Losing German

After 8 months away in Germany, I became pretty comfortable hearing and speaking German. I wasn’t fluent enough that people would mistake me for a native speaker – well actually people did, but they weren’t native speakers either.

Although I wasn’t completely fluent, the longer I was in Germany, the better I became at navigating what I did and didn’t know. I could hear a long stream of German, and from that mess pick out enough to understand the basics then use what I knew to say something back, or ask for clarification. And I always had the option of saying I didn’t understand.

Since returning to the U.S., I’d been wondering how quickly I might lose what I’d learned.

Viktor, my friend and colleague from Germany, called the other day. I hadn’t talked with him in a couple of weeks, and when he called and started speaking German it was a shock. I had to listen very closely and struggled with how to answer. I felt self-conscious speaking German and was starting to sweat.

After a few minutes my comfort level started to improve, but it was obvious and a bit discouraging to recognize that after just a month my German had already started to decline.

I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising – if you hear a language every day you’re bound to absorb something. And if you use it every day, even just a little, you’re bound to improve.

The little realization I had is how much easier it is when everyone around you is speaking the language. You don’t have to make the effort to immerse yourself in it – it’s all around you. You’d have to make an effort to avoid it.

It would take a fair amount of effort and diligence to get even a portion of the language exposure I had while in Germany. I would need to: listen to German stations via Internet radio while at work (www.dw-world.de), listen to German-language podcasts while in the car (www.schlaflosinmuenchen.com is a good one), tape the daily Deutsche Welle show on the SCOLA cable channel, read German newspapers. This is all reasonably doable, but without the imminent need to use it on a daily basis, it’s easy to get lazy.

I liked to ask people in Germany about learning English. More than one person told me that learning English in Germany was quite different when they knew they would need to go to the US or England and use it every day.

That’s the other realization: the motivation to make the extra effort with the language comes easier when you have a compelling reason.

Are you from England?

When I first arrived in Germany, I was so self-conscious about being foreign. I would walk down the street thinking that somehow everyone knew I was here from the U.S. It felt as though I was wearing a big sign advertising where I was from.

I recognized there was something a bit neurotic about this. I asked my German teacher if he thought people would easily recognize that I wasn’t from Germany. He said yes, but it didn’t have anything to do with how I looked or dressed. He said there’s something intangible that people would pick up on.

After a few months of living in Germany and walking down the same streets every day, after the newness and strangeness had started to fade, I didn’t feel so self-consciously foreign.

But then I would start to talk with someone, and immediately they knew I wasn’t a native. This was never a problem; if anything people were even friendlier when they found out I wasn’t from Germany.

After asking if I spoke English, people almost always asked if I was from England. I suppose that makes sense: English … England. And of course England is much closer to Germany than the U.S. People were often surprised when I said I was from the U.S. Here I was thinking it was so obvious where I was from, and people really didn’t know.

This happened in Spain and Italy too – people assuming I was from England.

And then in Italy and France I encountered people who thought I was German.

In a restaurant in Girona, Spain they asked whether I wanted a menu in Spanish or Catalan. They were surprised when I asked if they had an English menu – which they had, but which was not very well translated. One of the desserts was “scum of milk with fruit”. I almost tried it, just out of curiosity but I was already beyond having eaten enough.

One of my favorite encounters happened my first week in Germany. While out for a bike ride an older woman walking on a farm path stopped me. She was complaining how someone had run over the reflectors on the edge of the path. She spoke no English and my German was just starting to come along. I was wearing my team Torelli kit, riding my Torelli bike, and she asked if I was a bike racer from Italy. I thought for a moment about playing along and saying yes. But I did know how to say in German, “no, but I can wish.” We talked for quite a while -- mostly her talking, as she complained about the current state of affairs in Germany with all of the foreigners. She didn't seem to have a problem with me though -- I think because I was learning German -- and as I rode off she wished me best of luck during my stay.

Deutsch outside of Deutschland

I never considered that learning German would be all that useful outside of Germany.

But there are other German-speaking countries besides Germany, even if their German is not always the same as the one I understand. In September I went to Austria to see the World Championship road races. My German was useful at the hotel desk, and with waiters at restaurants. Then while trying to navigate the race course I stopped to ask for directions from a policeman. After a moment of confusion I quickly realized what he spoke wasn’t the German I knew. He could understand my Hochdeutsch, but when he spoke it was in the Austrian dialect. I imagine it was similar to what would happen if a German who learned English in, say, Cleveland had traveled to Arkansas for the first time and spoke with a real local. Fortunately I had a map – pointing works in any language.

Traveling from Germany, it was not surprising that other travelers would be speaking German. Coming back to the U.S. at both Thanksgiving and Christmas, I found myself in the interesting position of helping the person seated next to me fill out the U.S. customs form. They each spoke decent English, but I know from filling out official forms in Germany that “official language” is not so simple. How do you explain in simple terms in German the meaning of, “have you ever taken a child whose parent is a U.S. citizen out of the country?”

