It's easy to pickup basic german, but it's difficult to speak german properly. Also, there are few variations on german like there are on English or French, so you need to speak it correctly. There is no "African German" or "Canadian German" or "Australian German". So the language is not tolerant of many variations like english or french is.

You're flat wrong about the variations. German dialects are almost like completely different languages. I grew up in Berlin, and we vacationed in Austria and Switzerland on a few occasions. I spoke fluent German (I attended German public schools) but when the natives were speaking their dialects to each other I didn't have a clue what they were saying. They would switch to "Hochdeutsch" when speaking to non-locals. The Austrian and Swiss dialects are probably the most extreme cases. Other regions have "dialects" that are really closer to accents with a few local phrases thrown in (kind of like New England).

German dialects are not as grossly different as let's say Nigerian English vs British English. Most people who speak dialectical german can speak normal german, but a british english speaker cannot switch to nigerian english or jamaican english.

German is diverse are as many languages, but English and French are far more diverse.

I'm torn here. I mostly agree with you (both the Berlin presentation and the language topic). I tend to believe that I speak very high level, accent free German (heck - I'm German. But 'accent free' is key..). I had to do business in Switzerland for roughly two years.

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..

Why does this happen? You don't have all-german tv channels, movies, music and whatever for everybody to parrot the "standard" dialect from?

I mean, why would people be blissfully unaware of the standard form.

It's not that they're blissfully unaware. It's being thaught in school and almost all official writing is done in the so called 'written German'. But it's simply not the language you speak (safe for a reason to the contrary, like not everybody understanding it). Even in written (private) communication it's used quite a lot, like in mails, sms, ...

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.]

In DE, ~everything~ on TV is in 'high level' German. Bah, we even dub every movie, special we-show-you-the-real-thing cinemas notwithstanding. Still, you have local dialects that are mostly used on the streets. Often these are part of the local identity, part of belonging to a place and people speaking different (even if that means 'correct') are easily identified as outsiders. I guess it's just a natural thing: I regularly hear people from the USA joke about southern/northern/eastern/western dialects as well - and Europe had a couple of years more to develop those.

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).

1: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bern

I think this irrelevant in this context. If you are going to do a Startup and especially in a big city like Berlin, everyone you work with will speak proper German.

And of course those people will know some English, too.

There are various variations in Germany alone not to mention Austria and Switzerland and even for native speakers they can be almost impossible to understand.

The proper spelling is the least of your worries if you want to learn German.

No way. English certainly has germanic roots but it was more recently influenced by french. We have over 17k french words in English where as in german the word might have a german root but it's no longer recognizable in most cases (e.g. enough comes from the root genug. They don't look alike but the enough came from the french not being able to make the ch sound that genug had on the end at the time).

It's true, there are a lot of french words in it. But English hasn't picked up the grammar of france. Because it was way harder to learn. You rather switch some words, than the whole logic in your sentence-making. That's why I think that if you're able to speak english, you'll be able to speak german too.

Well I'm american, have learned German and am learning French and I think I would have had a much easier time with French. The actual German grammar isn't that English like really. It's a kind of reverse old English. It has really strict rules about where verbs go and in what cases. Also, any verb past the first one has to be tacked on the end of the sentence, no matter how many there are. So you end up with things like:

He had yesterday at 3pm with his huge knife the postman killed should could.

German may be easy to "pick up" because of all the cognates, but I've found that the German grammer is both complex and not very "English".

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.

As a speaker of both English and German, and a dabbler in the other Romantic languages, I find German impossible to learn. I've taken years of classes and am still no good at it.

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.

The Awful German Language - Mark Twain [1]

I love that essay - and he agrees with you on the gender issue:

---

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)

Ah, I've read this before, it's delightful, but I go one further. I don't actually mind the detached genders (Greek has them, the door is a she, the table is an it, the bench is a he), as long as you can guess it from the word itself somehow (in Greek, gender is determined by the word's suffix, the girl is still neuter but you can tell even if you've never seen the word before).

In German, you basically have to learn an extra bit of information for every word.

Ah, right. Yes, it's just arbitrary and completely disconnected from the words as far as I can tell.

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..

Are you talking about Nutella? Shockingly, that's actual Italian, and not local to Germany.

It varies by region and dialect, also - very popular example is the soda pop "Cola".

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).

It's more than a bit:

0 = der

1 = die

10 = das

"A bit" = "some". I know that 3 > 2.

I'm sorry, I thought you were speaking technically. "An extra bit of information" could easily be mistaken for a computer term.

I guess it is, but I thought people would realise that I don't think that a bit has three states :P

I knew you knew German had three genders, I just thought other people didn't know.

Oh, true. Good catch, thanks!

re: genders - I learned the hard way that "pollo" and "polla" have completely different meanings in Spain when I ordered a chicken sandwich.

You are heavily under-estimating just how much more grammar there is in German compared to English and once you know how to correctly apply that grammar, there are quite a few exceptions to those rules which would all mean different things. And also we have those three "genders" and "the little girl" is NOT considered female, for example.

But our potatoes are female!