How long to learn german in germany?

axer

Hi,

I am looking at moving to Germany (probably Dresden) in January or February for probably a year as my Girlfriend is German. I only did german for 1st year in secondary school but I have picked up a few phrases and can count in german but dont really know any verbs - just ich bin, du bist... and ich habe... (in present tense i.e. very basic verbs). I want to do a german course when I move over to try and learn enough to get a job - maybe in an english speaking call centre or something like that if there is anything like that. I would obviously need the german to be able to talk to supervisors and fellow workers etc. but my german wouldnt have to be excellent i'm thinking.

I am thinking about bringing enough money for 4/5 months out of work while I learn german. Is this being realistic - could I learn enough german in that length of time or how long should I realistically give? My girlfriend would be helping me practise of course as she has perfect english.

Thanks for any help/advice,
Noel.

Sin scéal eile

4/5 Months is fine to learn German IF you stay hard and try to speak it, when I first moved to Germany everyone wanted to speak English to me, I had a hard time trying to find someone who would actually speak German to me.

Watch German TV, talk the language, read as much German as possible, surround yourself with all things German.

You won't speak perfect German in that time, but you can learn a hell of a lot, (if you really want to.)

Imposter

Check out how much the courses will cost too. They will be quite expensive.

stereo_steve

Pick your area carefully!

If you go to Dresden you are going to learn sachsen German! For example words sound different for example ish not like the ich you learned in school. I lived in Leipzig earlier this year. It took a while to learn how to repronounce everything!

strassenwolf

Dresden may actually be a good spot to go to. There will be plenty of people around, e.g. many in their thirties, who grew up in the DDR and did not learn English in school (many will have learnt Russian as their foreign language). It's very hard to find people in the western part of Germany who can speak little or no English.

axer

Thanks for the replies. It may be Cottbus I am moving to yet (all depends where the girlfriend gets a job). The girlfriend is from a village half way between Berlin and Dresden but in Brandenburg. I am a computer & Network engineer (CCNA Qualified) and website developer. Whats the odds I will be able to get myself a job with the amount of German I will learn in 4/5 months? Thats the thing that I'm worried about.

Sonnenblumen

stereo_steve wrote:

Pick your area carefully!

If you go to Dresden you are going to learn sachsen German! For example words sound different for example ish not like the ich you learned in school. I lived in Leipzig earlier this year. It took a while to learn how to repronounce everything!

Pay attention to the Skinners, they speak a different German to most. And be sure to lock your car.

bill_lumbergh

axer wrote:

I want to do a german course when I move over to try and learn enough to get a job

you could check out the university there http://www.uni-dresden.de as they'd probably have German language courses that wouldn't be as expensive as in a language school.
also http://www.spiegel.de is a good site to read German news articles etc at, which would really help you. they've got some audio news clips too

janullrich

U will be very lucky to get any type of job being honest. Unemployment is high overall in Germany but particularly in the East where the economy has not picked up anything to what it should have done. I would start checking around. Maybe there is skilled work in English that a company needs. Leipzig is best though in this area.

smoke.me.a.kipper

ive been in freiburg for almost 2 years now. i have never put any effort into actually studying german in a school or with books since ive been out here, until now (ive left it a bit late!!). thats a bad idea, as now i can speak eneough to get by, when if i studied at the start, i could be doing alot more.

also, its true that alot of germans will just speak english to you to practice their english. that can be annoying.

go to a sprachschule when you get there, and try and take an intensive course. anyone i know over here who has done that, speaks (and reads and writes) pretty good german.

put the effort in and study it.

An Taoiseach

Smoke.me.a.kipper

I'm thinking of moving to Freiburg late next year. Do you know if it is difficult to get a job in that area? I've heard that jobs are easy enough to come by in Frankfurt or Munich but I can't find too much about Freiburg.

Any advice?

bowsie casey

I spent 4 years in Niedersachsen (50 km from Bremen). Even with (rusty) Leaving Cert German, it took me a good year to be able to converse efficiently in work. Yeah, I could get by, but only because the (US) company required that its employees speak some English. By the end of Year 2 I was pretty fluent.

I don't want to spoil the party here, but in my experience, you will find it very difficult to get a job with poor German, unless you are willing to take a low-paid job (for which there will be lots of competition in that part of Germany.

And they have that bloody awful accent over there in East Germany (or West Poland as a lot of Germans call it)...

axer

bowsie casey wrote:

I don't want to spoil the party here, but in my experience, you will find it very difficult to get a job with poor German, unless you are willing to take a low-paid job (for which there will be lots of competition in that part of Germany.

I figure that will probably be a problem alright. I do a bit of webdesign/computer work so that might keep me going as I can work from Germany and have saved up enough to hopefully keep me going for 6/7 months while I study.
Plus the girlfriend should have a fairly good job (not that I'll be scrounging or anything).

bowsie casey wrote:

And they have that bloody awful accent over there in East Germany (or West Poland as a lot of Germans call it)...

Ouch! The girlfriend wouldn't like that! She would say thats a typical wessie thing to say!

All I can do is try and emerse myself in as much german as I can for 6 months or so (as Sin scéal eile said) and see how I get on.

Am gonna check out a few sprachschule's in the area for prices and courses etc.

Thanks for all the replies guys. Any more advice is much appreciated.