The German Project/Das Deutsche Sprachproject: 55 Days/Tage, 63% Fluency/Fließend

Es sieht immer noch aus wie mein verrücktes altes Gehirn kann mehr neue Wörter ziemlich gut auf Deutsch lernen. Ich habe fast täglich für zwei Monaten die Sprachübungen arbeiten. Ein Teil meiner Grammatik ist manchmal falsch, aber ich (langsam) weiter zu verbessern. Ich benutze auch ein Sprachübersetzer Programm für mich zu testen. Ich kann Sätze jetzt mit weniger Anstrengung komposieren. Wann ich deutsch dazu spreche, versteht mich das Programm gut, also ist mein Akzent zumindest verständlich. Ich kann es besser schreiben, ich lese es gut genug und ich habe die Bedeutung von unbekannten Worten durch ein bisschen besser intuition zu erraten, aber ich mache immer noch schlecht beim Lernen durch das Zuhören. Das ist immer noch ein eine ständige Schwierigkeit für mich mit Deutsch und anderen Sprachen. Vielleicht sind meine Erwartungen jetzt zu groβ, aber ich versuche es noch.

Translation (or at least what I tried to say): It seems that my crazy old brain can still learn some more new words in German fairly well. I’ve been working on the language exercises almost daily for two months. Some of my grammar is sometimes incorrect, but I am continuing to (slowly) improve. I also use a speech translation program to test myself. I can now compose sentences with less effort. When I speak German to it, it understands me well, thus my accent is at least comprehensible. I can write it better, I read it well enough, and I’ve been correctly guessing the meaning of unknown words through a bit better intuition, but I’m still doing poorly at learning through listening. It is still the constant difficulty for me with German and other languages. Perhaps my expectations are too great now (at this age), but I’m still trying.

I sort of did a review of some progress notes on earlier attempts and reasoning for learning German in an entry some while ago (Deutschhackung). Some of that commentary still applies here. This is the third of my language projects (after Swedish and Ukrainian). This re-immersion into German has stepped me up into a more intermediate level. In all honesty though, despite the fluency rating my program gave me (which I think is over-generous), I feel that I’d be dead in the water if I had to engage in a more technical or colloquial conversation in German with someone. My “know enough to avoid getting jailed or shot” principle applies equally to learning this as it did with learning Spanish many years ago.

It’s a really shame that more Anglophones don’t learn more about this language, as they are closely related, and there are some really cool tricks about German, mostly to do with its flexibility for compounding words, more so than English has. Unfortunately, the taste for learning and acquiring it generally has been soured somewhat for most North Americans and non-Teutonic Europeans alike in the past, for the fact that Germans were our adversaries in two of the bloodiest conflicts in modern history. People, out of some defiant reaction toward a perceived enemy’s propaganda of being a “master race”, won’t readily pick up an interest in learning that other language or culture, especially when one’s own national or cultural pride takes over, from the fact that one’s side proper was victorious over such opposing forces, not just once, but twice*. It thus made the language, and the culture around it, maligned for a long while, even perhaps subconsciously if not overtly. Sadly, there were several decades of this friction going on between us and the Germanic states in the early and mid 20^th century, and even though over 100 years has passed since the beginning of it in World War I, with a worsening of it by fascism throughout the second World War to follow, the result was that, either through our own ethno-centric pride after those war years, or through lingering stale resentments. Thus, German’s popularity as an alternate language to learn waned and became a lesser desired form of protocol language. Sadly, I feel that German was uncooled for us in that sense. This ignorance became a meme that continued to stick around long afterward, even being passed on into the generations who didn’t or don’t even have such grudges about the past. More sadly, it’s also commonly perceived that the only other reputed keeners for any such renewed interest in learning German here in North America, outside of those who already have familial ties with the culture, are mostly amongst those who allegedly belong to or associate with Neo-Nazis, the Skinheads, or those who have similar such sociopathic racist tendencies. That’s not exactly good PR for the language either. That’s my theory for its weakened popularity anyway. If I could make up a nice concise German word that adequately sums up this meme, it would be probably be Bedrohungkulturvermeidung**: a defiance against, or willful shunning of, something representing a cultural force that is, or once was, thought of as corruptively evil or potentially destructive to your own. It’s an ignorant concept meme that I suppose I’m actively trying to shatter.

