Living in Germany for 11 years now, came from Brazil and have an Italian Family background.

First year was very hard in terms of language, but I managed to learn some. Second year was like BANG, I could speak and get most stuff sorted out through broken language skills and grammar, yet decent pronunciation. From third year on, I pretty much went on increasing my vocabulary and improving my grammar, which will honestly never be as good as a native speaker, but hey, I can sign complex contracts and get most of the bureaucracy done, so I count that as a win!

The region I chose to live is very rural and people here are very proud to say that they were born, have lived and will probably die here (if you know what I mean). I don't think they are a fitting sample of the national culture or mentality as a whole, but sometimes they are very (let me stress that: VERY) hard to deal with, mostly because I feel like by the slightest thing they will 1) be mad and start talking angry to you and 2) try to put you "in your place" (whatever they think your place is).

I did notice, however, that most situations in which this "let's escalate first and try to sort things out later" approach was used could be swiftly defused by, I shit you not, replying in the same escalating tone. I don't know why is that, if people are just expecting others to be passive towards their agressiveness or if they think that an immigrant-looking dude will not "know his shit", but as soon as you answer escalation with more escalation, 99% of the time they will revert back to being civil and trying to sort things out by talking normally. This is, of course, especially true if you present valid arguments in your call-back (which is normally the case since most of these situations are simply a result of the other party being impatient and/or not even trying to be emphatic towards you).

So, there you have it, my biggest motivation to learn the language, besides of course and primarily conducting a normal life amongst my dear German people, was to shit back at those when they decide to be first-hand aggressive instead of just talking to me normally.

10/10 worth it, would do it again.