[porca misèria]

pablopatito, on 05 October 2011 - 09:43 AM, said:

We'd all go. The wife is keen and the kids are too young to understand. But I suspect the kids will have a better life growing up as Germans than English - better education, better housing, less crime, better job prospects etc etc. That's the main reason for wanting to leave. My lad's only six, but I think I can tell already that he'll become an engineer and Germany seems to suit engineers better.

Yep. I was taken aback by the respect I got as an engineer in Germany. First time in my life!

The only time I've had respect in the UK is working for American employers.

[Redback911]

no lucky man, on 05 October 2011 - 09:32 AM, said:

IPersonally I find German a very tricky language. I have learned quite a bit, but you will need to be pretty comfortable with grammatical terms as German is a minefield in this respect.

Exactly, German is hard for English speakers because the grammer rules are different, although in typical German fashion they are logical. At school the smart kids tend to learn German, everyone else French, then the special ones learn Spanish ;-)

Have you thought of the Netherlands or Belgium? In my experience there are a lot of IT and Telecommunication companies in the Benelux area. A number of US technology company's have their European HQ in those regions too. The Netherlands also has a 35% tax ruling (whereas 35% of your salary is tax free) for ex-pats. The English comprehension is extremely high, in fact its hard to learn Dutch as people will tend to switch to English just to be helpful.

[Austin Allegro]

If you're in IT you' ve already got a head start. I met a chap here who does freelance IT work online and only needs to work one or two days a week to afford a standard of living he could only get in the UK by working full time.

Here in Hungary (at least in the capital) you can pretty much get by speaking only English, though you might need a translator for some things to do with tax etc. There are foreigners who have lived here for years and can only say hello, goodbye and thank you in Hungarian, if that. This does make it a bit harder to learn the language because there's very little incentive.

But it's also lethally hard. Even just to say a simple sentence you have to think 'is this a definite or indefinite object and is this a transitive or intransitive verb?' To most state-school educated Britons even those grammatical terms in English are meaningless!

[swissy_fit]

http://www.jobwinner.ch
http://www.jobup.ch

[porca misèria]

no lucky man, on 05 October 2011 - 09:32 AM, said:

I'm not sure that your age is really an issue, but you will need time (2/3 years from my experience). Personally I find German a very tricky language. I have learned quite a bit, but you will need to be pretty comfortable with grammatical terms as German is a minefield in this respect. Here are the 2 main things I find difficult; I believe these are common problems:

1. German has 3 genders, but it doesn't just stop with der,die and das. Depending on the 'case' of the sentence, the equivalent word for 'the' will be a choice of many.

Heh. Trivia. It's basically the same as English, with the proviso that English has lost its notions of gender to the point where the ignorant/PC brigade have hijacked the word as a synonym for sex!

You want a bit more of a challenge, try for example Italian, where the rules are a whole lot more alien. For example, where gender attaches to the object rather than the subject:
English: His wife, Her husband
German: His wife, Her husband
Italian: Her wife, His husband (because the pronoun takes the gender of the object, not the subject).

And if Italian is too easy, try a language without a European heritage. Chinese, for instance

Quote

2. Word order is oftten inversed, putting the verb at the end of the sentence. This obviously makes it hard to process. As a simple example:

What that really means is that German more structured than English is. The OP being an IT person should German very straightforward find.

Quote

The major factor as always in helping you get fluent in German (both speaking and understanding) would be the ability to practise. Usually this entails living in a German speaking country for some time. Nothing beats this experience, which will help your language skills, as well as giving you experience of this country and its culture.

Yep. That's what really matters.

[pablopatito]

Redback911, on 05 October 2011 - 09:52 AM, said:

Have you thought of the Netherlands or Belgium?

I have. But I get the impression though that Amsterdam is really nice but ridiculously expensive and the rest of Holland can be a bit grim, wet and industrial. I should probably go there and find out for myself though!

[swissy_fit]

snowflux, on 05 October 2011 - 09:47 AM, said:

I wouldn't dismiss family concerns quite that casually! Sure, if the kids are young, they'll pick up the language pretty quickly and soon integrate. But with no language knowledge, job or social network, life could be very difficult for a partner, no matter how pleasant the material environment.

Sure, if his wife is not an intelligent and adaptable person this is a no-no anyway, I assume she must be or he wouldn't be considering it.

