Learning German

I’ve recently been trying to learn German and have found that learning a language is not really something that allows for shyness. It’s one of those things that you have to bumble through at first, butchering the grammar and coming to learn that you accidentally/on purpose called someone boring—because I cannot both translate and have an inner monologue I guess.

Germans like to smash words together, so you get combinations like Freundschaftsbezeigungen, a word meaning a demonstration of friendship. When I look at these words on the page I can’t help but feel overwhelmed or überwältigt. Words also have their own gender. The table is masculine while the girl is neutral but the duck is somehow feminine, all of this reminding me why I always thought French was too difficult to learn.

I’d first signed up for a class on Saturday mornings, and because no one wanted to actually show up at 9:30 on a Saturday myself and two others had the teacher all to ourselves. What followed was eight weeks of conjugating verbs and learning sentences that I doubted I’d actually be able to slip into casual conversation: “Those aren’t my ducks,” or “the rabbit ate my shoes.” It was not the sort of talk that I imagined actually using unless I turned out to be the sort of person who slept on the banks of the Rhine. After class I would imagine getting on the wrong transcontinental flight and—because you are unable to explain what happened unless questions like, “Is this your knife?” are somehow going to help you out—ending up in a foreign psyche ward.

Now that the class is finished I’ve taken to using an online course of sorts that I’ve been pretty regular to use every day. I’ve discovered that if you speak louder into it, it doesn’t always notice that you’ve botched your pronunciation, and I often find myself yelling at my computer (which is not such a new development, now it’s just in another language) with all of the windows in the house opened, which often makes me wonder what the neighbours think.

My fellow classmates are resilient though and we still try to meet up and go over the material. The other girl in the class is very pregnant and each time we meet it’s like the timeframe we’ve been given is drawing to a close. She is eight and a half months along now and we sit in a living room where there will soon be an inflated pool where she intends to have the child. I find myself tucking my feet under me during study group, as if the birth could take place at a moment’s notice and I will be in the way.

I am so excited for her, that she has gestated a baby. Sie ist sehr Schwanger, or very pregnant. Yet I cannot even express in German, the language of her partner, how excited I am for the upcoming birth of their child.

Outside the Terror Museum. Budapest 2015