Relocating to Berlin: Speaking the Language

While I'm reluctant to say this in the presence of my British friends, the main reason why I chose to live in England in my late teens and early twenties rather than somewhere else in the world was that I already (more or less) spoke the language.  Sure, the British have that lingering fondness for extraneous "u"s (colour, valour, labour, harbour, neighbour, etc.).  But otherwise, I could usually figure out what my British friends were saying - unless they were from Lancashire.

Germany is an entirely different kettle of fish.

So, of course, people ask me and my wife if we speak German.  The short answer is: Well. . . . . . .

The slightly longer answer is that we have been trying for years to learn it.

My first experience of trying to learn German goes all the way back to Winnetka, Illinois in the mid 1980s.  My own school gave us the choice of learning up to three languages: Latin and French were offered starting in 7th Grade, with the third option of Spanish added in high school.  Given the choice, I chose Latin.  I figured that it would give me a good basis for learning the whole panoply of Romance languages, or at the very least that it would give me a head start in the lucrative field of law.  But what I really wanted to learn was German.  As it wasn't offered at my school, I saved my pennies (which, as an unemployed 12 year old were few and far between) and enrolled in a night school German class at the local public high school.

That first exposure to the German language lasted all of one lesson.  The rest of the class consisted entirely of middle-aged and retired adults.  To say that I felt out of place is an understatement.  As I recall, I walked home at the intermission half-way through the class.  I did learn one German phrase from that one German class that has stayed with me to today: "Was machen Sie hier?" ("What are you doing here?")  In retrospect, that seems like an appropriate question.

After my wife and I were married, and had shared the experience of singing in the Washington Sängerbund for a couple of years, we decided that maybe the solution would be to learn German together.  Again, we applied to attend a night school at our local public high school.  This time we got through German 1, and then promptly forgot most of it because we never used it.

Then we got German lessons on CD.

Then I attended a German class at the Göthe Institut in Washington.

Then we got Rosetta Stone.

In all cases, it's not that we didn't learn.  It's just that we couldn't retain any of what we learned for very long because we never had occasion to use it consistently.

Then we had our daughter.  And as we had our 10-Year Plan, and as we were obsessive about meeting our targets, as soon as she was old enough, we enrolled her at a German school just outside of Washington.  Starting in preschool, our daughter has used no language other than German during the school day.  Now, four years later, she can speak it fluently.  And for us, after four years of dealing with the school administration and teachers, after helping with homework, after watching movies and reading books, after supervising play dates and attending birthday parties, we have finally started to retain what we have already learned.

Unlike our daughter, my wife and I are still nowhere near fluent in German.  We are, at least, functional in it.  Just as I eventually learned how to understand and speak British English - even in Lancashire - I have no doubt that we'll quickly pick up German.

Ultimately, we will have no other choice!