A Completely Honest Look at How Bad My German Has Gotten

In this video, I try to speak in German after over a year of almost total neglect and with absolutely no preparation at all.

I want to show you all of my mistakes and exactly how good or bad my German is right now.

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[Flauschbally]

Dein Deutsch ist wirklich super, wenn man bedenkt wie lange Du nicht mehr in dieser Sprache gesprochen hast. Ich wünschte, mein Holländisch (was ich gerade lerne) wäre schon so super. Sehr beeindruckend Deine Sprachenvielfalt. Weiter so. BRAVO.

[JNDSAN]

your honesty is really refreshing, it would have been interesting to have practised even for a day and then seen how you sound, doing it in such an off the cuff way is always incredibly difficult because youre not in the mindset of the language

[judyh.]

Robin, ich bin beeindruckt, das war echt gut! 🤗 Trotz der fehler, die sich logischerweise nach so langer zeit nicht vermeiden lassen, habe ich alles verstanden! 😉

As you are so amazingly honest with us I will be the same with you. I hope that's okay, as i am trying to help you, to show you where you stand. 😊 I think, as you said, your german now in comparison to your german in 2016 is a bit rusty. You were searching for some words and because I know english i knew how you tried to rebuild them from english words to match the german word structure 😉 which is really clever, but for some didnt work, since the german 'wortstamm' could not be deducted from english in some of these cases 😉 therefore a german, who doesnt know english might end up not understanding what you tried to tell them.
You also sometimes mixed up the sentence structure and struggled with words that can consist of more than one part (words like zuhören -> 'ich höre dir zu' oder 'ich will dem orchester zuhören' ...) but I think these must be hella tricky for learners... 🙈
In general, even though all of the above might sound like a lot, it is definitely not! Most of these are what i would call 'minor mistakes' that hardly limit understanding. (Except for the english/german mixture in words, but like i've mentioned these would, most likely, only confuse non-english spreaking germans ;) ) i am sure with immersion you will be able to bring your german back to an almost flawless and even more impressive level! 🙄
Also: I love your accent and pronunciation! I think you have the potential to sound very native once you get back into practice!! 🙊 I truly am impressed 🙄
Also 'to launch a book' means 'Ein Buch herausbringen' 😉

[smileydaysss]

I never learned German before, but I think you did it naturally. Nice job! : )

[albertomontero]

Hallo. I have a question for you: did you learn your german showed in this vid with the help of only Babbel ?

[huntbot]

Hallo! Ich bin Amerikaner und studiere Deutsch auch. Ich habe "finieren" nie gehort, so ich habe meinen deutschen Austauschschuler Sonn gefragt, und er hat erzahlt, das finieren is wirklich kein Wort - aber es kann in der Zahnmedizin benutzt sein lol. Er sagt, das man sagt "fertigstellen" in diesem Kontext. Entschuldige das ich keine Umlauts habe!