Multiculturalism Story

Today, I had to escort the wife (German in nature) to a medical appointment in the midst of Wiesbaden.  I stepped into a waiting room, which I tend to hate these episodes because there's always sickly people around and coughing, and found just six folks sitting there....mostly not coughing.  I assessed the situation and noted....there's me (the American), the wife (German), four Germans, and two non-Germans.

There's some administrative things required and my wife is called in as they are dealing with one of the non-Germans.  After they've completed the non-German....apparently there is some commentary between the clerks and my wife.

The non-German was an African, and basically ONLY spoke French (my guess is Cameroon).  The German clerks?  They could handle German and to some extent...English.  French?  No....zero background.

I had a discussion with a German instructor (university-background) around three years ago.  The instructor pointed out that while there's some basic foreign language for most all German kids....it's fairly basic, and generally limited to English....so you might 'accidentally' (her phrase) pick up fifty to a hundred words that you might remember.  If you made it into Gymnasium (the higher German school)?  Well....that's different.  French, Italian, Latin, Russian and in some rare cases now....a few Asian languages like Japanese or Chinese. 

But in this case at the medical office?  Well....they were stuck and basically just pencil-whipped the form as best as possible.  After the French-speaker left.....then came the German 'heartburn'.....bringing up Chancellor Merkel and 'multi-culty' (the German slang for negative chatter about too many foreigners in the country).  It's a weekly thing now.....five or six people who wander in and speak zero German or English. 

The integration class business?  My guess is that this person had just arrived in the past month or two, and had yet to get into classes. 

Out of 82-million, I'd take a guess that at least eight million folks are in Germany, and German is their second-language.  Communicating?  It comes up daily as a problem.  I stood on a bus a few weeks ago, and a Syrian guy was using poor German to get directions from the driver about where to get off.  The driver?  The driver wasn't a German (probably a Czech or Pole), and his German was marginally working.  Several months ago, I stood at some grocery where the Chinese guy was trying to discuss some meat item he needed from the butcher department, and the lady behind the counter was Greek and trying her best to communicate in German.

All of this...if you think about the long term implications....is going to lead to some awful confusing situations.  You could be standing there and dealing with some policeman who is Syrian in nature and has decent (not great) German skills, and trying to explain a situation. 

This is one of those little things that working class Germans kinda grumble about.  They didn't have to deal with this much twenty years ago.  Now?  These situations pop up occasionally.