Me in the Alps in Winter 2015

Me in the Alps in Winter 2015
Not Just Surviving, But Thriving!

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Foolish and Proud (Töricht und Stolz)

On the Bridge between Knowing Nothing and Knowing Everything
Today I am Working my version of Step 7: We humbly asked our Higher Power to help us with the process of becoming citizens of another country, and to ask for and accept help when we needed it.

So, here I am, living in Munich, and teaching myself to speak German (from now on I'll try to refer to it as Deutsch) with the help of various computer programs that basically do a call-and-repeat approach to language learning. Here's the picture of the horse. What is it? It is das Pferd (remember to voice that P!). A few pictures later, here's the picture of the horse. What is it? Oh right, der Pferd. Whoops, DAS Pferd.

(Deutsch doesn't just have an equivalent of "the" before a noun. It has one of three: der, die, or das. With no discernable logic for any of them. Oh yeah, and then there's the plurals...)

It's not so different from the best of my real-time interactions with helpful Bavarians. At the shop I point to the vegetables and say "Gomuse" and the clerk/friend/stranger says "Go-mew-zuh" and I say "Go-mooze" and they say "Go-mew-zuh" and I say "Go-mewze" and they say "Go-mewz-UH" and finally I say "Guh-MEWZ-uh"! And we all smile in relief. And then I say "die Guh-MEWZ-uh" and they say, "Nein, DAS Gemüse," and so it goes.

Mix and repeat 100 times a day.

No matter how much I want to remember these words, they do not stick in my brain UNLESS I connect them to an already-existing item in that same grey zone. I can remember the (rather unusual) term for a bicycle-mounted public comment box because I'm a bike nut AND it tickled my fancy just to see it: der Fahrrad-Wünschkästen. I mean, who doesn't want one of those things?


A Bicycle Public Comment Box, of course!


But John has to remind me over and over again that einfang does not mean simple: einfach does. It's just not sticking. It's just not that einfach. (Ah, that'll do it!)

Again, mix and repeat 100 times a day.