That's when you double down and tell them in German that you don't speak English. That'll confuse 'em.

They probably speak English with you because your German is not sufficiently efficient.

My favorite phrase to use in all foreign countries is "Please forgive me, I am American." It gets a laugh out of almost everyone even when terribly butchered in any language and most people will then attempt English for you.

Except Parisians, who do not care. I think they would prefer I point and grunt to trying either English or my awful French.

Ja, wir neigen dazu, das zu tun.

Compared to other languages... If those other languages are Romantic, North Germanic, Dutch, Afrikaans, or Frisian. A majority of other languages are typically considered more difficult for people who only speak English.

That being said, I found Russian way easier than German at first, but that quickly stops being the case... German shares a lot of semantic/syntactic similarities with English so you can reasonably assume that a lot of German constructions will easily translate to English, for Russian though it's more unfamiliar and you have to put more effort into thinking Russian-y. The main thing that made German way harder at first is German declensions... ugh... Russian has a complex declension system but it's extremely regular, while German declensions are pretty irregular and the declension of articles is especially bad because their forms overlap a lot. Adjective declension is similarly bad. German word order also fucked with me a lot but it's decently rigid so you get it quickly.

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