Go like Silk

No one is perfect. No one speaks perfect German either. The only way not to speak without making mistakes is to say nothing at all. So trying to achieve ‘perfect German’ is not going to help.

Don’t worry about making mistakes or constructing complicated sentences. Concentrate on what you want to say and you’ll know how to say it.

Looking for a job isn’t easy. It’s even more difficult in a language or a culture that doesn’t yet feel quite like home. We want to stay calm and confident at job interviews and to be able to show what we know.

It’s good to be prepared. But learning what to say by heart is not the way to go. There will always be questions or comments you weren’t expecting. But you can prepare for the unexpected. Remember how much you know. That way, you’re for any situation and can take each question as it comes.

There is so much we want to say, but the words aren’t always there when we need them. Finding just the right word can be hard. We forget how many other words we already know in German.

Remember: When we know what we want to say, we’ll always find a way to say it. You don’t need long vocabulary lists in your head. Trust what you already know and what you want to say. That’s all you need.

‘You’ve got a very strong accent.’ We’ve probably all heard this at some point. And felt there was something wrong with our German.

Our accent is simply part of our biography. It shows where we come from, which languages we speak, how we have lived. So don’t apologize for your accent. It’s part of who you are.

If you’re living or working in Austria, German is no longer a foreign language for you. But it can take time until we feel really at home in a language we haven’t grown up with. Wherever we are on our way to making friends with German, we want to be able to express ourselves and to be ourselves.

No one else can say what you want to say. So don’t compare the way you speak German to other people’s. Speak your own words in your own way. And you’ll always be yourself in German.