Now that I’ve been more immersed, here are a few things of note that I like/love about the German language, or at least keep me curious and interested enough about it to make me keep learning it:

1.       Easy to spell – No, honestly! Some other people look at the longer words and get intimidated, but it’s really quite logical. If I do misspell it, it is due to me being a shitty typist (and unable to find the umlaut characters in the Alt-key sets). There are no silent letters in German that I can find, unless they are adopted foreign words. There are some signature diphthongs, but at least those are restricted to only one sound each. The only confusing part in writing it for me is when to use “v” and “w” when guessing the spelling of some words, as those sound the same to me, and when to use “s” or “ss” or the “ß” in the spelling. Otherwise, it’s all pretty straight forward.

2.       Prefixes and suffixes – The prepositional prefixes (ab-, an-, auf-, aus-, .  .  . -, über-, un-, unter-, ver-, vor-, zu-) , and the suffixes (like -heit, -keit, -ung) can be affixed to an infinitive verb to make a lot of options with a lot more flexibility than what English has.

3.       Easier pattern recognition for me for translating cognates – For example, the German words with “cht” in them generally equate to the same word with “ght” in it in English (sicht = sight, licht = light, Nacht = night, Macht = might (power), acht = eight) … und so wieder (etc.).

4.       Lots of similar and common words in German with not only English, but other languages – Dutch, what little I studied of it, looks like a very vowel splattered marriage between English and German. If I choose to learn more of it, it would be easier knowing English and some improved German. Swedish has lots of words that are related to German, which makes it a little more retainable.

5.       It’s multinational – Germany, Switzerland, Austria speak it, as well as pocket German ethnic communities like in the Czech Republic, the Alsace region in France, plus in Northern Italy, Southern Denmark, Western Poland, and whichever other countries share borders with the German-speaking nations. It’s more likely that the German language extends into these other bordering nations rather than the other way around.

The things that aren’t so nice about German:

1.       The dreadful grammatical gender issue – not just masculine and feminine to know, but neuter as well. As an Anglophone, my revulsion for such a complicated system, which includes having to match all case articles and adjectival forms accordingly, seems to be deeply ingrained.

2.       The numbers – the way the order gets switched for the tens and ones after the teen numbers. This doesn’t help a mind like mine, which is already tainted with a bit of innumeracy.

3.       The guttural ‘ch’ sound – Not such a pleasant thing to hear, but at least it’s not as heavily used in German as it is in other languages like Dutch or Arabic. My reluctance to learn either one of those other two is greatly based on the frequency that this horrid sound is made in general parlance when I hear these languages being spoken. It’s somewhat of a hostile sounding phoneme. I’d hate sounding like I’m going to spit or hock up phlegm all over someone while I talk. The word ‘Küche’ (kitchen) is a particularly awful word for me to hear. If someone said ‘Gehen Sie in die Küche.’ (Go in the kitchen!), just the sound of that final word in that sentence would make me feel like I was getting punished instead of going to this room that ordinarily makes me happy. To be a fair critic, I give equal weight in comparing annoying sounds between German and English, I’ll readily admit that the most unpleasant sound to come from the English language (as many foreign learners of it would probably agree) is the silly ‘th’ diphthong. In fact, I hate the word ‘diphthong’ itself for the fact that it has ‘th’ compressed in it.  A lisping sound that is considered generally ear-grating and annoying in most other languages is all too common in spoken English***. Linguistically, in general I find that these are the two most unsexy sounds that any language can have.

4.       Genitive Case confusion – A Germanic language like Swedish is similar to English when changing to a case form that indicates possession, the advantage being that neither language has grammatical gender.  German itself is inherently so much more complicated because of that issue of grammatical gender.

5.       Accusative and Dative Case definite and indefinite articles – this is a nightmare for me to keep straight in my mind between all the stupid genders. Added to that are prepositional article contractions to account for too (am, im, zum, vom, zur, beim, etc.). This is not at all easy for an English thinking mind.

