I’m talking about Dutch, sorry for being unclear, I thought “man” rather than “Mann” would make it clear. I’m just saying the phonetic sequence “die man” is something many Germans will have heard before from nearby and related languages. I understand that it could be surprising the first time.
I’m a native Dutch speaker and have a German partner and live in a German speaking country (although my standard German isn’t amazing, B1-2ish) so I’m not totally ignorant of the parts of speech in Germanic languages.
Nah you’re good, hopefully other people reading will find it interesting. You’re right, English usually works better across that border, unless they speak Platte in which case it can be a tossup if someone doesn’t have great English.