Learning the German Language

I cannot ever hope to even come close to Mark Twain's awesome observations regarding the study of the German language, but I can offer my own thoughts and experiences. For the record, my favorite Twain quote was something about how he'd rather decline two German beers than one German adjective. I don't know if I'd go that far but ...

In high school, I took Spanish. Then, for the first time, they offered Russian the next year. I jumped at the opportunity. I loved Russian I. Unfortunately, not many of my classmates felt the same and they only offered Russian II on a sort of tutorial-give up your lunch break and we'll let you take this class-working on your own at the back of the Russian I class basis. What can I say? I was hooked. I took the class. You know, eating lunch while ignoring what the teacher was saying and doing my own thing was actually kind of neat.

Then I went to college.

They had no placement exam for Russian (most American schools do NOT offer it!), and I decided if I had to take an introductory language course (I had by then become enamored by all things Cold War related and found Spanish boring), I would take German.

While the other students in the class moaned on hearing there were four different cases, I laughed. Russian had six. A couple of different letters? No problem. I had learned a different alphabet for Russian. Alternate pronunciation? I scoffed. Russian had several sounds that I never learned how to make properly. I accepted my deficiencies in that area (which were - I am certain - ample) and moved on.

I should mention that as a computer science major who really didn't need another language - aside from computer languages, that is - it was a few semesters before I had room in my schedule to take a new language, and I actually tried first to take classical Greek. BIG MISTAKE. I have no idea what my nineteen-year-old brain was thinking when I registered. Several students in the class were Greek and they were as miserable as I was. I already knew the Cyrillic alphabet, so the Greek one wasn't difficult, but almost every word in classical Greek seemed to take up an entire line to write. Not only was I plagued with a constant case of writer's cramp, but I was afraid I would bankrupt myself just buying enough notepaper to do my homework. It didn't take me long to decide that the effort it was taking to learn a DEAD language was not worth it. I dropped the class.

I did sign up for Russian I again along with German I, but it was boring to start over, so I never bothered to go on. Also, it should be noted that our exams were almost always dictated and the professor was very partial to the name Анна (if memory serves correctly on the accent - pronounced Ánna). Guess how you say 'she' in Russian? Она. Pronounced Aná. Guess who constantly got the accent wrong and wrote Анна instead of Она (or vice versa)? In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if I got it wrong just now!

Anyway, back to German. Day one of German one. A delightful professor entered and wrote the words schießen and scheißen on the board. He turned to us and said, "For every vord in German spelled vis an 'ie' zere ist also a vord spelled vis an 'ei'. Schießen und scheißen. One means to shoot, ze ozzer means to shit. Never confuse ze two. End of lesson one." With that he left the room. All I could think was that this guy was awesome (and vaguely reminiscent of a high school Spanish teacher who had taught us to conjugate using a very rude word - but guess who can still conjugate a Spanish verb after all these years?)! Anyway, we were packing up our books when another professor came in. Apparently, Herr Cool Professor had been in the wrong room. Rather than that fun teacher, we had been assigned a linguistics expert who spoke seven languages and was (for some unknown reason) hellbent on getting us to pronounce the word 'nicht' correctly. He would spend countless hours of class time making us repeat words and sentences until he thought our pronunciation was 'up to snuff'. I still remember the day he made us say 'Diese Klasse ist so langweilig'. You know why I still remember that day and that sentence? Because truer words were never spoken in any language!!! (If you don't speak German, it means 'This class is so boring'.)

Additionally, he required us to spend several hours a week in the language lab, supposedly listening to tapes of German pronunciation. Yeah right. I would go to the lab, sign in for the required amount of time and insert my own cassette tape (yes, I know that dates me) in the machine, rather than the one given to me by the monitor. There was no way I was going to sit and listen to 'Wie ist die Suppe heute? Die Suppe ist heiß.' for an hour. Frankly, I didn't give a hoot if the freaking soup was hot. My only concession to his requirement was that I would listen to a German band, such as Accept or the Scorpions and watch carefully for the proctor so I could lower the volume when they passed.

Anyway, when registration time for the next semester came, you can bet your sweet bippy that I looked for Herr Cool Professor's class. I was never so happy in college as when I was in his class. He came from a Russian speaking family in East Berlin and had ridden his bicycle across to the west as the Russian army was stringing chicken wire across Berlin to mark the site of the future wall. How awesome is that? After the careful, well-spoken accent of the linguistics professor, Herr Cool Professor's slangy Russian/East Berlin accent was refreshing. And as long as he could understand what we were saying, he wasn't overly picky about our accent. And we learned.

I never missed one of his classes, despite the fact that the simple dialog sentences of German I quickly gave way to readings about the economics of the Weimar Republic in German II (who comes up with these syllabuses?). I also blew the curve for the rest of the class. What can I say? I was having fun. In school! Sadly, it's been so many years since I used any of my languages (other than Spanish) that I'm afraid my German vocabulary is limited to what I call Goth German (vampires, death, grave, etc.) because of some music I listen to and my Russian vocabulary is almost non-existent. It's true what they say, if you don't use it, you lose it.

But I think the real lesson to be taken from all this is that students will learn when they identify with the material and/or the teacher. My German teacher was probably thirty or forty years older than me, but I adored his class, and (not that I'm advocating or condoning the use of profanity in class - at least by the teachers) that high school Spanish teacher of mine sure taught me how to conjugate verbs in a way that stuck.

I highly recommend Mark Twain's essay "The Awful German Language". Even if you've never studied German, you'll appreciate his wit, but for those who speak and/or have studied German, you'll probably laugh your butt off!