Language Difficulty for English speakers: German Part 1

German has been my friend and fiend since I was 13 years old. The level of German I speak and understand is at about the highest level for a person who did not spend anytime before the age of 18 in the country. People will always be able to tell right off the bat that I am a non-native speaker due to my accent and the impression I make of non-nativeness through word choice, grammatical constructions, style inappropriate to the situation and correcting myself.  I’m ok with all that, because despite what other people would like to think about their own level of “nativeness” in a foreign language, I don’t see other people speaking English as a second language doing any better. In addition German has always been a struggle for me. Spanish was easy and fun; Greek had a difficult start, but once the ball got rolling, nothing could stop me; Russian was difficult, but I did well; and French the vocab was so easy I never had to study hard and the accent is so strong before you start learning the language that pronouncing things correctly was tons of fun. If anyone is going to hate on my German for being “sub-par” they should know out of all the languages I have attempted to learn, it has given me the most trouble and I am incredibly proud of becoming fluent in it.

German. It lulls you into a false sense of ease, saying, “look how similar all the vocab is to English, Come on you got this” And then the case system hits you. Der, die, das, den, dem, des. And the plural endings. Sometimes none, sometimes -s, sometimes an -n sometimes an -en, sometimes just a little umlaut in the middle of the word, sometimes an –e, sometimes an -er and sometimes the Germans can’t even decide what is right. Then once you’ve gotten on board with this whole ridiculous set of endings without (or at least, VERY little) rhyme or reason , you start to get excited that they sometimes repeat themselves. “Hey this isn’t so bad really”, der, den dem des Mann(-es) (man), die die der der Frau (woman), das das dem des Restaurant(-s) (obvi) and die die den der Häuser (houses). I don’t actually have to learn so  many “words” Half of the time I can say das and it’s correct and if I use dem when I know I need dative case then I don’t need to always be sure of the gender, as long as I know it’s not feminine. Oh my friend. IF ONLY they had a distinct word for each case, then you’d have to be extra careful about getting your grammar spot on from day one. It would save us English speakers a lot of errors.

The problem is, we native English speakers on a very primitive level do not get what all the fuss is about for having so many words for “the”. To me gender is a pretty lost cause, but it exists and I can deal with it pretty well. There are studies which show that people like me, (native English speakers fluent in a foreign language with gendered nouns) have the exact same brain set up when it comes to organizing our own repertoire of vocabulary as a native speaker does. When my brain goes to search for a word in German it automatically pulls up gender as well as all the words of the same gender are activated along with it. In real terms that means for my brain that I’ve got groups of words looking like this : bear, coat, ball, carpet, letter, fish; and toilet, air, rule, deed, fear, eternity, activity, butchers, beauty; and festival, secret, room, miracle, life, bed, eye, egg, witness. To you they have no commonality, but for me they are incredibly important otherwise, everything I would say would be wrong and irritating to anyone listening. The first group are all masculine nouns, the second feminine nouns and the last neuter in German.

Unlike a child who grows up in Germany I am conscious of this knowledge. I can trust my brain in a normal conversation and I get things right, but if I were to make decisions about grammaticality I would be using a part of my brain responsible for conscious decision-making, whereas a native speaker would do this more or less automatically. That is, they would use a different part of their brain and wouldn’t be aware of accessing the information they have stored. Which is why it’s hard for anybody to learn a second language as an adult. Even as a child, the younger you begin, the better your chances are that your brain will deal with syntax efficiently and unconsciously. Studies show even if you begin at age 10 and sound like a native speaker, the part of your brain responsible for syntax will not be the same as those who’ve learned it as a first language.  This might not have any real consequences in a person’s practical life, it’s just an interesting part about language learning. Certainly we adults have many advantages no one talks about: we can speed up the whole language learning process and are actually better at learning new vocab, since we have learning strategies at our disposal. (So don’t give up hope!)

