Communication between Americans and Germans can be very difficult, because we have different expectations about language. In America, we like to coat everything up nicely and try to indirectly say what we want to say in the most polite way possible. We are taught as kids, that if we don’t have anything nice to say, then we shouldn’t say anything at all. This is why we have to try to say negative things in more positive ways. It also means the listener has to think about what is being said and figure out the actual intent of the statement. Germans have the luxury of taking everything at face value, since Germans say exactly how they feel. Since Germans take everything we say literally, there is often confusion in transatlantic matters.
Here is some anecdotal evidence from an acquaintance, let’s call him “Jon”. Jon has just moved to Germany from America, and the change in climate has caused him to get a bad case of dandruff. Jon’s German is pretty good, but the subject of dandruff never came up in German class, so he grabs his trusty German/English dictionary and discovers that the German word for dandruff is Schuppen. Armed with his new vocabulary, Jon heads to the drug store and asks the employee there, if they have any shampoo for Schuppen, to which Jon receives a blank stare as if he were completely crazy.
Then she responds matter-of-factly, “No, we only have shampoo against dandruff.”
deutsche Übersetzung für Astrid ein/ausblenden
Astrid, was geht?
Na logo kriegst du die Übersetzung:
Immer gerade heraus
Die Kommunikation zwischen Amerikanern und Deutschen kann sehr schwierig sein, weil wir verschiedene Erwartungen an die Sprache haben. In Amerika versüßen wir gerne das, was wir eigentlich sagen wollen, um es auf die möglichst höflichste und freundlichste Art zu sagen. Uns wurde als Kindern beigebracht, dass man, wenn man nichts Nettes zu sagen hat, lieber gar nichts sagen sollte. Deshalb müssen wir immer versuchen, negative Sachen irgendwie positiv auszudrücken. Dies bedeutet auch, dass der Zuhörer gut aufpassen muss, was gesagt wird, weil er den eigentlichen Inhalt der Aussage herausfinden muss. Die Deutschen geniessen den Luxus, alles direkt verstehen zu können, da Deutsche exakt das sagen, was sie denken. Und weil Deutsche eben alles was wir sagen wörtlich nehmen, gibt es oft Missverständnisse in transatlantischen Angelegenheiten.
Es gibt eine kleine Anekdote hierzu von einem Bekannten, lassen Sie ihn uns “Jon” nennen. Jon ist gerade erst von Amerika nach Deutschland gezogen und der Klimawechsel hat einen schlimmen Fall von Schuppen bei ihm verursacht. Jons Deutsch ist ziemlich gut, aber das Thema Schuppen wurde im Deutschunterricht nie behandelt, also sucht er sich sein zuverlässiges Wörterbuch und findet heraus, dass das gesuchte Wort “Schuppen” ist. Mit diesem neuen Vokabular bewaffnet geht Jon in die nächste Drogerie und fragt die Angestellte dort, ob sie ein Shampoo für Schuppen haben, was mit einem leeren Blick beantwortet wird, als sei er völlig verrückt.
Dann antwortet sie sachlich: “Nein, wir haben nur Shampoo gegen Schuppen.”
Ciao ciao,
John
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May 21st, 2008 at 6:08 am
Ok, but this is Korinthenkackerei.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:16 am
Well, uh, this also strongly depends on the person you are talking to. And employees at drugstores are not known for high mental capacity.
Anyway, yes, we Germans tend to take things literally - one of the biggest issues in German Foreign conversation, as you mentioned. But hey, the world would be so boring without these misunderstandings…
May 21st, 2008 at 7:10 am
I can second that USAmericans try to say negative things in most positive ways possible. Uttering a polite “[Bullcrap]” when also the more negative “You *bleep* *bleep* full of *bleep*, are you *bleep*bleeeeeeep*?” is possible illustrates the superior conversational skills of any American. Seriously
Editor’s Note: Too tired to think of witty response for censorship.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:44 am
Hey, come on. I’d bet the drugstore lady was just humorous.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Well, I think that there is a very important difference between a cure for dandruff or against it; or at least it is very uncommon that people really want to buy something that provokes dandruff…^^
May 21st, 2008 at 4:43 pm
> In America, we like to coat everything up nicely and try
> to indirectly say what we want to say in the most polite
> way possible.
You better tell that to George Carlin.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
I think she was joking, because it was a little weird what your friend said and she wanted to make fun of him. Well, that’s what i hope or else she’s just very stupid.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Somehow Americans and Germans are like men and women (or vice versa
)
I work in an ‘university environment’ where German and American culture sometimes clash in a discussion…
Americans tend to be sissies when a German places a ‘contructive criticism’ like “No, that won’t work! This idea cannot work. You have to…’. And Germans never notice any criticism statements like ‘Your idea is quite unorthodox and interesting. But maybe you could also consider that…’
May 21st, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I think these differences and misunderstandings are related more to culture than to language.
In Schwaben there is this rule “Edd gschempft isch gnuag gloobd” (no dispraise is sufficient to express praise), which causes a lot of misunderstanding of this kind within the German language area, especially in northern Germany.
There are even blogs dedicated to this topic e.g http://www.blogwiese.ch
While on the other side I think the differences between German (even southern) and American culture is minimal compared to most east asian cultures.
An anecdote: the Japanese company NEC set up a subsidiary in Heidelberg as a proxy to the American dominated standardisation committees like IETF, because Japanese scientists wouldn’t be able to handle it when Americans would call their new idea “[bullcrap]” right in their faces.
Editor’s Note: Still prude here.
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:03 pm
I also had this kind of communication problem with an american friend of mine. We were on a vacation together (4 girls, 3 german, 1 american) and after one week she started acting really strange towards me and the other girls. She seemed to be pissed off for some reason. We asked her several times to tell us what was the matter but she just would answer kinda stiffly that everything was just fine.
after a week we all were didn’t know what to do anymore and got into a real argument with her. we (the germans) thought that it was kinda unfair of her just being cold to us and not telling us why and then she finally told us that she had felt like being outside our group because we had gone to the pool some times without remembering to ask her.
an we just thought: why the hell didn’t she just come up to us and tell us right away that she thought it wasn’t ok we didn’t ask her all the time.
if my girlfriends would treat me this way it wouldn’t take a week for me to tell them that i was pissed with them.
i would just say: hey, why are you forgetting about me all the time.
and they would say something like: no we didn’t forget you, we just thought is was normal you were welcome anyway.
i must say, i prefere the german way. i don’T have enough pacience to try to read someones mind whenever i feel something is wrong
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:34 pm
My fiance once asked a person at a drugstore checkout: “Wie geht es ihnen?” (”how are you doing?”). But instead of saying “all right” like he expected, that person looked at him in a confused way and after a couple of seconds started giving him a 5 minute talk about their health problems. So, if you are not interested in how somebody is doing, you should definitely not ask them in Germany
November 7th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Well, IMO there are two possible answers to the question: “Gut.” and “Muß ja.”
July 13th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
What about “Beschissen wär geprahlt”?!