Everybody understands it, most people are able to speak it quite well.
This should be no wonder as the languages are actually quite similar. At least the gap isn't so big as for example between English and some Latin language, or even something linguistically much more far away.
But even people are considerably well educated in this regard they don't like to speak English in daily life. Berlin (and the few other big northern cities like Frankfurt) are mostly an exception to that. But even there this does not hold for authorities. They will on principle insist on German.
They're actually quite not. Try typing something into www.deepl.com - verb placement alone separates the languages by much more than a few shared roots.
* I do so wish the German rules on the pronunciation of 'ei', and 'ie' could be/ could have been internationally adopted.
I asked him about that. He said in Alabama where he was born this was fairly common.
> They're actually quite not.
Of course German and English are very close related.
Both are Germanic languages. Look here, in the right lower corner:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages#/media...
Or here:
https://alternativetransport.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/34/
Not only words and grammar are closely related even most of the idiomatic "pictures" are exactly the same in both languages.
I have also no clue what you mean by "verb placement alone separates the languages" as both languages use by default SPO (subject - predicate - object) word order. (German is a little bit more flexible in this regard, though).
However, I found when I was there that attempting to speak at least a little bit elicited sympathy, and they would answer in English. It was probably easier than finding some German words I would understand.
So yeah, you don't just walk up to someone and start out speaking English.
But of course no official will talk to you in English. No way. Even if they could without much effort.
If you need to speak to an authority you need to do it in German. They will insist on that. Out of their perspective it's all about forcing you to "show respect" for the German authority.
Berlin is special anyway. It's more likely that some random dude on the street speaks English than German. I know people that live in Berlin for many years and still don't speak any German at all. In the day to day life that works out pretty well. The only occasions where they need to bring some native speaker with them is when they need to interact with the authorities…
On the countryside it's different though. Even everybody does also know English you wouldn't get away with not learning German; as not only the authorities would insist on speaking German. People will just ignore you and pretend they don't understand if you try to talk to them in a foreign language (even everybody understands at least some English).