[thod]

Immersion only helps if you already have a good grasp of the language. Foreigners are not eager to talk to you. When it becomes clear you cannot understand them nor they you, they will stop and not bother to talk to you again. You can turn on the TV set, but you still do not understand because they speak so fast. What is far more likely to happen is you will stick with English internet and watch Freesat in English. Your interactions with the locals will be restricted to simple phrases. When they reply, you will not understand. This idea of sitting in a bar talking to the locals to learn the language is garbage. You will sit in a corner by yourself while they gabble to each other.

[porca misèria]

thod, on 05 October 2011 - 10:21 AM, said:

Immersion only helps if you already have a good grasp of the language. Foreigners are not eager to talk to you. When it becomes clear you cannot understand them nor they you, they will stop and not bother to talk to you again. You can turn on the TV set, but you still do not understand because they speak so fast. What is far more likely to happen is you will stick with English internet and watch Freesat in English. Your interactions with the locals will be restricted to simple phrases. When they reply, you will not understand. This idea of sitting in a bar talking to the locals to learn the language is garbage. You will sit in a corner by yourself while they gabble to each other.

If you take that attitude, you'll just end up in an expat ghetto, or totally isolated. Can't understand why people like that go anywhere in the first place.

When I first went to Italy I spoke not a word of it. The locals were incredibly friendly and helpful when I was struggling in the first few weeks. The harder bit was between about 2 and 6 months, when I could get by with more words than pointing-and-asking but was less than fluent, and they all wanted to try their "foreign" on me!

[snowflux]

My favourite bit of German is a sign that I once saw outside an art college:

"Mal mal!"

for which the best translation I can come up with is:

"Have a go at painting!"

[Austin Allegro]

thod, on 05 October 2011 - 10:21 AM, said:

Immersion only helps if you already have a good grasp of the language. Foreigners are not eager to talk to you. When it becomes clear you cannot understand them nor they you, they will stop and not bother to talk to you again. You can turn on the TV set, but you still do not understand because they speak so fast. What is far more likely to happen is you will stick with English internet and watch Freesat in English. Your interactions with the locals will be restricted to simple phrases. When they reply, you will not understand. This idea of sitting in a bar talking to the locals to learn the language is garbage. You will sit in a corner by yourself while they gabble to each other.

I think that is probably true if you make no formal effort to interact. Immersion however is not about striking up conversations with strangers in bars. It's about maximising the situations where you have to speak the language and building up your skills gradually. For example, attending a summer school where you speak the native language all the time, or making friends with natives (in English) and practicing their language with them while they practice English with you.

This post has been edited by Austin Allegro: 05 October 2011 - 10:33 AM

[snowflux]

ccc, on 05 October 2011 - 09:48 AM, said:

This is true however if you make these mistakes people will still understand what you mean - even if they screw their face up a bit. The same cannot be said for other languages like Polish or Hungarian. Say something the 'wrong' way and they won't have a clue what you are saying.
...

I dunno about that. I can still remember my sense of triumph when, after about a dozen previous attempts, the shopkeeper actually understood first time my request for a box of matches:

"Einen Schachtel Streichhölzer, bitte!"

I found it a real bugger to pronounce properly.

[ccc]

snowflux, on 05 October 2011 - 10:44 AM, said:

I dunno about that. I can still remember my sense of triumph when, after about a dozen previous attempts, the shopkeeper actually understood first time my request for a box of matches:

"Einen Schachtel Streichhölzer, bitte!"

I found it a real bugger to pronounce properly.

The shopkeeper was probably Vietnamese and didn't have a scooby what you were on about.

[cypher007]

ive thought about leaving with the family to move to Hong Kong, as my wife is from there. but i find Cantonese completely incomprehensible. our little boy is kind of learning it from his Mum. he seems to understand what she says but doesnt speak much.

i like Hong Kong, ive visited it 7 times now, but there work ethic seems upside down, as in they work more than have a life.

This post has been edited by cypher007: 05 October 2011 - 11:26 AM

[snowflux]

ccc, on 05 October 2011 - 11:18 AM, said:

The shopkeeper was probably Vietnamese and didn't have a scooby what you were on about.

Nah, he was German all right. You'd probably have found it easier than me, what with those ch's being pronounced a bit like the ch in Scottish 'loch'.