Going to the hairdresser involves a risk, no matter what language is used. I must admit I hadn’t been to a hairdresser for years before I started seeing Pam, a student of mine from Wales who got fed up with learning German after a while and one day turned her attention to my hair instead.

She was a professional hairdresser, and it began slowly: When I was explaining something during our one-to-one lessons, she seemed to be distracted, frowned, looked at me critically, and then came up with something like: "Yes, yes, but you should do something about your hair here, you see," twirling a streak in her hands or brushing it out of my face.

Well, we ended up doing haircuts instead of German, or trying to combine both. A good experience for me, for I had been suffering from a hairdresser-phobia forever – whereas she likewise had been avoiding situations with the German language whenever she could. So I felt almost forced to overcome my inhibitions, as she did hers, and became her client.

I am quite happy with that, too. However, I am not the only hairdresser-phobic person, and I could fill a book with stories people have told me about dreadful experiences like, for instance, leaving the hairdresser’s looking like completely different than they wanted to.

Is this a question of failed communication or just about a lack of qualifications – or the extreme assertiveness of the stylist? Pam used to tell stories about clients who kept saying: "Please do it exactly the same way you did it six weeks ago!" – and she has a lot of clients. Her answer always was, "Yes, no problem, if you tell me what you want to have exactly like you did six weeks ago." For somebody not familiar with German, this might be a challenge but you will certainly have to accept the logic behind it, so here are some basic words and phrases that might help.

Schneiden (cut), waschen (wash), föhnen (blow-dry)

lang (long) – kurz (short)

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