Ok, valued much it might not be,
hehe, I think I am starting to notice when people speak English when they are Deutsch speaker. Once there was case when person was writing all nouns with big letter, which is valid in Deutsch, but not English.
They don’t help ANYONE.
Yeah… At the very least, in my current Jobcenter they offer translators. But there was funny situation. They use Skype for voice and video, and one time they tried to call translator, and it did not worked, and she said “Skype ist kaputt”, which is funny way to say that something does not function.
Sounds stupid, but welcome to germany. We value rules, even if they make not much sense :-)
We actually have similar law, that officials, workers, etc should serve clients in Ukrainian, but if someone want to, then can ask to speak in Russian, which is not big deal.
Well, until 2022. Not because laws has changed, but because asking someone to speak Russian might be considering quite rude, if they speak Ukrainian.
Ich nicht :-)
The burocracy is definitely… Uh… Much worse here. In several months here I got more papers documents here, then I got in my entire life in Ukraine. And everything is very slow and confusing.
But in general? It is definitely much much better that I had in past. Which, probably, say more about my past, then about Germany, but eh. I do not have much choice now anyway, so it is either that or become bloody mushy puddle somewhere under Kramatorsk.
Huh, that is sound really worse then I initially though.
As for german, yeah i imagine it being superhard with all the der-die-das and shit. Native speakers often also struggle, so…
The thing is with German language is… How everything is… Not intuitive and relies on either remembering EVERYTHING or remembering bunch of weird rules that sometimes can help you. Like Tags are he, all times of day is he, except Nacht… It is she…
Like… Ukrainian or Russian is, probably, might be even more complex with all of their stupid concepts, especially punctuation with comas. Like, you could easily build quite simple sentence, and almost every word in it should be separated by comas, because there is reason to why.
For example, this languages are also gendered, so nouns also can be he, she, it, which also affects many parts of language. In fact, gender affects not only conjunctions and other related words, but even verbs!
So, for example, if you wanted to ask “Was hat du heute gemacht?”, you can say only that. You can say that to him, her, it. While in both Russian and Ukrainian it will be: “Що ти сьогодні робила?” — for her as you “Що ти сьогодні робив?” — for him as you “Що ти сьогодні робило?” — for it as you. It not used that much, but it exists.
But the thing is… It is more obvious and depends on one simple rule?
For example, to get gender of word you can add simple possessive article “mine”, and just listen, if it sounds natural or not.
“Мій яблуко” — Meinen Apfel — it is sounds wrong. “Моя яблуко” — Meine Apfel — this sounds Aldo wrong. “Моє яблуко” — Mein Apfel — this sounds correct.
You could, of course, do it in hard way and learn them one by one. Or do as in Deutsch, where you can learn that all Tags are he, -ung is always she, and so on. But this is very horrific way to do so, even if you are native speaker.
It is especially useful, since many words do not share same gender in Ukrainian and Russian, but the principle stays the same.
With this simple “test” you can quickly deduce gender of a word, even if you see it in the first time in your life.
And do not mention conjunction of an words… Articles in Deutsch and that is my biggest nemesis.
Couldn’t say why but your english grammar “sounded” russian or ukranian
Yep, this is typical for us. Probably, the biggest give away is that many of us forget about existence of articles. Since we do not have this concept — it is very unnatural to use them since we have hard time grasping when would we even need them, especially in something like English.
You could never use them, when talking to Ukraninan or Russian, and they will understand you perfectly, while English or German speaker will, most likely, start to lose mind.
Or they use so, god, damn, much comas.
but as you wouldn’t dare to move here as a russian
Well… There is quite high amount of Russians who are here, but it us mostly because they are kids of parents who moved to Germany when USSR stopped being a thing. At least, UT seems to be true for Berlin and, probably, some eastern States, like Brandenburg and so on.
Are you allowed to stay or is it just some temporary stuff?
It is temporary, until Germany might decide to stop extending 24 paragraph for Ukrainians. They already extended it up to 2028 couple days, but added new rule that you do not have right for 24 paragraph unless you have a proof that you do not have military “obligation” in Ukraine.
Which, practically speaking, means that you would not be able to escape at all. At least, not alive or with all limbs intact.
And really bad thing about this paragraph is that time, that you spent here, is not counted toward getting right for citizenship.
Currently, as far I remember, you need to live here at least 5 years to even be allowed to attempt try to become citizen. You can speak the most fluent C1 Deutsch, know everything about politics, history, but since you do not have required 5 years — you can not.
You need to switch to different paragraphs, like work visa, marrying citizen, and so on for days to start counting.
Well… Kind of, yes. General structure is similar, although words from Ukrainian can become quickly very alien to Russian. In that regard, Ukrainian will be more close to Polish or, funnily enough, to Deutsch. Turn out, we use quite a lot words from it, or, at the very least, words from same source.
Words like Farbe, Ziel, words with Blitz, and so on. Even some sentence structure was making sense there, but not in Russian.
But yes.
Honestly, I really do enjoy English in many regards. Many things just not a thing there. (At least, not in modern English anyway). They do not even have different “you” anymore. Like, no “Sie” (as in “Groß person”, as our teacher loved to explain), no “du”, no “ihr”. (We also have this, but we have “combined” ‘Sie’ and ‘Ihr’ into same thing for the most part, “Ви”.), just you. And maybe added “You two/people” or “Your Highness” if you need to address them in different manner.
