u/taube_d

I’m Italian, lived in two different countries that weren't Italy. spent the first months in each one asking the standard newcomer questions: where should I live, where should I eat, what should I see. All the answers were useful, but they didn't actually help me fit in anywhere.

The question that did help came by accident. I asked a coworker what foreigners get wrong here that locals notice but never say. She gave me a list of things I’d been doing for months without realizing. Don’t ring the doorbell after 22:00 because the entire building considers it a crime. Saying "Wie geht's?" to a cashier means asking about their lower back pain unless you signal otherwise. Don’t show up at someone's apartment without texting first, ever, even close friends. Tipping more than 10% reads as weird, not generous. And at the grocery checkout, you bag your own bags fast, or the next person starts piling their things on top of yours.

Every one of those was something I’d been getting wrong. And the locals had been quietly registering it.

The magic of this question is that it pulls out the unspoken rules locals don't think to mention because they assume everyone knows. These are the cultural defaults you'd otherwise learn the hard way, by accidentally offending someone or having a friend direct enough to actually tell you. Ask it within the first month. Ask it of multiple people from different backgrounds. Write the answers down.

Picked it up from Italian friends a few months back. Asked an Italian friend if she wanted to come visit me in Spain this summer and she said "magari." I thought she was saying maybe. Weeks later, I realized she'd been saying something more like "God, I wish, that would be amazing, I absolutely want to but probably can't."

Then I started noticing it everywhere. Someone tells you they have great news? You respond "magari" and it means "really? amazing!" Someone invites you to something you have to decline? "Magari" means "I wish I could but no." Someone tells you about a dream that won't happen? "Magari" means "oh God, if only."

For most of the time I’ve been here, my brain has been translating in real time. Someone says something in Spanish, I process it, I translate it, I form a response in English, and I translate it back. The loop is fast, but it's always there.

Then last Tuesday, I was making coffee, and I realized I’d been thinking about whether I had enough leche for the rest of the week. not "milk." leche. the whole internal monologue, in Spanish, with no English version running in the background. It had been going for like ten seconds before I noticed.

I stopped what I was doing and just stood there for a minute, trying to catch what other thoughts had been happening in Spanish without me realizing.

The weird part wasn't that it happened. I’d been told this would happen. The weird part was catching it. genuinely disoriented for the rest of the morning.

What was the first thought you remember in your second language?

Did a project assignment at the German office last year, and I'm still finding things that feel completely normal to my colleagues but caught me off guard.

Bring your own birthday cake. The first time a coworker walked in with a tray of cake and told me it was for himself, I thought he was joking. He wasn't. Apparently, I'm now expected to do the same in October.

Calling in sick and being told, in writing, not to check email. Not as a polite suggestion, as a hard rule. Took me a while to stop feeling guilty about it.

Germans, which of these would you defend, and what's a workplace habit you don't realize would surprise a foreigner?

Been speaking Spanish daily for over a year, and I’m a different person in it. In English, I’m sarcastic and careful with what I say. In Spanish, I'm louder, more direct, and way more willing to make a fool of myself in public. My English friends would not recognize me at a Spanish dinner table.

I used to think this was just limited vocabulary forcing me to be blunter. But the shift sticks even when I know the words. It’s a whole different mode somehow.

Is this real for everyone, or am I making it up? What version of you comes out in your other language?

I lived in Spain for six months before I had a real conversation in Spanish. I could understand most of what people said and read menus and text fine. But the moment someone expected words to come out of my mouth in real time my brain went silent.

I kept telling myself I'd start speaking when I was "ready." Spoiler: that day was never coming.

What actually got me past it was unlearning the habit of trying to translate what I'd say in English. For months, I was constructing the English sentence in my head and then trying to say the same thing in Spanish, which meant I needed perfect grammar and the exact right word for everything. It never worked.

The shift was deciding to only say what I could actually say in Spanish. Even if it was basic. Even if it made me sound like a five year old. Instead of "I was wondering if you could maybe help me figure out where the post office is" it became "donde esta el correos." And it turns out Spanish people don't care. They just answered the question.

Once I lowered the bar, I started getting reps in, and reps are what fixed it. By month nine, I could actually have conversations without sweating, by month twelve people stopped switching to English on me.

The speaking wall was never about ability. It was about getting comfortable being bad in front of someone.

What got you past it?

Learning German for about a year now, and Sie/du is the part of the language I still freeze on. I can conjugate it fine in writing. In real conversation, I pause for half a second every time and the German I'm talking to clocks it.

What I can't tell is whether Germans actually think about which one to use, or if your brain just files every person you meet into a Sie or du slot the moment you meet them and the decision is already made before you open your mouth.

Is there ever a moment where a German adult genuinely doesn't know which one to use? What do you do in the weird middle cases, like a colleague your age you actually like, or your friend's parents you've known for years but never got the duzen offer?

Learning Spanish for a couple of years now, and "sobremesa" is the one that broke me. It's the time you spend at the table after the meal, when nobody's eating anymore, and nobody's getting up, you're all just sitting there talking. Spanish has a single word for that. English has no word because in English, you finish eating and you go.

What's yours? The word in your language that you use without thinking, and English just doesn't have. Bonus points if English has had centuries to come up with one and still hasn't bothered.