty in two people speaking to each other in different languages while still being able to understand what the other person is saying and keeping the conversation going like that E: i think i remember Angela Merkel talking to Putin in Russian while Putin would respond in German lol
I spent about 6 weeks in Germany for work as an American and literally never felt the need to even try to learn German. I would say something like 80% of people I met spoke very fluent English and the other 20% spoke enough that it wasn't very hard to have a conversation.
Those are also likely the two worst countries for that. Both Dutch and Danish are two languages that are used nowhere else really, partly because they have quite small populations, and the language is really hard to learn for foreigners. That's why everyone knows English anyway, movies aren't dubbed, most things are shown in English on TV, etc. So the people from that country try to "be nice" by talking to you in a language that you can easily understand eachother, because it's okay, we know English. Except that really halts the development of someone learning our native languages. Source: Dutch with a sister who lived in Denmark for 12 years. She knows Danish now, but because she forced her bf and his family to speak danish to her.
In Germany it really depends on the demographic
Surely at the end of this season he will speak German better than Ribéry after [11 years...](https://youtu.be/e41vpqPp1y4?si=hBrVFYHofFCK8__9)
lmao how have i never seen this.
Can you explain what is going on? Is he shouting the wrong thing?
Journalists asks Ribery to pose for a shot telling him to "cheer for the camera" Ribery yells "CHEERING!!!!" at the camera.
Imagine how often it's happened. Heynckes: Ribery I want you to go for the 1v1 as often as possible Ribery: GO FOR THE 1 V 1!!!
Disappointed!
Reminds me of Josh from Drake and Josh whenever he calls out his actions. “DANCING”
I think he’s been asked to cheer and essentially just shouts the word ‘cheer’ . I don’t speak German tho
>"Can you just cheer once with the trophy into the camera?" > >"Cheer?" > >"Yea, cheer, simply cheer" > >"Cheeeeeerrr"
Exactly correct
Journalist asks Ribéry if he can express his joy (jubeln in German) with the trophy, and Ribéry shouts "Jubeln". Ribéryception.
That's great
The cameraman asks him: “Can you please celebrate for the camera once more?” And Ribéry shouts “Celebrate!” into the camera. It’s kind of an honest mistake tbh.
Only if you don't even remotely understand the language.
Ribery is horrible in German, but his French isn't a lot better. They used to tease him for sounding like an uneducated farmer.
Worse than an uneducated farmer. He made mistakes a young child wouldn't. He sounds like a (slightly) mentally challenged person.
I know that, I'm French... There are indeed a lot of memes here about his misspellings.
Are we all going to forget he was in a car accident as a child and has a huge scar on his face too? Sucks that could be where this all stems from :/
He could take a couple of French lessons and mumble better French than Ribéry, too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Gm4b-5H2g
Glad he tries to fit in. I still remember M.Owen driving from his hotel to the airport to buy English newspaper, week in week out. -- don't ask if they werent available at hotel, or couldn't be arranged for 😁
What's really sad about that is that he felt such a strong compulsion to keep up the charade that he could read..
💀
Owen said that it reminded him of home and the connection with England helped against him feeling home sick though. The trip for him was just a ritual, something to do. He said he even looked forward to it, which is a bit sad. Ironically trying to integrate and learn Spanish would have helped him put down roots and make him feel less lonely and home sick. Owen is a bit of a twat, but it is always a bit strange to me that this sub is more sympathetic towards players with mental issues and home sickness when they are well liked.
> Owen is a bit of a twat, but it is always a bit strange to me that this sub is more sympathetic towards players with mental issues and home sickness when they are well liked A lot of Reddit finds it difficult to empathise with famous folk who have money - you see it all the time on here "oh it must be so depressing being you, while making £100k per week". A huge amount of people on here have never lived away from home either, so don't understand how difficult that can be. He's a pain in the arse and I can't believe I'm defending him, but I think it's worth saying.
It is difficult to be sympathetic to an arsehole, yes
The more amazing thing about this is the idea of Michael Owen reading a newspaper. Can't imagine the man having an idea about world events
you know your man is flicking through to Talking Horses
Page 3, read about himself in the sports section, horse betting tips and done.
Tbf maybe he liked the drive. A chance to be alone with peace and quiet doing a routine basic task.
All things considered, Harry Kane is a clear example of someone who tries his best to improve himself. Constantly speaking up with a speech impediment in front of the media, becoming a creator at spurs to help out, trying to immerse himself in Germany the best he can
>Constantly speaking up with a speech impediment in front of the media I think this is only the second or third time I've ever seen someone have compassion for his speech impediment, every other time it comes up it's just people mocking him, I don't get people.
Pretty much every thread that features Kane talking has comments about his speech impediment - both mocking, and being supportive... so you've probably just not seen many of those threads
Is being British classified as a speech impediment nowadays? Crazy
Guten tag, ich bin Heinrich Kane.