6.       Which “This” to use – I cannot for the life of me keep it straight in my head about which form of the demonstrative adjective ‘this’ to use in German (dies, diese, dieses, diesen, diesem, dieser) for the right case. I cheat a little and generally play at safe all the time by simply using das (that) or ‘das hier’ (the English equivalent to ‘that there’ or ‘this here’).

The some of the more useful to adopt and interesting German words, in my mind, are as follows:

1.       Schadenfreude – (harm joy) that twisted sense of pleasure you get when you find out that someone you absolutely despise becomes stricken with some sort of misfortune. It has been adopted into the Oxford English dictionary, and I don’t think we use it enough when we witness things that pertain to it.

2.       Ohrwurm – (ear worm) that song that enters your head and then just won’t stop playing itself over and over again through your mind.

3.       Words ending in -ig, -ling, -us – those endings denote that a word is masculine, less shuffling around to do in my mental junk drawer.

4.       Words ending in -ung, -ie, -ik, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -ion, -ur – those endings automatically indicate that the nouns are feminine. Again, a detail that helps me do less mental hunting and pecking.

5.       Words ending in -um, -ment, -chen, -el – those ending indicate that the noun is neuter. Again, a helpful mnemonic.

6.       Weltschmerz – (world pain) A feeling of melancholy about being sick and tired of dealing with too many problems. Another German word readily adopted into the OED.

7.       Reichen – a verb (infinitive form here) roughly meaning ‘to be sufficent’ or ‘to be enough’. Handy to know if you are in a situation like when you’re with some hard-drinking German buddies who are trying to order round number five of Jägermeister shots each chased with one litre steins of beer, and you’re half-wrecked already and haven’t yet finished your third. It’s easy enough then to say half-pissed “Nein danke, das reicht!” (No thanks, that’s enough!). I’d probably be drunk enough by then to pronounce those awful “ch” sounds correctly.

8.       Hintergedanken – (behind thoughts) I actually learned this word from one of the lectures of Alan Watts. It’s used to describe a thought in the back of your mind that you are instinctually trying to act on. It’s sort of like working on an ulterior motive that you are not really conscious or aware of.

9.       Fernweh – (wanderlust) Given that I’m typing this entry on what is yet another staycation, I’m getting too intimately familiar with the meaning of this word. It is the complete opposite of homesickness (Heimweh in German). That is, it’s a desperate intensified and unsatisfied desire to be anywhere else: for the sake exploration of someplace novel and unfamiliar; to be anywhere else than where you currently are at.

10.   Bierficker – Here comes the nasty word number 10, the spot reserved for profanity, vulgarity, and potty-mouth vocabulary. I learned this one many years ago (and not because it was directed at me though). It’s a compound word used as an insult directed at a guy’s masculine endowment: the combination of ‘beer’, and a word that means the same as the English one with the ‘i’ substituted for the ‘u’. It’s meant to suggest that some guy’s Schwanz ist so klein dass er in den Hals einer Bierflasche passen kann. Again, this sentence is semi-Anglified since I can’t use the genitive case very well, even to describe genitals. However, the gist of this word implies that indecent acts with a beer bottle could be performed, because one’s genital unit is so miniscule that it could fit into the neck of one. Leave it to the beer-drinking, applied science/technical engineering minds of the Germans to dream up this kind of trash talk.

I found the time to complete this language program five days early. Partly because I was a bit more ambitious because I’ve been finding more comfort and ease with this language from, and partly because I had nothing much else planned during my week of holidays. I filled the void with some more lessons.

 The next two-month language learning session I have lined up is French, which is appropriate: because the program begins on July 1^st, on the 150^th birthday of this great nation, and thus it would be very fitting to learn more in my country’s other official language. I was hoping that I’d get some direct immersion in it from a trip to Montreal, but that’s going to have to wait.  

*- It should be made clear that there are no real winners of a war. Lives are still lost, industries, infrastructures are razed, the environment gets destroyed, and debts amass all for the sake of destruction on both sides. Resources get taken away from education, reducing social poverty, enhanced development, and responsible sustainability. Victories have an expense just as losses do. The one thing I’ll say for the resilience of the Germans, despite being defeated twice, they came together again as a leader in technical and economic development on the world stage, far better in ways perhaps than we have as North Americans, who were the so-called victors of both conflicts. Another reason they should be respected.

