Lmst

I’m not saying that people who talk about a “job crisis” facing every young person, including immigrants, is lying.

However, I am saying that I have heard that same exact narrative in every country I’ve ever lived in, unchanged, since 2015, regardless of economy, immigration numbers, or any other influencing factor.

#immigrantlife #america #canada #immigration

Well that's a first. A coworker just asked "Bist du eine Deutsche?" / ( Are you a German ) because there is something a little off but people often just assume I am from a less common German area. This is less than a year when my accent was stronger and a guy just assumed I was from the Netherlands. Blonde hair, blue eyes, slight accent but well integrated? Dutch.

PROGRESS

#immigrantlife

I had a boss tell me once that German has a lot of ways to say the same thing and only a few ways to say the right thing. And in my hubris I was like yeah english has that too, they're called synonyms. Boy, was I wrong. Now I am trying to master the difference between vermehren, erhöhen, and steigern all of which translate to "to increase" but it's not that simple. Or the difference between wo, woher, wohin, womit, wozu, wieso that are all very similar but absolutely different. Or even stuff like this meme. Those are just some of the many examples

Learning the intericacies and use cases of words is one of the hardest parts of learning a language and a great deal of German humor is situated in those small differences. I WILL learn but my gods is moving towards C1/C2 rough.

Deutsche sprache, ist schwere Sprache O.o

#german #immigrantlife

Meme says the difficulty of the German language in a nutshell

German: Was ist der Unterschied zwischen warum, wieso, weshalb, weswegen, darum, deshalb, deswegen

English translaton what is the difference between why, why, why, why, why, why

I had an odd interaction with a coworker. He was voicing an annoyance with me that he could tell when I was thinking in English. Because my pronunciation was always off, word choice different and my voice was "Etwas Höher" ( a little higher ). He had to ask, "is that even Taylor?".

English requires more gender performance than German does. @thatfrisiangirlish has even said that there's more German growl to my english and I give less care to how high my voice is.

It's just odd to me some of these bilingual things that I don't even notice but people around me pick up on.

#immigrantlife #bilingualproblems

Even though I am usually well adjusted here in Hamburg, I also get nostalgia. Today I am yearning for a 🇳🇱-style sausage roll. #Saucijzenbroodje #immigrantlife #firstworldproblems

I read this article a long time ago about some woman from South East Asia somewhere that lost the ability to really speak with her mother as she had lost the ability to speak in her mother tongue.

I always wondered how that felt. Then I called my mother for mother's day and I had to look at my German girlfriend because I could not think of the Enlgish word for Lebensblut. I didn't really think about it. I speak German more often now than I speak English. I'm out of practice.

Then my coworker said "It must be hard to lose your mothertongue" and it struck me, because I did not think of it in that context. I dunno how I feel but I have met plenty of people that speak related languages that moved that lost their faculty in their mothertongue. German, Dutch and English are related languages. Getting better at one generally means the others get a little worse.

I still don't know how I feel but @thatfrisiangirlish said "Hah one day I'll have the better english" to which I replied "And someday I'll have the better german". The competition is AFOOT!

#immigrantlife #lifechanges

Denglisch is a constant source of confusion. We're not talking "Total cringe". We're talking people swapping English and German rules or words together like a horrible fruit salad where somebody says "tomato is a fruit".

The other day my coworker said "Smalligkeit". Kleinigkeit is a word. He just switched small and Klein. or my boss started using "to kill" but conjugating it in German so "ich habe gekilled" or "ich würde ihr killen".

I get that we did that with Engleutsch with half Englishifying Eisberg to Iceberg but it's still jarring to hear as an English/German speaker.

#german #english #immigrantlife

British born migrant children fight to survive poverty – Channel 4 News Their parents have no recourse to public funds even for the kids so are unable access social housing, NHS care even for the kids, as well as benefits www.channel4.com/news/british... #ImmigrantLife #Poverty 1/2

British born migrant children ...

British born migrant children fight to survive poverty – Channel 4 News
Their parents have no recourse to public funds even for the kids so are unable access social housing, NHS care even for the kids, as well as benefits

https://www.channel4.com/news/british-born-migrant-children-fight-to-survive-poverty

#ImmigrantLife
#Poverty
#ChildPoverty
#BritishBorn
#NoRecourseToPublicFunds
#WorkingImmigrants
#WorkingMigrants
#Migrants
#Working
#Immigration
#Immigrants

When I get a visa, and some time, I need to go on a hug tour, where I meet all the folks who have supported me through this journey, and thank them in person.

#immigrant #immigrantlife

I have been spending every waking moment basically preparing to move or hanging out with friends before I move. Moving has never been this exhausting before lol. #immigrant #immigrantlife

For context when I moved to where I lived now I was working full time, helping my parents diy their house to sell it for more, helped everyone in the house move their stuff first, and provided free childcare to my parents all in addition to moving myself.

@thatfrisiangirlish and I were talking and ae said "You have two primary problems with your German, your inability to distinguish between ei and ie" and yeah this is why I always lost at spelling bees. My brain cannot handle the lack of any rule in pronunciation or spelling and just glosses over, which doesn't help in german.

"And also that you don't verb enough. You omit your verbing too often." to which I protested verb is not a verb. To which Tally replied but I made it a verb, "To verb". I hate English so much.

Then I had a sudden dawning realization. "My gods, you are annoying me with my own language to push me further into German!"

All Tally did was laugh malevolently.

#german #immigrantlife

There are a lot of words in German that are very similar that mean absolutely different things. Like Schwul and Schwül. Schwul means Gay like as in LGBT. It's why it's LSBT in German. Schwül means hot and humid. Just as an example.

I just spent a few hours last night repairing the English version of my Restaurants menu because some English speakers were given it and laughed. I found a menu entry that said Rust Onion Schnitzel. Geröstet means roasted but Gerostet means rusted. When I gave my boss the corrections I asked her, "You paid money for this?".

Yes, yes she did. I think I chose the wrong career. I could just badly translate things for soooo much more money >_<.

#immigrantlife #cooklife

German and English are cousin languages so I find a great deal of enjoyment thinking about how bin and been are pronounced similarly and are both forms of "to be" ( sein ) or Steep and schief are similar but schief means at an angle and steep means .... a high incline. Meanings are different but from pronunciation I would guess they originate from the same or similar root word in our progenitor language.

But what I do really enjoy is that he vowels have changed but we but we have both found how to pronounce uncomfortable words similarly. English E is how German I is pronounced. Or at least close. All of this together means oi and eu make similar sounds. So Moist and Feucht have the same meaning and the same absolutely slimey uncomfortable pronunciation.

Also any weird Barbarism of english I rote blame on the French. It was one of the major branching points between our languages. England lost to France and Germany didn't. Just saying.

#immigrantlife #german #english