I didn’t think I’d be speaking German in France though. Sitting at breakfast the first morning I was in Cannes, the waiter came by and asked me in German what I wanted to drink. Without thinking I answered him in German, before realizing, “hey, we’re in France.”

He had noticed the German newspaper I was reading. He said he was from Turkey, but had lived in Germany (in Düsseldorf in fact) for quite a few years and spoke fluent German. The rest of the week every time he saw me he would speak German.

Just a few weeks later in Italy, I was surprised to see many signs in shops written in both Italian and German. I’m sure this is because of tourism. There were several occasions where people thought I was a tourist from Germany. One afternoon I stopped in a combination wine store / restaurant, and when I didn’t understand Italian the owner started speaking to me in German. On several occasions people apologized for not speaking better English or German.

One morning at the hotel I heard German coming from the TV in another room. A team from Südtirol was also staying at the hotel. Südtirol is a region in the border area between Italy and Austria. It was still winter there, so these guys had also come to Tuscany for some decent weather and good training. They spoke German, Italian, and of course the Austrian dialect. Listening to them at dinner, they seemed to speak mostly in Austrian. But to the waiter they spoke Italian, and we had a few brief conversations in German.

Europe is appealing in this way: the mixture of languages and dialects, relative compactness of the countries, blending of the border areas, pockets of different language within a single country. It makes for interesting cultural textures that change so quickly from place to place.

I’m still in awe of people who can switch between multiple languages so easily. Learning one foreign language has been hard enough. People have told me that it gets easier, each new language you pick up. Easy for them to say now. I'm not sure I would have the stamina to test it personally.

Not a tourist

Walking through the airport in Düsseldorf this week, I noticed some GPS units in an electronic store. I had been thinking about buying one, and the unit I wanted was on sale for a good price. The clerk then told me I would get a refund on the Value-Added Tax (VAT) because I had a U.S. passport.

This was a great deal so I bought it. Or rather I tried to. The first hurdle was to get the credit card company to accept the transaction – it triggered the security flag as an 'unusual transaction'.

The clerk then gave be the refund paperwork and said I must to go the customs office around the corner to get it stamped.

The customs office is staffed by people in drab olive-green uniforms, vaguely military-looking. In contrast the local police dress in a uniform that makes them appear more friendly and welcoming. Interesting that the bureaucrats dress in a manner more threatening than the police.

Whether it is the uniform or the job itself, the woman at the customs desk was not very nice. She was actually quite mean. She leafed through my passport and said sternly, in German, “This is meant for tourists. You are not a tourist”.

Apparently you must be in the country for less than 90 days to be able to take advantage of the VAT refund. She put a big stamp on the rebate form saying ‘denied’.

In coming to Germany to work, I was looking for the experience of not being a tourist. I wanted to get a sense for what it is like to actually live here. I’ve now been told without question that is the case. I get to pay the tax just like anyone else.

After being refused at the customs office, I wanted to return the GPS, and I still needed to get my luggage, but now I was now outside the security area. After some hassling with the airport security people, I went back to the store. The clerk, wanting to make the sale, discounted the price even more, to within a couple of Euros of the tax refund. So not everyone in Germany is completely inflexible.

In the end this was an even better deal. It only cost me an hour and a half and a bit of aggravation. And I can now say with certainty, I am not a tourist.

Learning German through film

Most of the movies shown here are from America. Most all of them are dubbed in German. I don’t like the dubbed movies. There’s something wrong when you see German coming from Bill Murray or Johnny Depp. It just doesn’t work.

Sometimes we get movies in the original English and less often English with German subtitles. Someone told me that Germans generally don’t like reading subtitles and would rather have the dubbed versions.

I noticed the theater closest to me was showing “Babel” (Brad Pitt, Kate Blanchett), with subtitles. This movie would have been ruined had it been dubbed. It has several interconnected story lines, taking place in the U.S., Mexico, Morocco, and Japan, with the native languages spoken. To dub the entire film in German would be absurd.

It’s not one of those “easy” movies to see. But it’s quite powerful. And quite fitting for where I am right now, because one of the themes is how our perceived cultural differences come between us – language being one of those differences. So it was fitting also that the subtitles were in a foreign language. Even though I’ve learned a fair amount of German, I realize the perception of being different is still very much apparent.

It occurred to me that seeing films with German subtitles is a great learning tool. You see many of the same words over and over, and for me that commits them to memory. I learned the words for “rifle” (Gewehr), “bleed to death” (verbluten), and “shoot” (schießen) among quite a few others (you should get some sense of the intensity of the movie).

I figure getting a language lesson helped offset the 9 Euro (almost $12) ticket price.

(a small) Language milestone

I have this picture in my head that someday I will walk into a German bar, order a beer, sit down, and have a regular conversation in German about yesterday’s football match (European, that is), or smoking bans (works for me), or speed limits on the Autobahn (not sure about that one).

Right now though, my attempts to speak German often center on my attempts to speak German. That’s true in more than one way.

