I'd actually disagree with you there. Given that English is a Germanic language, the little German I know was far easier to learn as a native English speaker than French or Japanese (the two other languages I studied for a short while).
German is diverse are as many languages, but English and French are far more diverse.
My takeaway:
* Lots of people there (no offense intended if any CH people read this) referred to the language I know as 'written German'
* Lots of people (TV news guys are kind of the only counter examples) have a _heavy_ accent if they speak what they consider de_DE (Time for an anecdote: A good local CH friend of mine told me once that he talked with a DE guy for quite a while, on his best official German level, and was told all of a sudden if he can talk German (probably considered as 'accent-free') as well).
After fighting the 'everybody speaks German in CH/AT' a bit I'd like to point to the fact that there are lots of accents and dialects that just sound like gibberish if you're not used to them. Let's leave AT/CH out of this for a moment: If I visit the northern part of Germany/the shore, if I visit the most southern places, if I go to the southwest (Platt/Bayrisch/Hessisch) and people speak 'normally' I end up understanding 50%-70%. And I didn't even mention some dialects from the east of Germany.
Actually - if people from Berlin talk fast and use the local dialect, I'm lost..
I mean, why would people be blissfully unaware of the standard form.
Oh, and at least for Swiss German: It is kinda a different language (but extremely related to the written German): It's not just an accent with some funny words, but has a slightly different grammar, too. Most glarious is the lack of most of the verb tenses in Swiss German. So pupils have to learn quite some stuff to be really fluent in written German.
And even just within Switzerland there are dialects I don't understand (as in no clue what they're talking about). People speaking these usually switch to a more conformistic pronounciation when talking to people from other areas and don't use some of the more obscure words.
And for the reasons this all exists (at least for Switzerland): It's cultivated and all kinda part of your local/national identity. Politicians who speak a "too good" written German are deemed suspicious, almost all of the local culture (theater, local movies, even most of the Swiss tv produciton ...) is in Swiss German.
[Native Swiss German speaker, here.]
Switzerland is a very specific case, I guess. The level of national pride is very high, with a very prominent political party living close to the racism edge (and crossing it every now and then), protecting the country from outside influences (contractors from i.e. Germany are not really welcome there, often seen as stealing jobs).
Add to this national pride a good amount of _local_ awareness: CH is a federal system, each 'state'(Kanton) fighting for as much independence as possible. Heck, they don't even have a real capital city [1] because they don't want one state to surpass the others. Your local region of origin seems to be much more important there.
In addition CH has 4 (erm.. 3.5?) official languages and already some 'borders' that separate parts of the country into ~mostly french/german/italian regions. You drive 5 min and every sign switches from German to French and the whole culture changes (food, lifestyle are the easiest things to spot).
And of course those people will know some English, too.
The proper spelling is the least of your worries if you want to learn German.
He had yesterday at 3pm with his huge knife the postman killed should could.
French, on the other hand, has significant vocabulary overlap with English and it's grammar rules are either easier to learn, or easy to fudge when speaking.
Its grammar is really close to ancient Greek, but that makes learning it no easier. Greek has three genders also, but you can usually tell the gender from the noun's suffix. In German, you have to learn the article with the word. It is one of the hardest languages I've met.
I love that essay - and he agrees with you on the gender issue:
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To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female -- tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it -- for in Germany all the women either male heads or sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.
Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in Germany a man may think he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the thought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him that in this respect he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land.
---
1: http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html (First hit I found on Google. You might find "better" versions)
In German, you basically have to learn an extra bit of information for every word.
In fact, we tend to argue about the gender of things here regularly. One well-known (and mocked) example is a very popular local hazelnut cream. People actually discuss if the brand name should be considered female or of no gender at all (not sure if anyone wants to claim that it should be male).
Since there's no real logic behind all these rules it's fair game to argue about it..
In Austria Cola is neuter "it", in Germany it is female, which for me as a native speaker from Austria always "feels" like they are referring to the can (which is female in Germany and Austria).
0 = der
1 = die
10 = das
--ps i am an amateur in legal field
Does anyone know where to find startup/programming/tech events in the berlin area? Which mailing lists to follow etc?
- Android round table every last Wednesday - Lisp round table on Thursday - Wifi hackers every Wednesday
You can "follow" their calendar: http://www.c-base.org/calender/termine.ics
Berlin is not particularly welcoming to posh types, or the kind of people who enjoy high-class exclusive nightlife. You really don't want to park your luxury car on the street.
For everyone else, I'd say Berlin is extremely free and tolerant and generally welcoming.
The outskirts are really suburban more than anything, and completely different.
but the disparate nautre of east/west berlin is one of the best things going for it. especially in the crossover areas like kreuzberg (not kreuzkoelln) and bits of mitte (that haven't been gentrified yet)
Funny you should say this, I have the same feeling for the rest of Germany (that I have seen so far) as well... Germany and Germans tend to impose Germany and the German way on you.
Another advantage is that a lot of european young people go to berlin, for example from france, U.K, holland, poland and so on. It's a city that draws the young upwardly mobile crowd, rather than the working class. So there is the sense of a diversity of ideas, and many different people doing different things. It's a city that does not feel very "german", it feels very european.
Berlin is not so great for people looking to work in the tech industry because there is no concentration of tech companies. But for self-starters, it's quite conducive.
I doubt that Berlin will really become the mecca for technology though, because I do not think it's easy to learn the german language, and in the end, Berlin is in Germany, and Germany is not very multi-cultural. London feels much free-er, English laws are much more conducive to small companies, and people already speak english.
Berlin imposes berlin on you, you have to kind of be the berlin type to like berlin, but I get the feeling, you can just be yourself in London.