**- A compound word I constructed from what I think roughly translates to “threat-to-culture avoidance”. It’s probably incorrect. I don’t know if such a word actually exists in German, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it, or some variant of this word really did.

*** - I had a living example to bring this fact to light to me during my brief time as an English teacher in a foreign country. I was tutoring English to other teachers in the faculty of the school where I was working at after class hours. This one teacher, though interested in learning some English, had great difficulty in pronouncing the ‘th’ sounds, and judging by her reaction, she also found this diphthong a repugnant nerve-grating thing to hear. To make matters worse, she was a math teacher, so I assumed she would be interested in learning the proper way to say the numbers. Big mistake! The ordinal numbers after 2, and the way fractions are expressed make learning numbers in English a nightmare for someone without ability or liking for pronouncing the ‘th’ sound. Teaching her ordinal numbers (4^th, 5^th, 6^th etc.) and fractions was almost like the scene in the Monty Python film, The Life of Brian, where the Judean masses were taunting the lisping Biggus Dickus with the recitation of ‘S’ laden names. I realize now that I could have been exceptionally torturous to her, and could have made her recite the ordinal fraction 3333/33,000 (three thousand three hundred and thirty-three thirty-three thousandths)

5Q5A: Summer Holiday Stretch 2017 (Part 1)

For the past while it seems, I’ve been becoming very paranoid every time I book holiday time: because it feels like I’ve been jinxed or cursed, for the past few times in frequent succession, by something that either afflicts me negatively health-wise, or else presents itself as some other crisis to respond to that gouges away at me financially, robbing me of funds to do anything more adventurous. As a result, lately I haven’t been too committed to even make any travels or definite plans for extended leave, just out of pessimism and cynical belief that some recurring pattern of this will happen: with something coming along and ruining things for me anyway. So far, this time around, some whammy, bad karma, or some other force of malevolent juju hasn’t befallen me (yet). However, now I’m deprived of anything of novelty to do, and starting things off in this suck-ass rainy weather of today doesn’t help. I turn to writing as my last resort to noodle things out, and to try to put things into perspective in 5Q5A format, to also hopefully prevent me from rambling on too much.

Q1. If I can’t away anywhere, what things can I do to at least “mentally vacate”?

A1. My regular weekend routine involves just doing my own laundry/housecleaning, or hacking food

My favourite thing to do alone as a kid was

assembling model airplanes. Here's what I

walked out of that store with: a cheaper

than plastic option, and a whole lot

more to build for a cheaper price.

to pieces and applying some form of heat to them, and maybe preserving this stuff. All still labour-intensive projects; all still a lot of work, and it’s certainly not 100% leisure. I thought I was going to try to test how far I could still run with my infarct-afflicted lungs. Of course, that didn’t happen given the rain. One other thing I thought of doing was taking a prolonged break from all this “being-an-adult-with-responsibilities” bullshit. The trick then is to think like a kid. With me not being, or having been a parent, I have never had many opportunities to view the world vicariously through the eyes of a child: watching them grow, or interacting with them as an adult through play. If brought up right, kids are usually uninhibited in using whatever creativity, wonder, and genius they have: before too much progressively invasive adult reality dulls that shine away from them. To get back that quality involves finding some place where adults go to supply themselves with stuff to exercise some new creativity, and the place to spark that kind of stuff was Michaels art supply shop, to find some sort of craft supplies. I did find something that tickled my fancy, and made me a bit nostalgic of my own childhood. My next stop will probably be at Lee Valley, to collect some precision tools, if making little airplanes isn’t going to entertain me.

Q2. What was the thing that came closest to being bad juju then at the beginning of this holiday?

