Berlin? No thanks.

You can just imagine the article in The Guardian. Written by some badly-paid part-time hack from a grim northern English town. She's probably lived in Berlin for a year, knows (very little) German, and is keen to earn a bit of money.

So here goes - how "the ruthlessly efficient Germans" have finally accepted that order and duty is not everything. How they're finally coming to terms with their chaotic inner self. How their tormented Prussian souls have suddenly learnt to love squalor, unfinished building sites and outdoor toilets. Berlin, the former Prussian capital (geddit?) as the new Capital of Chaos, yo.

So far, so boring, and predictable.

But what of it really? It's true that Berlin attracts millions of young people from every corner of Germany, and ooh - even Europe. People who are fed up with the one single bus that links their village to the nearest small town. People from remote places where the bus shelter is the trendy place to gather. People who's idea of a fun night out is to hitch a hike to a club (club?) called "NYC" in italic typeface which is behind the corn fields in a disused chapel. People who like hanging round graveyards lighting candles whilst wearing long belted black leather coats.

Of course they love Berlin. It's such a big town isn't it? Full of vibe (pronounced Weib.) It's cool, hey? (pronounced kuhl). It's really creative. (Posting a promotional photo of a café with an ironic garden gnome in the window.)

So of course nobody minds that the place is a tip, and that nothing works. All part of that metropolitan feeling. Just like one imagines New York, or err,yeah... other big towns.

Berlin has become a mecca for international provincialdom. And just like other towns (the promotion of London at the height of the ill-fated "Cool Britannia" PR-campaign comes to mind) that are bankrupt, it tries to turn its run-downness into an asset. Which is fine, and has already worked wonders for property prices there. Just don't tell me all those broken-down trams, dysfunctional airports,and dilapidated concrete blocks is "the Germans" coming to terms with their inner turmoil.

10 Reasons Why Germans Tend to Be So Bad At English

Two street views, or rather audio-boos from two European capitals:

A couple of months ago I visited Amsterdam- and was truly gobsmacked: Amsterdam is a bilingual town. English and Dutch are spoken as if they were the two natural indigenous languages of that town. Amsterdamers are loquacious, eloquent, and switch codes with ease. Last weekend I was in Berlin. And I was shocked:  Berliners mostly seem to speak a sort of pidgin-English, with every verb in the present tense - unidiomatic, halting, and what is worst - they carry their local dialect over into English.

Of course I'm not singling out Berlin as a focus for bad foreign language skills. All over Germany, people will nod enthusiastically when asked whether they speak English - and reply  with a resounding"Yesss!" (It's a sign of their incompetence that it wouldn't occur to them to say "I do"). Their grammar is generally non-existent, their pronunciation atrocious and their vocabulary limited to about 200 words. Besides, they have a fatal tendency to translate word by word. "You go high there" (Gehen Sie da hoch).

Why is that? Why are Dutch people so adept at English, and Germans, despite their personal conviction of total fluency so useless at it?

1) Teaching methods are far too theoretical. At school, you don't get exposure to the actual spoken language, you get to memorize rules and regulations. ("The adverb always goes infront of the ...")

2) Teachers themselves aren't very good at English (having gone through equally bad language education), thereby procreating bad pronunciation and general linguistic inadequacy.

3) Children aren't exposed to how English is actually spoken: All foreign TV series are dubbed. In Holland, they all come with subtitles.

4) Pupils are not required to spend time abroad. And few Germans (as opposed to the Dutch) go for ,say, a weekend break in the UK.

5) There is an implicit understanding that German and English are quite similar.Thus, the radical difference in e.g. grammatical tenses gets totally overlooked. In German you  get by by just using the present tense - English with its complicated tenses/aspect system doesn't work at all if reduced to the present tense.

6) At university level emphasis is placed on translating texts, rather than active competence of a foreign language. It's almost as if styudying a foreign language automatically means wanting to set up business as a translator. Maybe this is a way of guiding students towards professional pragmatism, but it is not conducive to foreign language fluency.

7) Native speakers as foreign language assistants do exist both at school and unversity level, but they are too grateful for any active participation to actually bother much about students's accents. Incompetent pronunciation is so strong in Germany, that students are often baffled and at a loss when faced with the actuality of proper British (or indeed American) pronunciation.

8) Given the self-image as a competent speaker of English, Germans tend not to carry on learning, or even adding new vocabulary or idioms. ("Wieso? Ich kann Englisch")

9) Idioms are  crucial to proper English. German has far fewer idioms, and a rule-restriczve way of teaching/learning never gets anywhere near them. Germans learn words, not idiom clusters.

10) Bad English spawns off more bad English. Even companies advertising for international positions mostly do so in faulty English. Technical brochures, tourism websites, youth magazines and other publications are frequently written in pidgin English. And who is to notice?

A lot needs to be done to help this situtaion. Germany is seriously falling behind in European language competence, especially as other foreign languages (French and Spanish are currently  No's 2 and 3) are only spoken by a tiny minority. Massive funding of improved language teaching would help the situation, but what's even more important: The country needs to actually admit to itself that there is a problem which needs addressing.