I‘ve been living here for a few years now and still can‘t speak fluently. Should I give up? Any advice? I’ve been living in the german part of switzerland for about 4 years now (moved from wales) and have been going to school here. I went to a private school for a lot of my time here that was billingual. There, english was spoken and the friends that I had could speak german but usually only spoke english with each other. Since I didn’t know a lock of german, I spoke english there the entire time. Later on during my tome at that schools, there were many times where I tried to speak german with my friends but most of them just spoke back to me in english a lot of the times since it was automatic to them, and speaking german honestly felt so awkward and uncomfortable. I then got into public school last year, where I’d be forced to speak german. A few months in I’d decided that I wanted to learn swiss german since it fascinated me a lot and just sounded very cool. I was both advised by some classmate and my dad that I should properly learn high german first and then try swiss german, but I didn’t listen since I thought that I wouldn’t be able to learn german properly due to me being surrounded exclusively by people who speak swiss german (meaning that there was no high german that I could bounce back off of and learn from them). So, I decided to start learning. It was going pretty alright and I ended up making a lot of progress by the summer, I was even able to hold conversations with random people at parties (a big thing for me since I am/used to be extremely socially awkward and anxious). Everything stopped when my class got mixed up the following year and I was no longer surrounded by those who spoke swiss german, instead I was surrounded by friends that I had from a shared class in the previous year that preferred/spoke mainly english with others who could speak english. I obviously got closer to those who I could speak english with, not only because we are in the same class, but mainly because I was able to express myself a lot more with them and I mostly stayed on the quieter side with the SG speaking people in my old class. I noticed myself regressing in both G and SG and it’s honestly so unfortunate because there are so many people that I wish I could be better friends with or get to know more that I can’t due to the language barrier. And usually people aren’t interested in what you have to say when you take 10 years to form a sentence where you mess up pronounciation,stutter, and weird sounds that you didnt want to come out of your mouth just come out. It’s genuinely gotten so bad (from my perspective) to the point where I feel like I either A)developed a speech impediment B) am under the average level of intelligence which is why I “know” three languages, but can’t seem to speak any of them fluently besides english (and I’ve even started to mess up a lot in english). I’ve dealt enough with getting ignored or seeing how people (not everyone) are uninterested in what I have to say and I’m tired of being disregarded. I also think a big chunk of teens here don‘t like hearing people speak english so that just makes my situation more inconvenient. The embarrassment I get from trying to speak swiss german is genuinely so bad to the point where I get daily chest pain every time my mind reminds me of the things that I’ve said. The high german is only a bit better. I rarely ever participate in class due to the fear of being judged or genuinely not knowing how to form my answer and cannot write an essay without six million grammatical errors which brings my grade down by a lot accompanied by my rudimentary vocabulary. I at least don’t get that chest-aching embarrassment when I speak to friends in high german but still. I’ve taken tests online that say my german level is around C-something (cant remember) and I just can’t seem to believe it. I don’t know how I managed to pass two years of fully german public school. I’m in my last year now before uni and I want good grades for my Matura. I also want to fix the speaking part so I’m able to participate more which would help with grades. I’ve wanted to ditch swiss german but it would be so weird for the people that I’ve been speaking swiss german with for me to just switch to high german (I’m not close friends with those people anyway but idk). I speak english with the person i speak to the most in school and have tried multiple times to speak exclusively german/swiss german with them but we both always ended up switching back to english at some point in time. I’m tired of trying but I need this to get good grades, study and to socialise here. Maybe I should start by asking my dad to get a tutor, no idea. This is all so embarrassing to me, since I’ve been living here for years now and maybe others think I’m stupid, lazy or both but I wouldn’t blame them. Any advice? submitted by /u/Glad-Hat7228
Originally posted by u/Glad-Hat7228 on r/Switzerland