I moved to Germany last year with no job lined up as my wife had an opportunity over there. To get a job and to function well you need to speak and understand German. I continue to learn and I am surprised and fascinated with the culture and activities that Germany has to offer.
One myth is that all the German words are long and there is a shorter English equivalent. In my new job I train people in English who may have English as their 2nd or 3rd language. It's a balance between making the course boring by using too simplistic phrasing or being entertaining and having references they don't understand without explanation. I try and avoid anything that sounds too 'new age' even if I think that the concept works. Often I use the term visualisation to encourage people to share information in pictures or graphs or to rehearse mentally a situation they are going to be involved in. It turns out the Germans have a word kopfkino (head cinema) that does all the work for me and more and is more elegant. Another word I have discovered is Mimik which is German for facial expressions.
Getting past the surface and stereotypes of culture opens up a different game to explore and try out new things. Mark Twain may have complained about the German language but I put that in Mark Twain's nature to tweak the tail of his host country.
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