At any rate German is a hard language simply because of its articles. You literally cannot utter a sentence without grasping information about the grammatical structure of what you are trying to say and if you learn a new word without the article you will have to stop the conversation to consult someone about its gender.  Not to mention that there are some “rules” about which gender a word falls into, but once you get beyond the basic core vocab this is not really much help.  Trust me as a native English speaker this seems like a huge waste of time. Remember how I said it would have been better to have separate words for each “the”. Look when I was 13 and started learning German, I thought it was cute that ever single noun was capitalized, like it was a VIP and was always accompanied by a friendly-looking der, die or das. But I did not LEARN these words together. I thought I did, I certainly tried. But at the time my brain didn’t see the no point.

Nowadays, I certainly do see that  it can tell you something helpful. I mean word order is pretty free, so technically they could put the object before the subject and say Den Hund frisst die Maus, meaning, the mouse ate the dog! But the thing is, they don’t, at least not with any amount of frequency to make it rewarding for me. Sometimes they make jokes with the articles like when they mean Euro the money instead of the Euro cup soccer tournament. If I get a joke based on an article I feel incredibly proud of myself. 🙂

Otherwise, let me just illustrate how my conversations (with German word order) go with my Greek boyfriend, who I usually speak German to.

Me: I saw today the Juliane!

BF: yes, what did you guys do?

Me: She wanted to me the, the the, what’s it called…

BF: contract

Me: yes, to me…. The, the or the? 

BF:  the. 

Me: yes, the contract give. 

These are conversations I have very often. I’d like to get it right every single time, but seeing as some verbs take accusative case and some dative and in the midst of a conversation I don’t feel like stopping everything in its track to discuss which version of “the” is correct, I have to live with, what to native speakers are very basic errors.

Somehow a and an are even more annoying.  They behave with different rules. It looks like this: ein, einen, einem (masc.); eine, eine, einer (fem.) and ein, ein, einem (neuter). This would all be fine I think if adjectives didn’t get in the way and wreak havoc. Adjectives seem to need a lot of attention in German. I have known these rules for years now and I would say that only this year, while having to write a lot more for university, have the adjective rules become engraved in my brain. See you can have an adjective without a “the/a” and then they have different endings and you can have one in-between the “the” and the noun and this has different endings and finally you get a third category of adjectives in-between a “a” and the noun with its own rules. And don’t forget all four cases! 😉

See German thinks it’s very clever, it really only wants to explicitly have the gender in the endings once. So whereas Russian and Greek are consistent in slapping the same ending on word classes so that you know its gender and case in all parts of the phrase, the Germans prefer efficiency.

Here are some telling examples of what I mean:

The dough is raw. (Der Teig ist roh). It’s unhealthy to eat raw dough (rohen Teig). But my raw dough (mein roher Teig) has no eggs. I will eat no raw dough. (keinen rohen Teig). He ate a bit from this raw dough. (von diesem rohen Teig). Or my favorite: Despite the raw dough, (Trotz des rohen Teigs/Teiges 2 options!) This last one is my favorite, despite the extra s to the noun cause it is easy and consistent, so I always remember the -en ending. Unfortunately it is the genitive case and dying out. If the Accusative case would just die out, I think I would make practically no errors, but no it’s the one I like and get.

Or my favorite strategy to avoid the whole thing: the dough, which is raw (der Teig, der roh ist)

Yeah have fun with that. I was just showing the three adjectives in the strong versus weak inflection with “a”, “the” and without an article. 15 years of learning now and these charts have finally become internalized and I can get these endings correct on the first go if I take my time.

My bf says it’s like watching a computer work and he imagines the charts flashing before my eyes when I am stuck in a sentence.  And it’s true. If you tell me I made a mistake in the last sentence, I can replay it and give you the correct answer in a matter of seconds. The problem is becoming fluent is just a matter of making your brain become accustomed to you speaking another language. It really boils down to a set of habits you’ve acquired. I have had to relearn all the rules for articles again and focus on the tricky ones, but I am still in the habit of saying many of them wrong.

