[BlueLancer]

Overall, I took 9 years of high school and college German, along with the Gateway German classes when I was assigned to Germany at the Mannheim Law Center.

I never tried using any of it with the Germans after I said "Guten Tag" to a five-year old German boy on a bus. When he responded, assuming that I could understand and speak the language, he lost me after the first sentence.

Although I must admit that I did get pretty good with the phrase "Eine bier bitte" ...

[Red Badger]

I speak a little German, having been there for a job in 2000 and again in 2001. Total immersion works...............

[pepsi_junkie]

I took the required Spanish in High School and did the min possible to pass, telling myself I simply had no gift for learning language. Then years later I had to move to Southern Spain for a year for work, a place where English is far from universally spoken. I had to learn or starve. So I learned a basic level of Spanish, just enough to get by.

The problem is that I learned mostly by listening to native speakers so my accent is pretty much perfect but the local accent is very identifiable (like a Boston accent, say) and people hearing me speak that way very quickly assume I am fluent. Bad assumption, ends up embarassing for both parties. But oh well, que lastima.

[AZJeep]

Do not be discouraged.
German is tricky. There are many dialects which differ so much that Germans do not understand each other.
Children and old people are the worst!
Middle aged, educated people are your best bet, but they usually speak well English, unfortunately for learning German! TV news are the best foreign language lessons. Those anchors make lots of money, just to look nice and speak good language.
Politicians are usually good a language too, Biden being an exception.
Even in America you may have problems with native children chat. Also try to understand native old guy with missing teeth!

[Verginius Rufus]

The first time I got on a train in Europe (one of those with 6-person compartments), I asked "Ist dieser Platz frei?" (straight out of my Beginning German college textbook). I got a long answer that was not in the textbook. It turned out that the people were fluent English speakers.

Mark Twain had a friend who had a very hard time learning German. After two months, Twain reported, all he knew how to say was "Zwei Bier." But he had that down solid.

[Army Air Corps]

Noch ein Helles, bitte! ;)

[haircutter]

MY HUBBY was stationed at Mannheim base, in Germany for almost two years in 1962 and 1963...

Sadly I was not able to join him, was in school and job searching...

He loved his time there...still speaks about it...