Learning German

The conversation usually goes something like this: “How long have you been in Berlin?”. “Six years”, I reply. “Six years? You’ve lived here that long and you still can’t speak German?”

This conversation has happened more times than I can remember. I even started to add an extra few words to my “six years” by continuing with “please don’t ask me why I can’t speak German!”. Such is the anticipation of their response.

When I arrived in this great city I was full of enthusiasm. A new country, an amazing city in which to immerse, and a new language and culture to experience. I immediately enrolled in my local sprachschule and started the 4 week intensive beginners course.

A month later I felt completely disillusioned! Four weeks in a class room, book work, writing work and, yes, the intolerable German grammar. I remember finishing the course and thinking that I have had complicated grammar pushed into me for 4 weeks, and yet, I have not even learnt how to enter a bakers and ask for some bread!! Surely learning a second language can’t be this hard? Perhaps I had just been unlucky. Maybe I didn’t match the teachers style and another teacher will be better? Undeterred I immediately enrolled for another 4 weeks.

But, alas, nothing really changed. Another 4 weeks passed and I came to the conclusion this really wasn’t working for me. German was taught as an academic exercise. Something you can only learn by study, rather than simply using it. I spoke to my language teacher about this and she explained that most people who attend sprachschule do so to get an entry into university. So the academic side of things is important.

But for me, I just wanted to speak and understand. I only wanted to be conversational. I didn’t really need to read or write German. My working environment would always be English for written communication. All I needed to do was have conversations which I could understand and be understood.

As the months passed I kind of “got by”. I was too busy with work to go back to language school. I found I could pick up bits and pieces here and there, but I didn’t really improve significantly. I would meet people who had been in Berlin less time than me and they would seem fluent in comparison to my pigeon German. I remember meeting an Australian opera singer. She was speaking German with such confidence with what sounded like fluency to me. Judging by the responses of the Germans in the conversation, she was clearly speaking very well. When I asked how long she had been speaking German, I almost fell off my chair when she responded with “only 4 months”. She must have sensed my amazement, because she immediately waved the comment away by saying “oh but, I just have a “thing” for languages”.

So, over the years I have thought long and hard about why I have struggled so much. Maybe I just left it too late in life to try and learn my first second language? Perhaps it’s because I never really learnt grammar at school? I am a product of the 1980’s British comprehensive education system that thought grammar wasn’t worth teaching unless you wanted to speak another language — and that won’t be necessary since “everyone will be speaking English in 10 years time”!! Not a particularly “comprehensive” education! Or perhaps I just need to come to terms with “languages are just not my thing”.

But maybe it’s because I believe there must be a more “natural” way of learning a language. After all, every human in the world learns to speak a language simply by — well — speaking it! It’s the most natural thing a person can do. We are intrinsically programmed to do it, like, learning to walk or eating food.

Whatever the reasons, here I am six and a half years later and looking forward to beginning the language gym. Maybe this is what I need to reignite my desire to master this language. And maybe, just maybe, I will experience a natural learning environment where conversation happens with little focus on grammatical constructs, but simply happens by people talking to each other.

If I can be confidently conversational in 6 months, such that my work colleagues don’t speak English to me by default, then I will consider the language gym a personal success. My aim is to be able to do my job in German, not written but spoken. This is my ultimate goal.