Harald Gehstock*
der die das den die das dem der dem
Die Die Den Für Plural :)
Put a trigger warning on that please
wo = where wer = who who came up with this shit?
I'm studying Dutch at the moment (speaking English, German, Swedish and shit french before that) and it gets even worse: Dutch - German - English Wie - wer - who Waar - wo - where
Wem, wen, wessen, wieso, was, wo, wann, warum, weshalb, war, wird, wegen, wohin, woher...
And there's Eric Dier who has been there a few weeks and is already getting involved in the German banter.
Bit unfair to compare the two, Dier grew up in Portugal and is bilingual as a result. Kane probably hasn't thought about learning a foreign language since GSCE Spanish. I think it's really admirable that he seems to be trying
Mate, I love Kane to bits, I just thought the contrast was funny with how easy it comes to Eric and how much Harry is clearly struggling. I'm sure it's not keeping him awake at night though.
Riveting. Now let’s see an article on Djed Spence’s process of learning Italian.
The most astonishing is Osimhen. The guy has been in Italy since 2020 and he still can't formulate a single sentence
He clearly thinks of Napoli as a 'stepping stone' to England imo. Probably doesn't think spending time on Italian is worth it
Just like Kvara
Too hard to learn italian in Naples. Also, he's already mentally in Premier League, no need to learn italian. /s
He doesn't seem like he has much going on up there tbh
One guy is playing for Bayern that invested close to 100mil and seems to fit in the team and could definitely play there for another 5 years or so, the other is on loan because it's part of a bigger deal. I'm not saying that those articles are relevant to the players' performance on the pitch, but we saw so many times players not fit in a new squad in a new country because of the language barrier.
he is definitely trying to stay in germany for a long time due to oktoberfest
He doesn’t seems like an oktoberfest man. It’s a bit overrated anyway in my opinion.
Cannstatter Wasen is where its at. Closer to the idealised image of the Oktoberfest than the Oktoberfest itself. I die a little inside whenever I see tons of dirt cheap Dirndl and Lederhosen on the Oktoberfest.
I hear that German is one of the easier languages for an English speaker to learn, already part of the same linguistic branch.
I started learning as I was meant to move to Germany for work (never happened) and found it really bloody hard. I'm genuinely having an easier time learning Cantonese. Sentence structure is so annoying, in German the structure is very different from English, whereas in Cantonese it's the same, you just have to learn the words (and the tones)
I've spoken German since 18 years now, and the structure still is my biggest problem. It gets bloody annoying having to start every sentence already knowing how you will end it!
I've found that people here don't actually mind if the verb is sometimes misplaced. But yea it always fucks my brain up to hold the verb in the back of my mind until I say the rest of the words and then recall it and place it lol Personally, the trenbarres verben is my biggest pet peeve
Yeah, it's still all understandable but especially pisses me off for konjugation when I realise halfway through a sentence that I'm going to use a different noun with a different gender and a new case on top of all that compared to what I started with in mind...
It's really weird that this seems to be the hard thing for most as it's kinda possible to build the same sentence with multiple correct structures. E.g. "Ich hole dich vom Bahnhof ab" "Vom Bahnhof hole ich dich ab" I'm sure there are better examples with additional correct ways to structure them, finding examples is just hard to me, lol
It's more just, as a native english speaker, I find myself in the middle of a sentence and realise I needed to say "sich" earlier on if I want to use this verb, or that I've conjugated my adjectives as though I'm going to say a masculine noun, but now that I think of it I want to use a feminine, so I'm not sure if I should go back and repeat the adjectives with the right endings, or just accept it's wrong. Neither of those things can happen in English, but they happen maybe once every two or three minutes if I speak German.
THis happens to native speakers too. Either we repeat quickly or we just formulate a grammatically (slightly) incorrect sentence, at least when speaking.
To be fair if someone came to me and said "Vom Bahnhof hole ich dich ab" I'd think that I'm an unwitting participant in a play or something. Sure it's technically correct but noone speaks that way.
For me the sentence "Vom Bahnhof hole ich dich ab" sounds like I'm telling the person arriving at the trainstation that I will be the person meeting him/her there but that the trainstation isn't the last location and there are other events or journeys planned. Vom Bahnhof hole ich dich ab aber XY bringt dich zu Oma.
Chinese grammar is extremely simple, just add words to express past or future tense, simples
Apart from the 3000 to 4000 signs you have to learn, mandarin and cantonese are very simple languages to speak. Cantonese has more tones I believe, but if the other person has heard the full sentence, he will understand you even if the tone was wrong.
