No Email & Phone calls In GERMAN To Julian H. Stacey - Unless You Want To Pay For Computer Consultancy

NO GERMAN / KEIN DEUTSCH
Unless you will purchase Computer Consultancy /
Ausser sie Consultancy kaufen wollen.
Other exceptions.

If you want to Pay Money For Consultancy

• To Me, my Company my Associates
• Please Contact me by phone or email
• in English German or French. (I use Hoch Deutsch, Not Bayerisch).
• Skip the rest of this page.

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My Target Business Sector:

• English is the language of the industry & international projects.
• • "All the good people can speak English" - told me by a Swiss German computer consultant in 1985:
    • As largely true now as then.
    • Though it's now easier for Germans new to the industry to avoid reading books in English, as more international computer books are translated to German, & some simple "Me Too" books are written in German (Yes, there are also very occasionaly serious books first published in German, I know a couple of authors personaly, professionals fluent & relaxed in spoken English, who wrote books in German first, then get got translated, I have 1 book on shelf, doubtless the other in due course, but they are the exceptions to prove the rule. ) ...
    • International mail list are now of vital importance to computer development projects - where English is essential.
• Internationaly operating firms are my target business sector.
  Those with a mix of German & English using subsidiaries, customers, suppliers, etc.
• Some German
  • German Is Optional
    • German is a language I use for some business, including negotiating contracts, but
      German is not the language I use for technical computer development work though, just an optional extra language.
    • The more skilled segment of German computer professionals are nearly always fluent in both German & English. We can work & chat in a relaxed, frequently switching mix of English & German.
    • Germans also require English in Job Ads, eg
      Job Bewerbung: "Englisch im Wort & Scrift"
  • Not 100% German
    • 100% German is not required by the more skilled segment of German computer professionals.
    • German companies & staff that want everything developed in German, solely for use by Germans, are not my target: The linguistic & thus technological blinkers, & lower budgets to develop just for local market in German is less attractive.
    • Computer staff who can't read English, just German, are usually lower skilled, & not able to work on latest source code available on international project mail lists. It's more effort working with them.
    • Usually the more insistent the demand for 100% German, the less skilled the demander.

  If you do NOT want to pay me & you want German

  I am fluent enough in German, (though not grammaticaly correct), eg I read contracts & documentation, & argue my corner in debate in German, & go to German gatherings etc, but ...
  • I try to avoid Excess German Language - Why:
    • I get too much German !.
    • I don't avoid German just because I'm English
    • Nor just because the German language has so many defects.
    • Mostly I avoid it because ...
      • Acceeding to local proponents who want to use just German, is to slip down market: Allowing just German language, allows that the Just German speaker may not be competent to interact on interanational mail lists, thus may be harder to work with.
      • Avoiding contact with those who can't use English can work as a skills filter, not just a language filter. ( Similar filters were used by Romans with Greek language, Europeans with Latin, Normans in England with French, etc)
      • Sadly in some German technical circles, the least skilled members not competent to use international English speaking development forums, sometimes insist on burdening group discussion to be just in German language, worse, confusingly mispronouncing standard American orignal acronyms. sometimes completely unrecognisably, not just to German A-Z.)
  • Amusingly, some of my German friends & associates who speak very good English, assume my German is more limited than it is, because we rarely speak German, as their English is so good

• "Deutsch Sprechen! - Sie Sind In Deutschland!"

  Doesn't translate to my ears the way the speaker intends , Instead: The more agressively it's spoken, the more likely it tells me about the Complainer:
  • "Too lazy to learn a minimum comfort level in the language of their computer Industry: English.
  • A local user, probabaly reading just local German books published against old software versions.
  • Won't contribute on international development mail lists.
  • Wants English speaker to use his free time to improve his German for the free benfit of the small subset of German computer professionals too lazy to understand English, rather than leaving the English speaker his time intact, to contribute to international Free Software development.
  • A self satisifed possible looser, possibly with a nationalist tendency, best ignored.
• Better to associate with other computer industry Germans, with better skills & more fluent in both languages.

• I prefer to use German when appropriate not when agressively demanded, eg:

  • Exceptions: When a local is doing me a favour, I will of course happily use German.
  • When paid To lecture on Sys Admin in German
  • When paid to provide computer consultancy in German, English or Both as required.
  • When reading eg CT (a good German computer magazine, better than anything I know in Britain, a good reason to read in German.
  • When reading German history books etc
  • With friends, neighbours, etc,
  • When a German computer colleague is struggling in English, & its my turn to swap back to German (Some friends & colleagues often voluntarily swap unasked, every few minutes for load balancing :-)

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DRAFT review to here

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The Crystal mark of http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/ appears on some UK business correspondence.

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Some Defects Of The German Language

• German is at least 15% more verbose than English.
• German grammar is too Clunky.
• German grammar could be easily improved. I prefer French structure to German, despite I'm more proficient in German).
• The 3 gender cases are pointless (French uses just 2, English just one (except for animals), & some Asians use None, even more efficient than English)
• Excessive word contcatenation makes German harder to learn
• The umlauts are a nuisance to everyone not German
• the number system is as old fashioned as English nursery rhymes used to be (eg "Four & Twenty black birds backed in a pie") To "What's the time?" A modern German will still reply "Five and Twenty to Three" Even a German using a 24 hour clock would say for 21:35 "One and Twenty, Five and Thirty" ! - More weirdness exists eg "Drei viertel Funf" = 3/4 before 5.
• Computer Deutsch:
  • It's awfull hearing - & worse, having to say - mangled, doppel- gemoppled neu- Deutsch- lish with English nouns & German verbs, that Germans use for computer "Deutsch"
  • Typical example:
    • Ich habe es ge-initialisiert
      = I initialised it.
  • Mindlessly mis-pronouncing American acronyms in German is horribly wrong: As a guide, just remember the original English pronunciation of the American Unix tools, & what the acronyms are for in full, eg:
    • VI is Not "Fow Eee" ! - VI is the Unix standard Visual editor.
    • Awk is Not "Ah Vee Kah" ! Awk is pronounced like the Auk bird
    • LUN is Not "Loon" ! Loon is an abreviation of Lunatic., LUN is pronouced like Lunch, LUN is for Logical Unit Number
    • SCSI is pronouned Scuzzy - see definition in book by Relf/ NCR/ Prentice Hall
    • The crazed German pronunciation of ISA & EISA (Extended ISA ) etc got so bad I gave up, & in desperation either always wrote it, or called them 3 letter bus & 4 letter busses. !
  • There comes a time its better to switch to English.

Which Human Language ?

Americans: Do Not Write To Me In German If It's NOT Your Native Language.

Ascii FAQ: Why don't I use More German ?