Or the fact that, while they do technically have grammatical gender, it almost never affect the grammatical part of language. Like, almost everything, that are not living person is “it”. Or it is living thing with known gender (dog is “it” unless specified if it is “she” or “he”).
And that is it.
It is funny for us (at least, I think so) because we use this word as “universal” word that can be used in many different situation, good or bad.
For example, you might be familiar with “suka” or “blyat” or “pisdez” or “ahuenno”. They fill similar niche. Or “fuck” in English.
Which makes it funny, since instead of forming an entire complex sentence to express your feeling about some situation… You say one word (which is also very short) and everyone understand you perfectly.
There are some useless letters, I would tell you that. Letters like “Ё”, which essentially sounds like “йо”, and only small amount of some words even use this letter. “Ёлка” (evergreen tree) or “Ёжик” (hedgehog), however many people white it as “Ежик” or “Елка” and they fine with that.
Or “ъ”. I present you with… “Hard symbol” (exist in Russian only). It is opposite or “ь” (exist in both Ukrainian and Russian), which is “soft symbol”, which supposed to make words sounds softer. It supposed to make word sound more… Uh, harder?
Hard as in you going on with you day, but then you hit some really hard rock with your leg on your way and fall.
“Объявление” (announcement, notice) — reads as “ob-(short, immediate pause)-iawlenie”.
Some might even consider “я” to be useless. It is almost never possible to properly latinize, and it sounds essentially as “йа”.
“Ы” — while not useless is… Just weird letter. It is impossible to latinize (as far I am aware — Latin does not have anything close to this letter) and it sounds like you are caveman who just saw easy pray and you started to scream to your fellow cavemans to signal that information to them.
But you, probably, referring to cursive writing and it is… Well, many letters written in very similar way.
There was this meme floating around, when someone lose their mind over learning Cyrillic and they wrote word “шиншилла”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-tailed_chinchilla
This is real thing, that many letters written in this very round way. Compared to Latin, where many letters very different to write.
I would say that grammatical gender on itself is crap, but since we can not just throw it out overnight, might as well have some easy tool to easy the pain of using language.
I would say, that many of them, in fact, never really learned German. Not because they can not, but because they do not see this as necessity. They just usually were living in their own “places” and not interacting much with locals. E.g. only visiting Russian speaking doctors, barbers, schools, works and befriending only their fellow ‘comrades’ who also speak Russian.
I think there was number of around 1 million Ukrainians in Germany as of now, so this places are overfilled, and so more people have to hang out with locals as result of that.
Yep. I would say it might be especially harder in states where anti-immigration governments might win.
I think, as early as March of this east, Germany tried to cut free integration and language courses for people who want by themselves, but then later they kind of reversed this decision, but cut down available “slots” in half or more.
Nothing has changed for “” forced"" courses, however. For example, if your Jobcenter says that you must start going to courses until set Termin, then they pay for it. But even then, it is tricky system. They, usually, give you courses without problems if this is your first time, and only up to B1 level. If you would not be able to get B1, then they might refuse new courses application, and this is not that uncommon.
Typical language course in most schools consistent of 8 months. In this short timespan they cramp your brain up to B1 level, usually 3 hours a day, from Monday to Friday. And this is for German language. If it would had been English — sure, maybe 8 months is enough to get decent language skills. But German?
I am barely remembering correct articles, correct conjugations for verbs, “position zwei” or “eins”, numbers, audition, and we already doing Partizip 2, past form, and that is not to mention other stuff.
And that is me. My English knowledge helps me quite a lot, since rules there are quite similar. But mine colleagues who does not English as I do? They doing even worse.
And that not to mention that not everyone is… uh… Sharpest tool in a shed. Not everyone can look on a Tafel and be “oh, yeah, this is piece of cake”. I am certainly not.
So, I expect that I might not get B1. Not the first time, anyway.
For more then B2, you need to provide strong reason why you need this course. And if Jobcenter would not consider this to be a strong reason (or today’s berator was in bad mood), then you might get refusal.
In my case, I am not affected. Everyone who want to get 24, starting from 9 October, they need to have proof that they “done their military duties”. However, they stopped accepting all man from getting 24 around in Juni of this year. I guess, they did not had proper law in place to refuse before. This is not required for people who got here BEFORE that time.
However, I am still affected (but this is less about Germany, but about Ukraine), because in case if, for example, I need to update passport (or I will lose it), or get new documents, or bank, then it will be a problem, since most of things things are only available inside country or, in case of getting documents, they want to make sure that you are not “in search” for mobilisation, and if you are, you can simply return back, do your things, and be back :) (Which means you will be trapped inside afterward).
Sadly, it works in a similar way almost everywhere :( It is just now I have essentially 2 ways. Either somehow get citizenship here, or return back where I will die.
When you asked and got protection in one EU country, others might refuse to do so, simply referring to “well, you already got protection, so get out”. Which is bad, because there is almost not countries in the world where you can freely be infinitely when you are Ukrainian. Most require valid visa. Only with EU we have 90 days visa-free access, and I already “spent” them, so if I ever going to lose my German 24 paragraph, without getting different one (like work visa, marrying, etc) — I will be refused to even enter any other EU country. Except, of course, for deportation or returning back on my own free will.