Ich spreche kein deutsche

At some point or other, in the quasi-distant future, my sisters, niece Molly and I are planning on a trip to Germany. Planning, actually, is too strong a term. More like we’re beginning to socialize the idea. And part of the socializing is learning ein bisschen Deutsch. Which we’re all doing, more or less, through a free online language app called Duolingo.

I’ve been doing my five minutes a day on Duolingo for 10 weeks now. While the app claims to be a science-based way to learn a language, my gut sense is nein.

Part of the problem is that German is not quite as logical as one might think it would be. How can it be that sie means she. And they. And, if you capitalize it, you. You distinguish one from the other by the conjugation of the verb they’re attached to, and/or by the a lot of sentences. But after 10 weeks with Duolingo, I’m still struggling a bit around the edges. When I see a sentence in German, I can translate it. But if I’m asked to come up with “I’m reading”, it doesn’t come all that naturally. Mostly I can come up with it – ich lese, by the way – but there’s usually a bit of a pause that I don’t think would be there if I had actually seen the conjugation written out in full. Which is the way I learned Spanish, Latin, and French. So 55 years on, I still remember amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant. But struggle with ich lese, du liest, er/sie liest, wir lesen, ihr lest, sie lesen.  It would be less confusing if conjugations were consistent. They’re not. Sometimes the verbs for you/he/she are the same, sometimes they’re not. Thankfully, we and they are – so far – the same. But I’m sure there are exceptions. And this is just the present tense. Oy!

Anyway, I have ordered a beginner German book and, before we take our trip, I’m just going to hit the books and learn this stuff the old fashioned way.

I’m also a bit confused by the genders of nouns. Oh, sometimes the logic is clear. Junge/boy is masculine. But madchen/girl is neuter. Huh? I guess the convention is that words that use the diminutive (-chen) are neuter.

Then there are nouns that seemingly wouldn’t have a gender, but do. I mean, if I were going to assign a gender to apple (apfel), I’d make it feminine – Eve, and all that. But apfel is masculine. Newspaper, however, is feminine. This matters, because the articles that go with a noun are gendered. They pretty much tell you not to overthink things, and just memorize each now with the nominative article attached to it. So, der apfel (the apple), die zeitung (the newspaper), das brot (the bread).

Apfel, zeitung und brot are among the few nouns I’ve acquired with Duolingo, 10 weeks in. I’ve also got man, woman, child, boy, girl, water, milk, and book. Seems pretty skimpy after all this time. Especially since I knew these – and a handful of others picked up through old war movies and osmosis – already.

Sure, as vocabulary goes, these nouns are all pretty useful, although I do question the importance of learning the word newspaper in this day and age. Not quite whippersnapper or blunderbuss, but, surely, it would be better to learn the word for smartphone, no? (Handily, it’s smartphone.)

I know, I know. English is impossible if you didn’t grow up speaking English. All those homonyms – poor, pour, pore; bore, boor, boar – and all those differing pronunciations – tough, bough, through. (Good thing I memorized my phonics in second grade: aw, ow, oo.)

I have learned a few German words – tired, finished, strong – and phrases – how’s it going, good morning, I’m sorry, please, thanks – and, one that will likely prove quite useful, ich habe keine ahnung. Which means I have no idea.

Duolingo uses gamifcation. You get praise and acquire points as you go along. And I do like getting through a 5 minute lesson without making any mistakes. But I do end up with plenty of them. About half of these are goofy little lack of attention errors. I hear something in German and I type the words I hear in English, when they’re asking for it to be in German. Then there was “Hallo, Duo” which I couldn’t translate. Yes, I got that hallo is hello, but what the heck is Duo?

Ecce – as we say in Latin – Duo, the Duolingo icon/mascot:

Auf wiedersehen, Duo.

My mother’s first language – her mamaloshen – was German, so you’d think I’d know a bit more than I do. But she immigrated as a toddler. And my German-speaking relatives were in Chicago, and we only saw them once a year. Not that all of them – other than the displaced persons that my grandparents sponsored – didn’t speak English. So most of the German I picked up was English with a German accent. (No problem understanding Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes.) Sometimes what I thought was Grandma English was, in fact, Grandma Deutsch. As in “go by your mommy” which I always thought was her mistaken way of saying “go with your mommy.” When she was actually saying “go bei your mommy,” bei being German for with.

My mother had a few German words that she’d throw in. Ach du lieber strohsack – oh my dear mattress, kind of a gosh darn expression. Lausbub (rascal), which as kids we heard as “lousepoop.” And she would quote my grandfather in saying that men wanted wives who were “huebsch und stark” – pretty and strong. This actually came in handy the other morning with Duolingo, when they introduced two new words in a matching exercise that contained mostly words they’d already drummed in – enough with the zeitung. And there I was left with traurig and stark, sad and strong. Bing, bing, bing, if stark is strong, then traurig must be sad.

Anyway, I’ll be keeping on with Duolingo for a while. But I’m guessing that the most useful sentence I’ll bring to Germany with me is “ich spreche kein deutsche.” Of course, on the face of it, it’s not true. If you can say I speak no German in German, you’re obviously speaking some German. But other than stark, zeitung, and a bit more, I doubt I’ll have much to say.

Ach du lieber strohsack!