I group spoken languages into three basic categories:
1. Languages I feel like I can get my head around, either because they're fairly simple or I'm used to them. Most of the Romance languages fall into this category.
2. Languages that sound like something out of Star Wars. I first had this revelation when listening to spoken Vietnamese, but I now include most Asian languages in this category. Any time the same word can drastically change meaning based on the inflection, I'm going to call that language a Star Wars language. No way I can understand them, because they sound made up.
3. Languages that sound like I should be able to understand them, but for some reason (hyper-agglutination, bizarre syntax, right-to-left writing style which I swear influences the speech patterns) pose enough of an obstacle that I can't quite get it. German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Turkish, and the Semitic languages are included in this category.
I thought about adding a fourth category, "Scary", just for Russian. I suspect it would fit rather well into either category #2 or #3 above, but I'm not sure which.
I'm glad that so many Germans speak English, because not only do I not understand German, but since it falls under category #3, I'm kicking myself because I think I should be able to do something about it.
Knowing next to nothing about the language, Mrs. Bart and I were able to get around fairly well this weekend, with only a couple of screwups. Again, thanks to their extensive use of English.
Most of the time when I'm overseas, I'm used to people sizing me up and starting out the conversation in English. In Germany, I was surprised that most people started off with German, and only switched to English when we asked if they shprechen-ed it. Either (a) I look German, (b) they figure I'm foreign but want to practice my German as much as possible, (c) they're all nihilists and don't give a crap, or (d) they hate foreigners. And Jews. I'm going for (d).
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