Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Completion is not my forte.  I start new projects with all the passion and commitment of an Olympic athlete preparing for his big day.  I write down my goals, map out a plan, and throw myself into it with enough fervor to make a whirling dervish's head spin.  For the first few weeks, I consistently follow my plan and place proud check-marks by each accomplished item.

Yep. Once upon a time, I meant
to learn Old English.  Does "fo shizzle"
count as old English these days?

But all too soon, the excitement fades.  I go from writing every day to writing every other day.  Soon that turns into once a week.  Eventually, I stop altogether.  As both my mother and my husband can attest, all those projects sit neglected and forgotten in a drafts folder or on some dusty shelf in the back room.

That apocalyptic novella I started?  Yeah, it's still stuck in chapter five.  Who knows if Caroline will make it out of the burning car alive.

Continuing with my martial arts?  Um, still one step away from black belt.  Like I've been for the last eight years...

Developing a bucket list of places in Virginia?  Well, if by bucket list, you mean a bunch of doodles on college-ruled paper, sure!

So knowing this about me, you can recognize the momentousness of the occasion when I announce that after 18 months, not only am I still sticking with a project, but I've actually reached a milestone in it.

Drumroll please.

I FINALLY finished Level 1 of #RosettaStone #Deutsch! ENDLICH!!! (Only took me 18 months...) #ttot #travel #languagelearning #followthrough
— Thrifty Gypsy (@ThriftyGypsy87) February 20, 2015

And apparently only two people are proud of me.  Woot.

You read that correctly.  I, Katrina Can't-Ever-Finish-A-Project-to-Save-Her-Life-Unless-It's-Work-Related-And-By-Work-I-Mean-I-Get-Paid-For-It Elisabet, actually finished Level 1 of Rosetta Stone.  Albeit, after 18 months.

My husband purchased four levels of the Rosetta Stone German edition as a birthday present to me in August 2013.  I had all these big plans to complete Level One before our trip to Germany this past July so that I could carry on deep, meaningful conversations with Danny's Oma.  You know, the ones in which I comment about the weather (Der Regen in Spanien faellt vor allem in dem Flachland*), complain about the neighbor (Die Macht ist stark in diesem einen*), or bemoan the current political upheaval in Ukraine (Nie mitmachen Sie in einem Landkreig in Asien*).

Of course, that didn't happen.

But better late than not at all, yes?  So with another trip to Germany coming up in 68 days, I'm ready to tackle some new, totally-realistic goals when it comes to this language learning adventure:

1. Get halfway through Level 2 of Rosetta Stone.
2. Learn one joke to tell our German friends over a maß in der bierzelt.  (And don't give me that gab about Germans having no sense of humor; they totally do.)
3. Increase my vocabulary enough to have one sincere conversation with Oma in which I state my (memorized) piece, then smile and nod when she replies and I have no idea what she's saying.

So let it be written, so let it be done.**

Heck, who am I fooling?  If I can just follow the conversation without getting lost in a sea of I-Don't-Know-What-That-Word-Means, then I'll call the trip a win.

Are you trying to learn a new language?  How's that working out for you?

***

Linking up with A Brit and a Southerner, A Southern Gypsy, Carmen's Luxury Travel, Justin Plus Lauren, and Outbound Adventurer for the #WeekendWanderlust!

* If you're American and you've never watched My Fair Lady, Star Wars, or The Princess Bride, not only will you not understand these jokes, but I don't think we can be friends.  Like, seriously.
** Ten Commandments reference.  Again, see above.

Recycling, Or How to Be a Good German in America

So, we're neither German (at least not in terms of nationality), nor tree-hugging hippies (no offense to my hippie friends).  But after years of ignoring that nagging feeling that maybe we ought to recycle, we finally bought a few extra bins this past July and turned our waste system into something which would make our German relatives beam proudly.  Or so we'd like to think.

However, there is certainly an art form to separating one's rubbish, and though one might argue that the affinity and ability for Germans to do it so efficiently must have a DNA-link, the scene I encountered this past week would make Danny's Oma gasp in dismay.

Cue the "Psycho" stabbing music.

Obviously, when it came to Danny's recycling genes, the American genes won out over the German ones.  Surely his German half must have cried out in protest at this haphazardly-gleeful cramming of cardboard and paper into this bin.  The very idea sounds like a schizophrenic cartoon.

Thankfully, my maternal great-grandparents both had German roots, so the 1/16th German in me came to the recycling bin's rescue.

 Ahhhhh, no more overflow.  Now this is a neatly-sorted bin.

Disaster averted, my 1/16th German self could proceed to the next challenge:  ordering just the right wool socks to wear with my sandals this summer.

