I remember learning German—so beautiful, so strange—at school in Australia on the other side of the earth… . I liked the sticklebrick nature of it, building long supple words by putting short ones together. Things could be brought into being that had no name in English—Weltanschauung, Schadenfreude, sippenhaft, Sonderweg, Scheissfreundlichkeit, Vergangenheitsbewältigung. I liked the sweeping range of words from ‘heartfelt’ to ‘heartsick’. And I liked the order, the directness that I imagined in people. Then, in the 1980s, I came to live in West Berlin for a while and I wondered long and hard what went on behind that Wall.
[…] I think about the feeling I’ve developed for the former German Democratic Republic. It is a country which no longer exists, but here I am on a train hurtling through it—its tumbledown houses and bewildered people. This feeling needs a sticklebrick word: I can only describe it as horror-romance. It’s a dumb feeling, but I don’t want to shake it. The romance comes from the dream of a better world the German Communists wanted to build out of the ashes of their Nazi past: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. The horror comes from what they did in its name. East Germany has disappeared, but its remains are still at the site.
— Anna Funder, Stasiland (2002)The first time I went [to Germany], in 1999, I couldn’t bring myself to say so much as Guten Morgen. The sounds felt false coming out of my mouth, so instead I spent my time speaking English apologetically. Not that the apologies were needed. In Paris, yes, but in Berlin people’s attitude is “Thank you for allowing me to practice my perfect English.” And I do mean perfect. “Are you from Minnesota?” I kept asking.
In the beginning I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like “Cut the cake and lie face down in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl.” I’m guessing this comes from having watched too many Second World War movies. Then I remembered the umpteen Fassbinder films I’d sat through in the eighties, and German began to sound conflicted instead of heartless. I went back twice in 2000, and over time the sound of the language grew on me. It’s like English, but sideways.
[…] For the latest trip, I wanted to do better, and so I downloaded all thirty lessons of Pimsleur German I, which again start off with “Excuse me, do you understand English?” As with the Japanese and Italian versions, the program taught me to count and to tell time. Again I learned “The girl is already big” and “How are you?” (“Wie geht es Ihnen?”)
In Japanese and Italian, the response to the latter question is “I’m fine, and you?” In German it’s answered with a sigh, and a slight pause, following by “Not so good.”
[…] There’s no discord in Pimsleur’s Japan, but its Germany is a moody and often savage place. In one of the exercises, you’re encouraged to argue with a bellhop who tries to cheat you out of your change and who ends up sneering, “You don’t understand German.”
“Oh, but I do,” you learn to say. “I do understand German.”
— David Sedaris on learning German (and other foreign languages) in the New Yorker.Mark Twain, “The Awful German Language,” 1880.
My German teacher actually recommended this satirical text by Twain to help clarify some of these impossible (for English-speakers, at least) grammatical rules – an irony that I found marvellous, and so very German.
Another choice excerpt after Twain gets around to “the brief and pleasant task” of pointing out the language’s virtues:
“There are some German words which are singularly and powerfully effective. For instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, and affectionate home life; those which deal with love, in any and all forms, from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward the passing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which deal with outdoor Nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects – with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with any and all forms of rest, respose, and peace; those also which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairy-land; and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, is the language surpassingly rich and affective. There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry. That shows that the SOUND of the words is correct – it interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart.”
Handschuhe
The German word for gloves translates as hand-shoes.
Ich lerne Deutsch…
Last night, a substitute teacher asked her temporary (primary level, beginner, amateur, basic “Trinkst du Tee mit Milch?” skillz) students why it was they had chosen German to learn.
After almost six months of classes, this was the first time we had been asked this as a group.
The question bounced across the rows of desks and I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear that most students’ reasons were to do with love: an Austrian husband; a long-distance boyfriend in Bavaria; tangled family roots; a soon-to-be-son-in-law; newly-weds about to embark on a European adventure.
And then,
a dancer,
a musician (and her friend),
and a writer
for whom the language simply got under her skin.
