Passing Notes

To the highly esteemed German language,

I’m writing this letter to let you know I’ve chosen to stop learning you. No, don’t be mad. This is for the best for everybody. I’m leaving Germany in just two months (holy cow, TWO MONTHS?!?!), several weeks of which I’ll spend in lands where you are not primarily spoken. We had a good run - I learned a lot from you and for you I provided a seemingly endless array of mistakes to chortle about, some of them twice in the same sentence, even after I’d been corrected once. But all good things have to come to an end, and so a few partings words and then it’s Tschüssie for us!

First, I need to thank you. You’re my first real attempt at a spoken second language. Middle school Spanish doesn’t count, mi amigo and Latin, of course, had long gone silent before I attempted it. Trying to speak you befuddled my brain to an extent I didn’t know was possible but it also slowed me down and caused me to think about what I say, made me listen harder to the people around me, and forced me to be braver than I usually am. You introduced me to Sophia, my long-suffering and ever-patient tutor, who taught me as much about German culture and her life as she did about adjective endings (about which it is probably best we don’t speak, German). And finally, you have taught me more about my own language than college level grammar courses and three years of teaching grammar combined could ever have done. In my attempts to berate your grammatical choices I had to justify my own which ultimately makes me a better informed speaker of English.

This hasn’t been easy, my friend. I gotta say it’s an uphill battle, dude, a monumental task of epic proportions to try and learn you after I had decided I wasn’t adding any more languages to my repertoire. You asked me to turn my brain inside out, rethink how I communicate about the world around me, evaluate the significance of grammar rules in terms of cultural norms - that’s A LOT to do, especially when all I need is a Coke and a croissant. So knowing that the cards are stacked against the learner, you could make it easier. This guy gave me seven reasons not to learn you at all.

But I gave it the old college try. I learned to order food effectively. I learned to talk to the folks behind the cash register and in the market stall. I described my Christmas and wedding traditions. I understood announcements on all public transportation and information on signs. I knew enough to tell the survey people who hunt you down in Berlin to say I didn’t know enough to do their survey. I now immediately respond na klar instead of “of course” and natürlich instead of “naturally.” I learned something! I learned lots of somethings!

Vielen, vielen Dank, Deutsch. Es hat mir gefallen, dich kennenzulernen.

Liebe Gruße,

Deine

Lauren

P.S. I just thought you might want to know what other people are saying about you. There’s been talk, a lot of talk. Mark Twain had a lot to say. It’s all here, but you should really get back to him cause he’s been saying stuff like:

“Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, sie, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six -- and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.”