This is infuriating for me, since I know it means I am making a worse impression when I open my mouth, then what I am actually capable of. I have come miles from where I was a year ago, but there is one thought which absolutely infuriates me.

And it’s this: all the German speakers I meet at university, who say things like this:

I saw the husband of my sister. 

I met her for 6 months (six months ago)

I wanted that she call

It is a man in the garden.

We are four people.

I would a coffee.  

I am looking forward to meet you.

I’ve seen Mary yesterday. 

Have you waited long?

In the society (no article needed!)

He found quickly the key.

Which are all wrong wrong wrong, awkward and not mistakes you make at a C level (university), get to look so smug and self-satisfied when they assume that the mistakes I am making are “easy”. Just because it’s a basic word which they devote no time to choosing, neither in German(automatic) nor in English. Like excuse me I have memorized thousands upon thousands of bits of, what are to me, totally useless information just so I can be here in your country communicating and you have the nerve to make me feel like crap about it. English is definitely easier in this sense.

But just because the inflection is easy doesn’t mean the language is and neither does it mean that you yourself speak competent English. English is deceptive somehow in the same way as German. People think it has “no grammar” since what they misunderstand as being grammar is in fact only inflection and only one small part of what linguists classify as belonging to the grammar of a language. I mean I lose my patience with the bf at times when he struggles to remember he/she/it need an s. I mean for goodness sake it’s one measly letter. But non native speakers can’t even get that in their head sometimes. So even saying the inflection is “easy” doesn’t mean speakers do it any more competently.

So German as an English speaker, which part sucks the most? The articles. I hope you’ve been able to see why. Next time I’ll write about the other, slightly less omnipresent aspects which are difficult when learning German.

How difficult is it to become fluent in a language? Intro

My masters program is halfway over. What’s nice is that not only have I realized that it’s definitely the right program which aligns my passion and skills, but I’ve also learned an amazing amount of fascinating theories and research projects, as well as being able to restudy the languages that interest me: Greek, French and Russian. On top of that, after a seven year break, I’ve been forced to re-utilize university level German and challenge myself to face my shortcomings and express myself orally and in writing at a higher level. In one year my German has definitely made some improvements and that was quite shocking after plateauing for about 5 years.

However I’ve also faced a lot of myths and delusions about foreign language learning and what it means to be multilingual. My mistakes in German have been pointed out when I’m just going about my day-to-day business, my intelligence has been in-explicitly called into question and instead of focusing on my ideas, I’ve had people only focus on my language deficiencies. As a former English teacher, I know exactly the type of mistakes certain speakers make and the certain trip-ups the English language provides. I listen to good English all day long, but it comes with plenty of mistakes and lacking the subtly and expressiveness of native speakers. I recognize that I, as a person choosing to live in Germany, am and should be held to a higher standard when it comes to my German, but at the same time, as an English teacher mistakes are noticeable to me, when others might just let them slide and I definitely know that I speak “international” or what I call “teacher English” a majority of the time. I also have been so fed up with the delusions of Europeans who believe that they speak English as well as a native speaker, that I once gave a presentation at a super fast pace, with the English which would be expected in college and had the satisfaction of seeing my classmates semi-stunned in silence and not daring to ask much, lest they be called out for not comprehending something.

