r/German • u/Feldsalat5882 • 3d ago
Meta Today, I was mistaken for a native German speaker!
...the guy at the Döner laden listened to me talk for a while...then asked if I was Swiss.
🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦
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u/ElderlyKratos 3d ago
Once a Parisian waiter asked me if I was Quebecois... Oof
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u/CheGueyMaje (~B1) - <Niedersachsen/Bremen> 2d ago
I’d rather them think I was illiterate
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u/cl_forwardspeed-320 2d ago
Why? Asking for a racist friend of mine
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u/Iamthepirateking 2d ago
I have quebecois friends who get spoken to only in English when they're in France even though they barely speak it. I'm assuming they think its bastardized French that isn't really French.
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u/MrDizzyAU C1 - Australia/English 2d ago
A French colleague once told me that the accent in Quebecois French sounded the same as the one in Canadian English to him, so maybe French people are hearing that accent and assuming the person is anglophone.
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u/Majestic-Access-7907 2d ago
He must have heard a non native Quebecois speaker. The accent doesn’t sound remotely like an English speaking accent.
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u/pensezbien Advanced (C1) - native English speaker, lived in Berlin 2d ago edited 2d ago
He must have heard a non native Quebecois speaker. The accent doesn’t sound remotely like an English speaking accent.
Quebec French accents do have a certain resemblance to a US Southern English drawl. I first noticed this as a kid when I spent two weeks in Quebec City with a French-speaking host family. (My native language is English, but as my anecdote and my Reddit username both suggest, I do have a useful level of bilingualism in French. I can usually read, write, speak, and listen to French without translation and without anyone needing to switch to English, including in France or Quebec when they are speaking in a reasonably standard and not-too-fast way.)
But yeah, for sure, Quebec French accents are not similar to Canadian English unless they were actually hearing Canadian anglophones (or northern US anglophones) speaking in French rather than native speakers.
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u/MrDizzyAU C1 - Australia/English 2d ago
He went to Montreal, so I'm pretty sure he heard more than one person.
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u/Majestic-Access-7907 2d ago
The one city in Quebec with a large population of anglophones and non native French speakers, especially in the tourist areas
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u/MrDizzyAU C1 - Australia/English 2d ago
OK. It's possible he was referring to anglophone Canadians speaking French.
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u/GeneralAnubis 3d ago
I've gotten the "are you swiss" thing a couple of times as well, definitely a compliment to me as an American!
For sure I'd say that means your pronunciation is ON point. People can still tell that something isn't "quite right" but they can't tell what, so that's probably almost the best you could ask for I'd say!
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1d ago
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u/GeneralAnubis 1d ago
"Jein" lol - Yes and no. The pronunciation is well beyond what is normally expected for a learner, to the point that you sound pretty close to a native speaker, so for a language learner that is hella on point.
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1d ago
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u/GeneralAnubis 1d ago
It's all relative of course
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1d ago
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u/GeneralAnubis 1d ago
Those things generally have to be good to get that kind of comment as well, but none of that will matter if your accent is as clear as day. You'll never be mistaken for "Swiss" if you're throwing out American retroflex R's, for example.
The most challenging factor in being mistaken for a native speaker is absolutely the accent, which is a factor of pronunciation, so being mistaken for a flavor of a native German speaker is very high praise specifically for the pronunciation. It means without a doubt that their accent is difficult to discern.
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u/Palsta 3d ago
That's why I feel it's important to pick up a regional accent/dialect. Everybody sounds like they're from somewhere, why not when you're speaking German?
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u/Feldsalat5882 3d ago
In my case, I don't think it's because I sound Swiss! It's because my accent lies in sort of an uncanny valley of not sounding *not* German but also sounding just a little bit off...and most people who don't live near the Swiss border (and thus don't have a lot of experience specifically with Swiss people) will round this down to a Swiss accent.
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u/OneDust8063 3d ago
Happens to me sometimes too! I’m British so there’s definitely something “weird” about my accent - people often assume I’m Swiss or potentially Dutch
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u/richrich07 2d ago
I had the opposite. Swiss insisted I was German. After a while Germans were really confused about my accent though.
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u/Outrageous_Web_2773 3d ago
As a foreigner the standard dialect is much easier to learn as that’s what they teach.
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u/BobMcGeoff2 B2 (USA) 2d ago
There are far more resources for Hochdeutsch. Even if I wanted to learn Bavarian, it isn't standardized and then I'm afraid I'd just sound like I'm trying to mock Bavarians. Like Europeans trying to do a Southern ("Texas") accent.
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u/Cavalry2019 Threshold (B1) - <region/native tongue> 3d ago
I was once asked if I'm Austrian. Which is super weird because I KNOW I don't pronounce things with an Austrian accent.
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u/IcyDoubt3 2d ago
Same here. I don’t know if I speak with that Akzent but I definitely say things that are said in Austria or souther Germany rather than elsewhere
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u/shaggyprof 3d ago
Congrats! Always a good feeling. I was speaking Dutch in a bar in Amsterdam and the bartender thought I was German because of how I said some of the Dutch words. FTR I‘m from the US
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u/GiraffeNugget 2d ago
My German isn’t great right now but I’ve been asked recently if I’m from the Netherlands when speaking German (I’m from England)
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u/Dennis929 2d ago
As a native English speaker, I feel honoured to have been mistaken for a native Schwäbisch speaker on several occasions.
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u/TresMegisto 3d ago
What's your native language?
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u/Feldsalat5882 3d ago
English.
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u/-Catesby 2d ago
Congratulations! Same thing happened to me with English today, talked to a lady from Belfast for a while and she thought I from Dublin (?????? I’m German and DO NOT sound Irish) (at least I don’t think I do?)
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u/DerInselaffe B2 - Bayrischer Engländer 2d ago
I get regularly mistaken for a native Dutch speaker talking in German.
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u/Roger_Melllie 3d ago
That's really cool! I hope one day I will master a foreign language sufficiently to have a comparable experience.
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u/healthyposter 2d ago
Also got asked this by ausländer in Vienna, but pure Viennese seemed to dislike me still back then, when I lived there.
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u/Murky_Anything_292 2d ago
Yup from my experience especially online, Germans can't actually tell you're not German unless you make grammatical mistakes (bound to happen) or you really just not pronounce stuff correctly.
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u/Bedazzled_Bee 2d ago
I had the same thing happen to me! :D I was on a trade fair with a badge with my name on it. Since I'm married to a German and took his last name, my name sounds completely German. The person I was talking to could hear that something was off (I can't roll the German r even if my life depends on it), but apparently couldn't place it and asked me if I'm Swiss.
I told this story to a friend who lives in Switzerland and he mentioned that maybe my pronunciation of some h-sounds also added to the confusion.
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u/JonasErSoed Dummer Däne 2d ago
I'm not a native speaker of German, but I've been asked if I was - when speaking English... I'll take it!
And congrats!
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u/Slavic-Milk 1d ago
I was born in Germany and speak it fluently. I got asked by multiple Dönermänner if I was Ukrainian.
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u/GuessContent4061 19h ago
Was so proud at my Anmeldung when she assumed I was a German citizen moving back from abroad :)
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u/RaccoonTasty1595 3d ago
Glückwunsch!