SUSIE MALLETT

My visitors today

Sunday 11 July 2010

Language

"A dragonfly beside the doorbell at home in Nürnberg"
Summer 2006


Last week I noticed that there are advertisements on the internet from individuals and centres, searching for conductors in Germany. The advertisements are written in English.


http://www.conductive-education.org.uk/jobs-available/conductor-required-germany

http://www.conductive-education.org.uk/jobs-available/conductor-required-for-private-family-germany


I wondered why this is.


I wondered why people are writing in English and not in German.


I asked myself whether the work will be carried out in English.


That would be something for me, at last conductive practice in my mother tongue and near home. What a treat, if only I had the time.


PS


I have since enquired and both the advertisers below are looking for German speakers. I still do not know why the advertisements are in English, I forgot to ask.



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Probably because the language of the site is English, and there were some problems with Hungarian language used in the discussion forum years ago.

Anyway, my personal opinion is that they could have post it in German, but having had these problems with the Hungarian language, I would not 'dare' to post it in any other language...

Andrew said...

'...problems with Hungarian language used in the discussion forum years ago'

What problems were those?

Andrew

Susie Mallett said...

I am not really clear what you mean, Anonymous, about the language of the site being English. Does this mean that you think English MUST therefore be used to write a message or an advert? Is this legal? Or do you just mean that English is the language that the site is written in so it is only polite to use it in advertisements?

I have found nothing at all on the site to say that advertisements must be in English, hence my puzzlement that the ones in question were. If one wanted to respect the English language of the site it would have been sensible to have posted in both English and German.

What kind of problems could there have been with the Hungarian language on some discussion forum years ago that would make anyone not dare to write in German, or in any other language than English, in an advertisment for a position that will probably not be needing English? I can not think that either of the people posting those advertisements for jobs in Germany knew anything about the problems with Hungarian on a discussion forum, so this could have had no direct influence on their choice of language.

I have actually asked one of the advertisers now about this choice of language and I am waiting for a reply.

Susie Mallett said...

I seem to be writing a lot of PSs recently, here is another one!

PS

Immediately I had finished writing the last comment I received a reply from a lady who had posted one of the advertisments.

She tells me that it says on the website that the adverts MUST be written in the English language, she also said that of course it would have been a lot easier for her to have written them in German.

A lot more practical too as she also informed me that the conductor will need to speak enough German to communicate with her child.

Susie