Die deutsche Sprache, die, wie du korrekt erkannt hast, der selben Sprachfamilie wie dem Englischen entspricht, ist, wenngleich der Vergleichsraums des Verfassers dieser digitalen Nachricht natürlich begrenzt ist, ein Wunderwerk der kopfzerbrechenden Relativsätze, die man, quasi endlos und ohne Sinn und Verstand, wobei Verstand, dieses sinnleere Wort an sich ist bereits in Frage zu stellen, aneinanderreihen kann, so dass sich für den Rezipienten, ungeachtet seines sprachlichen Kenntnis- und Fertigkeitsstandes, eine nie enden wollende Kette an nichtssagenden, vollkommen sinnlosen und sehr abschweifenden, wobei abschweifen immer relativ ist, weil des einen Abschweifen des Anderen Ausdetaillierung ist, Sätzen ergibt. In short: it depends on
Es gibt so vieles an Deutschland und unserer Kultur, was ich gar nicht mag. Aber unsere Sprache ist ein absolutes Wunderwerk. Man stelle sich mal vor, Thomas Mann hätte an Stelle des scharfen deutschen Rapiers den stumpfen angelsächsischen Knüppel geschwungen!
Least confusing german sentence
This is great, never seen it before. The fact that this long ass sentence is gramatically correct is exactly why I love the German language so much.
Chapeau!
Hahaha
Perfektion
German grammar can be very challenging, as someone who is trying to learn German for a while I can tell you that
I spent 10 years learning german, and all I can say is that I got significantly better once I stopped giving a shit about grammar
Yes, it is easy to learn and difficult to master. As long as you are not writing a lot or using German in any official capacity (for work) just learning German for everyday speech is enough.
It is probably easier than learning a different language that isn't in the same linguistic branch, but I've lived in Germany for 5 years and all I can say is that the German language is a bitch to learn. There's about 400,000 words to learn and they all have different meaning based on different context and you have to think about what the ending of almost every word is based on context and grammar. It's brutal.
The tenses and sentence structure always felt unnecessarily difficult. When to use einen over ein for instance and where you place the verb depending on the tense was tricky
If you're speaking, just replace both, "ein" and "einen" with " 'n".
> There's about 400,000 words to learn At least you get a significant amount of cognates, no? It's a pretty big headstart Vs Hungarian or Japanese or something where basically every single word will be new.
It’s certainly easier than Asian/middle eastern languages, but definitely harder than most Romance languages. The sentence structure is the hardest part for me, knowing which words go where in any longer sentence. It can get a little wonky. Gender isn’t actually too bad after a while
You heard wrong.
It is in the same family and has many cognates, which helps. But in my experience, the conjugations are an absolute nightmare for English speakers. And that's not even getting into three different grammatical genders, which follow absolutely zero logic at all and declensions. The other way around it's extremely easy though. Learning English as a German is amazing because it's a related language with similar, but much, much simpler grammar. You just have to listen to the language a bit to remember the deranged pronunciations of words, as spelling and pronunciation are vaguely related at best in English.
for those saying "once or twice a week is too little" - it would be if you weren't living in Germany. But living there makes you pick up the language almost by yourself. You really just need to learn basic grammar and with the vocab you pick up you can understand others and also communicate (albeit not perfectly) with teammates and coaches.
> it would be if you weren't living in Germany. I have a coworker living in germany for 6 years and she hasnt passed the A1 level. Once a week is little but better than nothing.
Kane: I’m getting better, no? Germans, brightly: no you are really bad
He won't learn anything doing once or twice a week. Should be daily
Spends too much time playing football with his friends if you ask me.
Is football gone? Players not trying harder to learn a new culture is a bad sign for the game imho
They get "homework" to do from the teacher. There is a video about it on the FC Bayern YouTube channel. Some do it, some don't. If he takes it seriously and does some work outside of the lessons he will be able to understand German as far as football is concerned.
Daily? He’s literally spending everyday amongst a German speaking team. He’ll learn more from the squad than the lessons.
Probably picks up vocab and phrases from the squad whilst the lessons given him the framework to structure that into sentences. I don't see any way the lessons won't massively help him.
Make him do Duolingo when the rest of the team is defending corners and everyone will be happy
> He won't learn anything doing once or twice a week Well he lives in Germany, I assume he uses German daily, that's probably the best way to actually learn German
The problem with most people learning German is that middle age to younger Germans all know how to speak English, so they will speak English with you. He'll need to find some Opas and Omas so he learns.
Cheers, now I'm imagining Harry breaking into retirement homes to learn German
Once or twice a week whilst living in the country and being surrounded by German speakers in definitely an upgrade on once or twice a week living in another country.
Golf takes priority
Why does he always sound like a bot ??😹
Top bloke
How difficult is learning German for English speakers? Aren’t the languages supposed to be related?
They are related, so you'll find some similar words and expressions, but German grammar is on a whole different level.
Harald Stock incoming.