My own self-consciousness and focus on getting the language right mean the communication sometimes comes second. When my attention is mostly on the language itself it’s easy to lose sight of the most important aspect, which is that I’m communicating with another person.

Often the conversation turns to my learning of German. Partly this is because people seem curious about it. Partly it’s because this is one of my stock set of things I can talk about – little conversation tidbits that I now know well, that relieve some of the pressure of getting the language right.

I want badly to get to the point where I can have a conversation without being self-conscious about it, and without having to talk about my learning of German. I know that for the most part this is a matter of time and practice, but I have a feeling it’s a matter of also letting go of mostly being concerned with saying things correctly.

I reached one small milestone a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t even realize this until after the fact. I had gone up to the coffee room where one of the guys in the office, who I’d not met before, started up a conversation with me. He somehow knew I was from the U.S., and he was asking about what my assignment was, what I did in the U.S., how long I was staying, etc. I asked him about what he did, how long he’d been at the company, etc.

It wasn’t until afterwards that I realized we’d had a normal conversation, that I hadn’t been nervous about it, and that we hadn’t talked mostly about my learning German. Now this was a 5 minute conversation of very limited scope, so I don’t want to make too big of a deal about it. It’s not like I was discussing German philosophers … but I suppose even they had to start with something small.

Language barrier, part 2

I studied Spanish 4 years in high school plus a semester in college, but still would have had problems ordering in a Spanish restaurant. Unfortunately high school Spanish was not oriented towards functional usage, and I had no other compelling motivation to become fluent in a useful way.

In 1997 I traveled to Italy for a bike racing camp. I experienced for the first time the wonder of being in a foreign country among people speaking a language different than mine. And not just any language, but Italian. I think any single guy who can speak Italian should have no worries. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for German.

I felt I was missing something important by not being able to speak a second language. Here were all these people, many of whom did not have a college education, who could speak at least two languages, sometimes more. After that trip I resolved to learn another language.

At first I thought it would be Italian. I learned some on my own, enough to speak a few phrases on a second trip to Italy. That little taste was enough to convince me I wanted to learn more.

A series of coincidences sent me to Germany for several work trips then led me to find that we had a German teacher giving lessons at work. I then had both a compelling reason (work travel to Germany) and convenient lessons. In contrast to high school Spanish, my German lessons were oriented towards functional usage – useful things like ordering a beer, ordering food, telling someone you’re lost and need directions.

Part of the appeal of my work assignment here was learning more German in advance, being able to use it while here, and then becoming more fluent. So for me it is not so much a language barrier but instead a chance to learn and practice.

On a personal level, learning and using the language is a way to more readily make contact and communicate with the people here. My German has improved, but is still far from what I would consider to be fluent. When someone is speaking fast, I might catch about every third word or so. But even at that level, I’ve noticed that it makes a difference when communicating with native Germans.

When Laura was here, one night we stopped to have a beer in the Altstadt. The waitress started speaking to us in English. At first we thought she recognized us as being non-German. But then we noticed her English had absolutely no trace of a German accent.

She had moved here from California with her German husband. We asked her how it was going. I was expecting to hear her say how great it was, but instead she told us about all the problems she was having. She said that people made fun of her, refused to speak English to her, and gave her a hard time about using English in the bar. She definitely had an attitude towards the language and towards Germans.

Fortunately my experience here has been more positive. I came here knowing enough German for day-to-day living. And I’ve been willing to at least try to use it and to learn more. The people here seem quite tolerant, even appreciative, of my bad German.

Now if only German could sound as sexy as Italian.

Language barrier

The experience of the language barrier caught Laura by surprise.

Many people in Germany speak English well, and many more speak at least a little. But not everyone speaks English, and that includes many people you deal with daily: the woman in the bakery, the pharmacist, the man at the vegetable stand.

Even if they do speak English, it doesn’t feel right to walk up and just start speaking in English and assume that they will understand. But if you know absolutely no German that is all you can do.

Laura wasn’t prepared for how it feels to be in such a situation. You immediately identify yourself as being a foreigner – someone different who doesn’t fit in. For me personally, I tend to then feel incompetent, as though I should know how to speak their language and communicate.

Laura noticed this even caused her to change her behavior. She didn’t want to walk into the empty bakery because for sure the clerk would try to talk to her (in German).

I tried to teach her some of the basic things to say: please, thank you, I don’t speak German, do you speak English, where is the bathroom (only they say where is the toilet since “bathroom” would indicate you wanted to take a bath).

Even these few simple phrases are difficult to use in the moment when someone starts speaking a long string of German. I was standing in line waiting for an apple fritter when I saw the woman from the coffee shop come up and ask Laura something – I assumed whether we were done with our coffee cups. Even in this situation it’s hard in a split second to get a few simple words right: ich spreche kein Deutsch (literally, I speak no German). I could read her lips from a distance as she said, in English, “I don’t speak German.”

Laura said this gave her a new appreciation for people who come to the U.S. not knowing any English. I think people who are so adamant about only English being spoken in the U.S. have never been in such situations, and have never attempted to learn and use a second language. It is humbling.