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.