Ok, just kidding.  I've got to draw the line somewhere!

***

Linking up with  Jess from Ice Cream & Permafrost for the #SundayTraveler!

If you're looking for delightfully amusing vignettes and escapades regarding German culture and lifestyles, you should check out Expat Eye on Germany, an Irish-woman's recounting of daily life while teaching in Berlin.  It's a tongue-in-cheek blog best read with a mas of beer in hand and the understanding that no topic is off-limits for "BerLinda."

Das Ist Mir Wurst; Or My Love/Hate Relationship with German

Source.

 Q:  What do you call a person who speaks three languages?

A:  Trilingual.

Q:  What do you call a person who speaks two languages?

A:  Bilingual.

Q:  What do you call a person who speaks one language?

A:  An American!

***

Now before you think I missed my calling as a stand-up comedian (my wit is undeniable, I know), I have to admit that joke is actually quite old.  Sadly, it is also quite true.  And I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I fit the stereotype!

It's not for lack of exposure or education.  I studied Latin for eight years (two in middle school, four in high school, and two in university), but not much remains in my noggin besides the unforgettable amo, amas, amat drills.  I also had two years of Spanish in university, but after one scarring semester with a septuagenarian megalomaniac, I retained nothing beyond ¿Dónde está el baño?  While I can imagine this will be a very important phrase to know whenever I'm in a Spanish-speaking country, more's the pity that I can't remember anything else since I come into contact with a lot of Spanish-speakers in my current job.

Watching the World Cup match in 2010 while in Germany
(c) Thrifty Gypsy

Then I met my husband in 2006, which brings me to my current foreign language attempt.  (Cue dramatic music)  The language fraught with multi-syllabic, impossible-to-correctly-pronounce words:  GERMAN.

My husband is half-German, you see, and his mother's side of the family actually lives in Bavaria.  He spent every other summer growing up in a medieval, fully-walled town in the heart of Germany, and even now as an adult, the American intonation fades after a few days in country and his natural Frankish accent takes over.  From what I gather, the Frankish accent has about the same reputation as a strong southern accent in America.  I find that factoid rather amusing!

But I digress.  Currently, I am the only one on that side of the family who can't sprechen die deutsch even a little bit, a fact which saddens me every time we visit his family.  It's frustrating to not be able to have direct conversations with Oma, who does not speak any English, or have more than a halting, short conversation with his aunt and uncle.  Mind you, I know enough words now to understand most of what's being said even if I can't fully participate (so no talking behind my back!), but one-sided conversations are not really conversations.  After having four of our German friends visit us last summer, I resolved that I was finally going to put my nose to the grindstone and learn German.

So my husband bought the Rosetta Stone: German edition as a birthday present for moi last summer.  And between working full-time, taking university classes part-time, the holidays, social life, and everything else, my progress has been painfully slow.  With less than 40 days until our Italy/Germany trip this summer, I've had to kick things into high gear the past few weeks.

I'm finding that German is easy and yet difficult.  English derives many words from German, which makes recognition of many words easy, but grammatically, German is difficult for an English-speaker to learn.  Der, die, das - gah, those gender specific articles will be the death of me!  And pronunciation?  I feel like I'm coughing up a lung every time I try to correctly pronounce the -ch sound, and my tongue ties into knots trying to trill an r or two.  But there are some things about German that I really, really like.  In many ways English lacks words to describe an exact idea, which is why we've stolen such German words as wanderlust and schadenfreude to make up for it.  And there's no denying that German just sounds, well, cool!  It's guttural, commanding, and earthy.  (See the light-hearted video above if you actually have never heard German before!)

Thankfully most Germans speak a fair amount of English (especially those under the age of 40), and with my interpreter-husband in tow, I've never had any problems communicating with Germans.  But as I don't want my future children to end up monolingual, I hope that the Rosetta Stone lessons will continue to help me learn German.  I may not learn enough to carry on deep, philosophical conversations with Oma in July, but at the very least I'll be able to point out that meine Schuhe sind blau, or die schwartze Katze ist unter dem Tisch.  Be impressed, y'all.

Mmmmm, sausage!
(c) Thrifty Gypsy

In closing, I'll explain the title of this post as another illustration of why I love German so much.  In English, if something isn't important or we don't have a preference about something, we merely say "I don't care" or "it doesn't matter to me."  Fairly straight-forward, yes?  Well, Germans have a more interesting way of expressing their non-preference.  Das ist mir Wurst.  It literally means "it is sausage to me."  Start using that in your everyday conversations to elicit some funny looks!



Do you speak more than one language or are you learning a new language now?  Have you ever had difficulties communicating in another country when you don't know the native language?

Linking up with Bonnie and Van every Tuesday!