Sometimes it is the little things that are so much fun. My colleagues really enjoy when I visit the client’s kantine, or cafeteria. The reason for their joy is that my German is actually not perfect, and to make it worse I tend to have an “American” accent when speaking. Every language has its little quirks – Japanese for example has no “L” sound and when speaking with Japanese people in English you might catch an “R” sound where the L sound might be. While Hungarian has a lot of rolling R’s.
Well my problem with German is my R’s, which make some of the words come out as understandable but not quite perfect. While I was telling a story to a friend about how my children didn’t want me to read to them in German, I ended up at the front of the line. Not only was I not able to order my “Rinder Ragout”(roughly beef stew) and but somehow I wasn’t able to get any “Brokkoli” either. I found that to be both frustrating and funny as the other side dishes were rice, potatoes, and pasta – none of which sounded anything like broccoli.
With this as my background I did get a small insight into how others deal with these difficulties. My colleague explained how a friend of his from Bratislava ordered beer when in Cologne, Germany. He went up to the bar and said he wanted a beer. The bartender held up a small glass, 0.2 liter, which would have been the local specialty of Kölsch.
He vigorously shook his head no and pointed to the half liter weizen glasses that were nearby. None of this pesky talking and being misunderstood, nah, just point and grunt.