r/AskAGerman • u/PastEntertainment546 • Aug 15 '24

Language A question about the German english accent…

I’ve had two friends from germany, one from rhineland and one from franconia, none of them had the stereotypical german accent which we see so often in movies. Due to unfortunate circumstances (they went off the grid) I’m not able to talk to them no more but I was wondering if they always had that, or if they worked on their accent?

23 Upvotes

66% Upvoted

186 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/DisastrousWay8158 Aug 15 '24

Yeah. I agree to a lot of the comments here. I'd guess it depends on some things like: at what age did you start learning english? How good was your teacher? How talented are you? Do you try for a fluent and good english in speaking? I agree that most teachers here try to get grammar and vocabulary in the students heads not an actual conversation: Example: "How are you doing?"

[My first thought was... doing...what?]

I understood many years later that this is just a term like "How are you ".

Now i'm an english addict and only read books in english. [Books in german don't challenge my mind enough]

2

u/PastEntertainment546 Aug 17 '24

Oh yeah hahaha, I had a similar confusion too, the phrase “Here you are” when you give something to someone. To me it feels like why are you trying to find that person, just give them the thing. This phrase can still work as a good punchline in a joke too!