I do not feel like it is my job to rob someone of their delusions, but to me, there are two types of people in the world: those who are relaxed about languages, focusing on communicating and sharing, rather than exactly what is being said and those who assume all mistakes can be avoided and reflect innate intelligence or effort (read: prescriptivists). Both groups can include linguists, as well as those who have learned foreign languages as an adult. In the first group they would be cognizant of their mistakes and accepting of those of others. In the second group they assume their foreign language skills are excellent and hold everyone to the same standard regardless of what unique native language and foreign language relationship they are coming from. We Americans, and English speakers in general, generally fall into the first group. We only speak one language and tend to be forgiving of foreigners who speak English with us. (Too forgiving if you ask me, but more on that later). The most dangerous though are those who speak only one language fluently but hold everyone to the impossible standards of perfection.  These people have often been taught a foreign language in school, but failed to make the most difficult transition from beginner to fluent. Thus, they feel even more qualified to judge the deficiencies of others, having convinced themselves there’s nothing more to language than memorizing lots of vocab and that their not following through is in no way a reflection of themselves, but simply a lack of time etc. etc.; clearly if they did want to speak it, they would do so at the highest level. Since being at university I have made instant judgment calls about who I am willing to spend time with. If I meet anyone who falls into the second category, I make absolutely no effort in being friendly. Not because I am a horrible person mind you, but because these type of people generally see me not as a person, but rather, a means to  improving or increasing their opportunity to use English for free. As soon as someone sees me as a language tool, I check out of the situation.

Ah the trials and tribulations of being a native speaker of the world’s lingua franca abroad. Make no mistake, it is a good problem to have. But to be fair, it is my job and no one wants to have to be reminded of their job every waking hour of their life.

People approach language like everything in life, from their experience. I am going to be writing my master thesis about language politics and multilingualism in Europe. There is a huge problem in Europe of wanting to preserve linguistic variety, but unfortunately the people working in Brussels don’t usually include people who grew up in multilingual settings, with family members who had often imperfectly learned the language of the country as immigrants. The majority of Euro-crats at most had a dialect and a standard version to keep apart. If they did grow up multilingual it was probably two “large languages” like a German mom and a French dad, and they went to an English school, i.e. the focus was on a high university level standard. While this in and of itself is a good thing, it does not reflect the multilingual experience of many of Europe’s citizens. This means smaller languages (from minorities from Europe or immigrants outside of it) are neglected and not factored into the discussion of Europe’s language goals. And this in turn is what I encounter. People who have started learning English in grade school and then picked up another language in high school, have never been exposed to the multilingualism that exists all around them with minorities. Which in turn means their concept of multilingualism is very narrow. For them it means getting to a good level of an important world language, from a young age, learning another one if they enjoy it, while it’s easy and nothing complicated like life and feeding a family get in the way, which in turn means they are convinced that being multilingual means speaking two languages at more or less equal levels of competence is the norm and anything less than that is “bad” language use. I mean no wonder they can’t admit to themselves later that their English is not actually as good as they were led to believe it is! That would immediately invoke images of migrants in lower social classes who even if they are bilingual are constantly accused of either not being fluent enough in their native language (i.e. reading and writing skills aren’t as good as other citizens in the countries they come from) or speaking a bastardized form of the national language.

One thing is clear: elites bilingualism in two big languages = good, well-educated, but bilingual minorities = low intelligence, inadequacy, possible identity confusion.

This is all very laughable when you consider that language is a very democratic thing. It comes from the lower-classes and goes up, not the other way around. Why on earth do you think Greece elites fought unsuccessfully for over 100 years to try and make the masses speak something resembling ancient Greek, rather than the language they learned from their families? Many good things came out of it in the end, but their mission was by no means a success.

Here something funny for us English speakers. Does anything sound more posh than the southern London way of saying the word hot or the way people have dropped the r at the end of water? Yes we Americans think that sounds very refined, very chic. Well my friends that originated from the lower classes right around the industrial revolution. So the prostitutes and criminals in a Dickens novel started using these first. How does that make you feel? Wait until 200 years from now, when the monarchy (if it still exists) has substituted bottle for bo*el. A glottal stop no longer stigmatized, but the norm, imagine!

So I thought, since we have such funny ideas about language, especially about how difficult languages are, I would write from a native English perspective and provide examples of the easy and difficult thing about each language I am learning, instead of just providing a blanket statement about how it depends on where you are coming from and what you individually find hard. Maybe this will be useful for other language learners out there.

