Get by

Phrasal Verbs | B1

…My German isn't great…

This kind of negative positivity is quite common in English. Instead of directly saying that something is bad, we often say it in an indirect, negative-positive way:

e.g. He’s not the most reliable person in the world.

e.g. The meal wasn’t great, but we had a nice time anyway.

e.g. I wouldn’t say it’s the best book I’ve ever read, but you might like it.

…we'd just have to…

‘We’d’ here is ‘we would’. If the speaker expanded the sentence fully, it would be something like ‘If we didn’t have the car for a week, we would have to rely on public transport’. The condition (the if part) is implied in the original sentence – it doesn’t need to be said.

e.g. I decided not to go the party in the end. (If I had gone) I wouldn’t have been very good company.

…somehow we're getting by…

We use ‘somehow’ to mean ‘in an unknown way’ or ‘in a way that we can’t explain’.

e.g. I was 100% sure I would miss the deadline, but somehow I managed to hand in my coursework on time.

…Do you think…

Notice how contracted the question form is here – ‘do you think’ become ‘dyu think’ or ‘dju think’. This is typical for questions and can make them easy to miss.