One Way to Fake It ’Til You Make It

I don’t speak very good German.

I try but it’s frustrating how little day to day progress I make (tip: don’t ever think of language learning progress save on a year or year basis).

Duolingo says I’m 40% fluent but I suspect there’s a dose of corporate kindness added in there.

Coaching a soccer team that only speaks German is an interesting rite of passage. I know enough to communicate but not enough to conversate. A tricky place for any person let alone coach to reside.

As one who prefers to construct reality then conform to it would tend to do I’ve created a small work around that let’s me engage without getting bogged down in the correctness of my grammar.

Ready? Here it is:

Speak worse German than I’m currently capable of speaking.

In other words go faster, think less, say more. Don’t look back at any mishaps and don’t stop to think of the perfect word.

If I need to say: “Chase that ball like a man possessed.”

I’ll just rattle off: “Run there like a crazy dog.”

Like a slant rhyme it’s not perfect but in some ways that’s actually better because it’s more memorable.

It endears me as “that weird American guy” to the players just as my advice stands out in their minds as “that weird way to say [insert correct German].”

Here’s the takeaway.

Nobody get’s a particularly amazing song stuck in their head. Just a annoyingly memorable one. Lovingly embrace ways that you can be annoyingly memorable instead of particularly amazing.