I would also like to have an outlet for the delusional nonsense I sometimes have to put up with as an English speaker in Europe. I think I talk about it too much, so I’ll just stick it here and have my say, once and for all.

Part 1: German will be next 🙂

A little Euro-work never hurt anybody

Edit

Re-reading this again, it seems that I think only European women are capable of being catty. That is not my opinion at all. It’s just an example of how my normal American strategy of being nice no matter what, is ridiculous here. If I’m nice, I’m a pushover, and possibly incompetent as well. My teaching can speak for itself, but if I want to be respected as a person, I need to vocalize my observations in a way that as an American I would normally try to avoid at all costs. Nor am I trying to put a value judgement on either case. Both of these systems have their merits. I simply  wanted to remark on how behavior as an ex-pat changes little by little.

Edit

One thing that is certainly different from life in America vs in Europe, is compliments and advice. Both are doled out with a bit more forethought than in America.

There are times certainly when I miss the easy-going exchange of compliments between acquaintances. Usually a quick, hey, nice dress! makes the day just a little bit more pleasant.

On the other hand when you are on the receiving end of them here, it certainly means more.

The other day I got a compliment from the maths teacher at the Greek school. I’ve been doing my best recently to say a few things whenever I see him, cause the first year we just awkwardly greeted each other since his English is non-existant , and he’s friends with my bf’s friends. I also hate when I’m causing something to be awkward, but also he really gives a lot of himself for the kids and I respect that, as well as in the beginning we both laughed about our language struggles: my Greek and his German. Maybe for that reason he would always listen patiently and speak slowly, which God knows is rare enough with the Greeks

At any rate while copying, he told me: Your Greek is perfect! I remember when you came here, you couldn’t speak one word.

Ok so the Greeks use perfect to mean wonderful, wicked, fantastic, but it’s still feels great to hear it!  And I could read the alphabet and order in a restaurant/cafe two years ago. So it wasn’t nothing. But he’s right, it wasn’t that much either.

But I knew he wasn’t just saying that from our stilted conversations. He’s been listening to the kids speak to me in rapid-fire Greek when the door is open, and he’s been listening to what the students tell him (Goodness knows they never shut up with their gossip).

I don’t want to be dramatic, but I’ve been working towards that compliment since I started. So that at the end of 3 years, I can look back and say look how far I’ve come. I didn’t even say thank you, my brain was working so hard to think of something correct to respond with.

I’m such a perfectionist. I mean here I am chatting and communicating, however imperfectly with the bf’s parents and friends and my co-workers and kids, and meanwhile I’m still beating myself up for my Greek.

This stage is the hardest stage to realize I think. You’ve been learning and learning and listening and listening, and even once you’ve grasped all those grammar concepts you’ve still got a long road ahead of you memorizing all those verb forms. And a few embarrassing mistakes keep your mouth glued shut, but despite all that, one day you realize that coming out of your mouth is a string of words, that actually make sense and no one is laughing at you. Suddenly you’re singing along to the Greek songs without realizing you know all the words.

I suppose very soon I’ll stop ending every Greek sentence to my bf with, that was correct, right? and kicking my feet with glee.

Anyway that little well-timed compliment breathed more motivation into my Greek studies and just made my whole week a little bit nicer.

It’s funny how with some people you don’t really need to say a lot to know that you respect each other and that you’re on the same page.

It’s totally not that way with my other co-worker. I won’t waste too much time except to say two things: one, she is completely unobservant at work. At the beginning of the year, she wasn’t sure if I spoke any German. I’m not expecting her to memorize my major, but dear God I speak it with all the classes we share, and in front of her all the time. Secondly, she’s incapable of seeing her own mistakes.

So I’m only mentioning this to get to a story about my very European, sometimes more catty than I’d like, work-life.

Good we share classes, and in every class, we mark down, what has been done and what the homework is for the next lesson. I’d have enough money for a weekend-trip if I got a Euro every time my lovely coworker, forgot to either write a page number down, grade the vocab, print out copies, at times, lose the whole sheet, misplace the notebooks, etc,etc.

