Among the sounds of “good morning” and “how are you?” you’ll hear Lackeys (employees at Groundspeak) sharing a “Guten Morgen!” or “Wie geht’s?” when passing in the hallway. Is this because we have suddenly become fluent in German? Sadly, no, but we are trying! 18 Lackeys met twice a week for eight weeks to learn how to better understand and communicate in German. The Founders of Geocaching.com sat next to Lackeys who answer emails from around the world and other Lackeys who commonly communicate with German geocachers.
German language lessons at Groundspeak make sense. More than ten percent of geocaches located around the world today can be found on German soil. To see the incredible growth of geocaches in Germany, watch the YouTube video on this page. The video ends in 2009 when there were more than 118,000 geocaches in the country. Two years later, there are now more than 180,000 active geocaches in Germany.
After eight weeks of lessons, Lackeys moved from, “Mein Name ist….” (My name is… ) and “Wie bitte?” (Beg you pardon) to mostly understanding “Jeremy und Bryan kommen per Fahrrad vorbei.” (Jeremy and Bryan are coming by on their bikes). Lackey Annie Love recently met some German geocachers in the Groundspeak lobby with some freshly learned language skills: “Woher kommen Sie?” (where do you come from?)
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Understandably Lackey’s are not fluent in German… yet. More German language classes are in the works.
As the global geocaching community grows, Groundspeak Lackeys strive to understand the local languages, culture and most importantly how to best serve local geocaching communities. You can choose to read the main sections of Geocaching.com in any one of eleven different languages. Geocaching unites more than five million geocachers around the world, regardless of whether they say “Hello” or “Hallo” or “Ahoj” or “Hej” or “Hola” or “Ciao” or “Bonjour” or “Olá” or “Witam” or “Tere,” we all say “Geocaching.”
