the other day I was chatting with a lady from Poland who works as a teacher for young kids, and her wife who's German. we were talking about Merz's talk of increasing immigration requirementa to C1, and she was shocked. then the wife said "but you, your German is already perfect"—she only talks in German among themselves, also with their kids, also at her job, for more than a decade—but she said "no no: not perfect. I still make errors". I can't detect an accent even with my phonology training, but the Germans can. I recognised that subtle note of calloused panic in her voice, in the way her expression changed: trauma. the Germans can and do judge you for it, as they judge even one another for dialects. it's a country that's still a vocal believer in such debunked concepts as "grammar errors", and they treat it as a fact of nature, a law of physics they're powerless to change, rather than a thing they continue to choose to do ("it's physically impossible for me to not correct you when you make a mistake", one once told me).

she told me a few cases of xenophobia from language she has experienced, up to and including being denied a job because her accent would be "a bad example for the kids", after she was already past C2. because gods forbid the immigrant kids in the school have a model that it is ok to speak with an accent.

(this is illegal in Germany, of course, to discriminate on these grounds for a job. but her complaints predictably came to naught. like my lawyer said, there's a big distance between a right and reality. Germany is a country where everyone cares a lot about rules, except when they don't.)

her wife held hands with her. we had come to this topic while discussing how right-wing everyone in their rural area was, "like they're not neonazis but just... bad. you know?" I know what they mean; people who wouldn't raise the red-white-black but love to hoist the black-red-gold, the eagle. saw quite a few on the way there. "the last time it was like that too. you know?", I said. "most of them weren't like, literally believers in Hitler, race science, the whole thing. they just thought the führer would improve the economy, kick out criminals. restore their national pride. back then they got one third of votes only, now they're already at one fourth—I mean you know those things better than me", I caught myself lecturing, "your family must have memories, isn't it", because I know she's close to her elders. they did. like most of us she's been connecting the dots, the worst tableaus of history don't feel like "history" anymore. we understand now, it was just like this back then, too, it's not just the NSDAP it's the whole thing. Erinnerungen werden wach an die Zeit von damals.

"grammar Nazi" stopped being a joke for me a long time ago.