The accents are a give-away for Gaelic vs Irish: Gaelic uses the grave accent only, Irish the acute. You can see it in your examples. Other than that, pretty similar and AFAIK close to mutually comprehensible.

I remember compiling a list of Bizarre Things My Classmates Got Asked On Exchange when I was in high school. As I recall, the things that apparently didn't exist in Germany included:
- cars
- TV
-shoes
- the moon (???)

A propos of the them not wanting to believe she wasn't an immigrant, I also remember a section in our English textbook talking about what to do if you were on exchange in the US and someone asked you which country you liked better. ("Don't answer, they'll get offended! Be diplomatic, state how much you've been enjoying your time in the US...")

Yeah, I'm getting my ducks in a row and figuring out what the best time would be personal-circumstances-wise (it'd be good to hang on for another year job-searching-wise, for instance, I'm in a bit of an awkward place as far as experience goes) but I'm absolutely planning to leave as soon as I can. Just - I don't feel welcome. I don't even feel safe, as frightening as it is to admit it (and as much as I'd like to stick my fingers in my ears and go LA LA LA re: the rise in racist and xenophobic harrassment and hate crimes). It's sad because I've loved my time in this country so much, I met so many great people and did so many awesome things, but I just don't want to be here anymore. :(

I'm also not sure if I'd be eligible for the citizenship test (apparently there are weird things involving needing to register and having private health insurance which I had no idea about), never to mention that I've never planned on getting another citizenship because the German government can be really finicky about that, where "finicky" means "you mean just being German isn't good enough for you? Guess you don't need the German citizenship anymore, then!" Not a problem, I always figured, I'm an EU citizen after all- HA HA HA *wipes tears away* I should be doing stand-up comedy or something.

(sorry for the ramble, everyone, I will attempt to focus on Discworld now. just, y'know, this week has been actively devastating aaaaah.)

I'm German and have been living in the UK for over ten years at this point.

I. Kind of hear you on that shitty week. :(

That sounds familiar.... it's been ages, but I remember a Three Musketeers-style table-top RPG where minions had 1HP and you could get extra points or something for particularly dramatic flourishes in fights and the like. *googles* 7th Sea, it seems. Is that the one you mean?

I'd really love to see more multilingual fantasy or science fiction, seriously. I'm bilingual and the endless effective-monolingualism of most SFF just... grates. Translation spells/universal translators are all too often a handwavey excuse for not actually engaging with the subject, IMHO.

I definitely recognised myself in Kel as someone who's sort of a third culture kid myself, that feeling of "I share this culture in some ways more than my own but it's still not mine" (although my own culture-of-origin and culture-I-grew-up-in are much, much closer than the Yamani Isles and Tortall). I can see why people would have loved a half-Yamani Kel and think that would also have made for a great story, but I agree with you that the sort of foreigner-childhood/third-culture-kid experience Kel has is very rare to see in fiction and definitely worth addressing in its own right.

I totally grew up calling them that, realised what I was saying when I was around 12 or so and was pretty horrified. I then switched to Moor's head, not realising this was really just as bad. /o\

(Note that I'd translate that particular N-word as the other N-word, which used to be a reasonably polite term I believe? Rather than the N-word being discussed overall which AFAIK has never been anything other than a grotesque slur. Not defending this - god no! - but clarifying for people who don't speak German or know the terminology.)

I think I shall have to stick to the land where names make sense, like Milngavie

I see what you did there. (Whoever heard of a silent v, anyway??)

I occasionally have a very hard time making decisions and that coin-flip trick is amazing. You've been wracking your brain for ages trying to come up with a preference and failing, but then the coin lands on tails and you realise you're disappointed.

I too get very frustrated by habitual decision abdicators particularly of the "read my mind to figure out my *real* preference sort". As you say, making the decision takes work and ends up with a all the investment and responsibility landing on you. (And even if you have no real preference or none you can suss out, it's often relatively easy to toss options out. "Eh, I'm really not fussed. What do you think - pizza, Chinese, Indian, that burger place down the road? Or do you have anything else you'd like to try?"

(I do sometimes have to abdicate decision-making, but that's a case of "I am having so much trouble with decisions right now that trying to make one is actively distressing" and I apologise and am duly grateful to the other person if they take over, or at least throw some choices out there at that point.)