The first year, probably because I made such an effort to be friendly looking back now, she just didn’t respect me. But fine I’m younger and she doesn’t think I know my own grammar, like other native speakers.

The second year I tried to joke about her tendency to lose things. She looked at me like I was a UFO. After my blood pressure sank again, I decided I was going to go about this differently.

My first instinct was to go to my boss, but that wouldn’t fly, and I’d be an idiot to jeopardize the respect my boss has for me. The nice American needed to be suppressed. So I just verbally expressed my irritation when her poor work performance affected me, called her out for losing things and ignored her look of surprise, stopped saying sorry, or please, or thank you and just in general let her know that I saw her mistakes and it was irritating me. Because it was.

See, for better or worse, in America I’d be nice. I don’t like being catty. I don’t like stupid passive-aggressive notes that the Germans all seem to be experts at, because none of them are EVER wrong EVER.

I got a little too wound up, by her behavior and she definitely made the connection that I was irritated in her presence. So I snapped out of it. It’s not healthy. Everyone makes mistakes. I love what she does for the kids. I think she’s a great role model. I think she speaks great English and I would have liked to be more friendly with her.

BUT this week written in my course sheet, I see the note, pls write everything done in lesson.

So I can’t just read it and say nothing. I ask what I missed. Just 2 activities on a page, whoops mistakes happen. If she’s gonna to write notes like a child *ahem* German adult, she’ll have to deal with my reaction too. I can’t take it lying down, or we’ll be back to her not respecting me anymore. We American women really need some extra prep lessons, should we ever chose to live abroad.

Then today, I asked for my notebook for my next class, which she had been keeping in her room, I get it, glance at it, it looks fine, but once the lesson starts, it becomes clear that she has merely written arbitrary numbers on this sheet. Not having the chance to look at it any earlier, and not being able to recognize that book revision had been completed last time, I was unable to make the revision copies that we actually needed for the lesson, which was her job anyway.

Look the kids think it’s weird, they would like me to be totally confused and not check any homework, but I’m an old pro now. It’s no big deal. I’d rather just ignore this, sweep it under the rug, we all make mistakes. But that’s the thing: in my co-worker’s mind, I make mistakes, she doesn’t see hers.

So I write a note and loathe myself at the same time for doing it. On the way out, I confirm that I’ll need another lesson book for my early extra class tomorrow, so I’m not stuck, locked out of her room and improvising. Meanwhile she let’s me know I have writing to look forward to. She doesn’t want to admit it, but she can’t grade writing that quickly, which I think is normal and have told her she’s welcome to give me extra writings on occasion, but she can’t admit that, so instead practically every single class and every single unit, I am doing the writing. Joy.

Case in point, this is my work life in Europe, and dare I say it, but we are pretty much getting along even. I don’t like being so petty. But I’ve got the more experience, plus it is my native language, so I had darn well get some respect, at least for not losing everything I take home.

By the time I get to my 30’s, compared to my American counterparts, I am really going to be a piece of work.

You know all the things I would do in America, that to me mean absolutely nothing, except, hey we’re sharing the same room at the moment, let’s make it pleasant, can be too much here. I mention something to my boss, and she’s known me for awhile, but if it is even leaning in the direction of maybe being about my personal life, she dismisses me and ends the conversation.

It’s not like I’m finding out about this for the first time, but really it does surprise me, how much I constantly have to repress in emails and phone calls and classes, because no one wants to hear it.

However, were you as a woman to wear, what some would consider, an inappropriate shoe choice, you will be stared up and down all day, followed by a scowl, a smirk, or an eye-roll and I tell you, as an American if that isn’t more personal and more offensive than telling your boss the name of the town you visited on holiday, I don’t know what is.

Oh but hey, it’s their country and I’m just living in it. I’ll take the good, ignore the bad, and ain’t nobody better underestimate this face of mine as being young and a pushover.