Learning German and German Class
// May 20th, 2009 // Germany, Language Learning, People, cultural differences, oddities
I haven’t written for a while and I know I should, but then I also know I should be nice to my Grandma, call my parents, have medical insurance and wash my socks but I don’t, so go figure. Sometimes life gets in the way. I’ve also found it hard to write or reflect on things lately because my brain has been completely clogged up like a cheap U bend – with the German language.
I and anyone who knows me would say I’m not a natural language learner. They might also say I’m prone to understatements.
For some people it’s as if words and sentences are floating constantly around us, buzzing around our heads. They need only to glance towards them and they’re sucked down almost by osmosis, directly into their vocabulary to be reborn as beautiful, grammatically correct sentences. I too see these floating words and they see me, in fact the words are in cahoots, they like to form a tight fist and then repeatedly punch me in the face! I can sit for hours like this at my desk dizzy from their blows, emotionally battered and staring down at my Hausaufgaben.
Adam, Adam come on now, you’ve forgotten the context. Ah yes, I’ve enrolled in an intensive German class, 3.5hrs a day Montag bis Freitag. In one day I put in more effort than I did in the entire year that I lived in Germany before. That sounds impressive, but then 10×0 would be still zero right?
The course is held in an adult learning center with a sweat old dear for a teacher who somehow remains happy and upbeat despite on a daily basis being faced with great ineptitude on a daily basis. The class is full of characters and watching their interactions and the humour they provide me, is the main reason I get up at the ridiculous hour of 7am every day to attend. Of a class of 15 people I’m the only native English speaker. There are 5 people from China, one from Vietnam, one from Syria, one from Malta, 5 from the Ukraine and one from Iran.
My least favourite but most entertaining classmate is Bejan, the one from dem Iran a fact he gets wrong almost every day when he tries to demasculinate it to be das Iran (German language joke alert). He’s about 45, always looks slightly haggard in that ‘hard life’ kind of way. He’s bald as a badger and shuffles his way into class every day with his little metal flask and lunchbox looking down at his feet.
Every class has their show off, and Bejan who appears to feel not a hint of shame that he’s in a Level 1 German Beginners class but has lived here for 9 years, is that show off. He loves nothing more than to give you one nanosecond to answer your questions before jumping in and answering it for you. Bejan knows just about every German word, I think he attends just to bolster his self-confidence, or at least that would be the case were he were to get a lot of the answers right. While he knows an incredible number of individual German words he has little idea what to do with them. Let me construct a building metaphor here (pun intended) – while his garden might be full of bricks, he can only make rubble. He sits next to me, not by choice exactly, I missed the first day and there were no other seats. When I get stuff wrong, which occurs only 99% of the time he likes to tut, which drives me insane.
There’s one part of German class that I like more than any other, if it happens several times in one class my heart literally fills with joy, I come home like I’m returning from carnival – I’m of course talking about Bejan getting answers wrong. Yesterday we were practicing learning the numbers up to einer Million. Bejan had the simple task of saying “hundert”
Teacher: “hundert”
Bejan: ‘”hunder”
Teacher: “nein, hunderT”
Bejan: ‘”hunder”
Teacher: “nein, Bejan, nein – hunderT. tttttttttt”
Bejan: ‘”ttttt, hunder, tttttttt”
Teacher: “nein. ok. tttttttttt”
Bejan: “ttttttttt”
Teacher: “tttttttttt, hunderTTTTTTTTTTT, hunderTTTTTT
Bejan: “tttttttttttt, hunder, tttttttttt, hunder, tttttt”
Teacher: “um, ok, nächste Frage”
I was giddy with happiness, I felt like a small child in my pyjamas on Christmas morning coming downstairs to see a bicycle shaped lump under the tree.
One day a Vietnamese woman entered the class and had a perfectly proficient, long conversation with our teacher in German. When a new student arrives we get to ask them questions such as
“Wie heißen Sie?” / what is your name
“Hast du Kinder?” / do you have children
Yes she had two, one in Germany and one doing an internship in the USA
“Bist du verheiratet?” / are you married?
She’s SE Asian and over 35 so this one was pretty much a no brainer.
“Was sind deine Hobbies?” / what are your hobbies
Kochen, Kino, Music hören and the rest I’ve forgotten
“Was ist dein Beruf?” / what is your job?
She was a Hausfrau (housewife)
“Wie lange sind Sie schon in Deutschland?” / how long have you lived in Germany
10 years.
Bejan was floored, I thought he was having a panic attack next to me “10 jahre, aye, aye aye” he repeated to himself chuckling away unaware of the irony.<
Life is simple when you’ve just started learning a language. It’s organized and formulaic and can be neatly folded and placed in its appropriate box because you don’t yet have the vocabulary to critique the theories of Nietzsche, or Cultural Relativism. So instead we repeatedly tell each other our names, how old we are, if we have children and what our hobbies are. Responses are delivered in the best butchered German we can muster:
I am 25yrs now,
my hobbies are – well that was a tricky one as I didn’t know the word for to ride so I was saying “Fahrrad spielen” which you could interpret as “playing bicycle” , as in my hobby is to get down on my knees and pretend to be a Bicycle.
I have no child…
Everything becomes simple, and your expectations shrink down with it. In English it’s not that easy to entertain me, if it’s deep and meaningful or makes me laugh then there’s no problem. What you had for dinner last night (sorry twitter, although ironically I didn’t tweet what I just had for dinner) is not really going to cut it. If you can’t even say what you had for dinner last night because you lack the vocabulary, then either you’ll be completely bored or your entertainment expectations in that language must decrease which is what’s happening with me, and I guess with other people as well. Exhibit A:
Valery (a guy from the Ukraine) made a joke yesterday that went a little something like this:
Teacher: Valery, hast du eine deutsche Frau?
Valery: Nein, ich habe keine deutsche Frau, doch ich habe viele deutsche Frauen!
HAHAHHHAA, give this man a stage and a microphone I thought! When he delivered the punchline in German I thought my sides were going to split, the room erupted in laughter it was a veritable humour riot. Jokes that good could end wars. Yeah that’s right, I said wars.
Nochmal, in English this time:
Teacher: Valery, have you a German woman?
Valery: I do not have a German woman, I have many German women!
Ba boom….In English it’s barely Christmas cracker worthy, which I guess goes to show just how vital and fascinating and awe worthy language is.
It also highlights what you’re reduced to when you can’t speak it – you are just a 25 year old man, who is not married, has no children, comes from England and likes to impersonate a Bicycle.
Possibly related, hopefully entertaining other posts:
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Peter
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Zoe Davies
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Dad
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fletchy