A2. My beloved coffee grinder, one that was gifted to me over 20 years ago, finally kicked the bucket - a bad omen perhaps. It served me well. I always have whole bean coffee here; never that stale pre-ground crap. There is no shooting off into new realms of inspiration or creativity here from ground control without the right kind of caffeinated rocket fuel early on in my day. And with nothing else to grind my beans, that is a problem. I tried using my blender for grinding them, but unfortunately, the resulting grind was too course and it just couldn’t do the job right. Thankful, I found a replacement for a bargain.

Q3. If expense and travel time weren’t factors, what would have the plans otherwise been?

A3. Something like the list of the following things, on some madcap adventure throughout Northern Europe spending time:

·         Exploring the local castles

·         Picking random stops along the London Underground, and just wandering around for days staring up at the architecture

·         Cycling around Copenhagen and Amsterdam and taking in the outdoor markets and cafés

·         Touring the Viking Museum in Roskilde, Denmark

·         In a jacuzzi full of Swedish bikini models*

·         Gorging myself on fresh seafood in some seaside bistro along the Brittany coast of France

·         Visiting the D-Day battlegrounds and memorials (Juno beach)

·         Having my ass-end warming some barstools at various pubs in Dublin, and in other Irish communities

·         Doing whatever else Anthony Bourdain would be doing in those regions, and taking time to write some memoirs of these jaunts (He’s a lucky son of a bitch, and I am so envious for the job that he has!)

Q4. If then resorting to cheap(er) thrills, what are they?

A4. Not exactly a cheap thrill, but being in a rut of boredom, depressed by the dark sky and rain, and otherwise void of inspiration, I made a trip to the casino, and thankfully won a little money, just enough to cover some of the cheap thrills I bought throughout the day. The beer I brewed last month has cellared long enough to sample; I’m at least well-stocked with that. The best score so far for this early part of holiday time in terms of simple things (apart from a bargain priced new coffee grinder, and model plane book), has been an ample supply of . . . super fresh Black Mission Figs. The first time I ever had a fresh fig in my adult life seemed like a religious experience**.

Foccacia Bread baked with fresh figs, unripened goat cheese,

and seasoned with mint, pepper, and a little drizzle of salt

and olive oil. This, plus some olives, and some wine cured

dry salami as some chacuterie was my lunch. The rest were

just simply eaten raw, and some were reserved to be pickled

in balsamic vinegar.

That happened several years ago in St. Catherine’s, Ontario. For that I thank a certain Mr. Testa, an old gentleman Italian immigrant, who is also my cousin’s father-in-law, who offered me the experience of what one of these things actually taste like in their perfection: fully ripened, and eaten within seconds after being plucked off of its tree proper. Simply amazing! The fig tree he had grown and husbanded himself was his personal treasure. It stood only about two meters tall, sheltered in the very centre of a very orderly greenhouse, as if presented there in a shrine-like display, surrounded with all the other pots of herbs, pimento peppers, and various other plants he used for crafting his own homemade canned antipasti. The tree was itself a product of carefully and mindfully placed grafted scions, according to some tradition of his Old Country, which gave it a perfectly sculpted symmetry. It was like an oversized, fruit-laden, Bonsai tree. Amidst the branches of this tree were smaller pots of soil, tied and secured to them. The soil surfaces in these pots were contacting the bottoms of the crooks of the smaller boughs. These pots were triggering root growth on those nodes of the branches, which when established, he would then cut these rooted branches away from the main tree body. It was his method of propagating new cuttings, which he either further nurtured separately, or sold as new little fig trees; I was very impressed with this resourcefulness. The tasting a fresh fig now always reminds me of this sort of ingenuity and pride. The same kind of pride my Dad had for his blossoming apple tree earlier this spring. Fresh figs are a rare find in this town, so scoring some by happenstance was a real bonus. So, I grabbed up as many as I found practical to use, given how perishable they are.

Q5. What is the next thing to invest in for having a decent summer holiday locally?

A5. Given that I’m conveniently only a block away from the riverbank, I’d really like to explore the

city, and the southern riverbend, from rowing around on the South Saskatchewan itself. The only watercraft that I might be able to carry there and back by myself is a shorter (2.5 - 3 m) kayak. The only things that keep me from outright getting one is the question of storage space (it would have to be hung from the ceiling of my balcony, a possible condo regulation infraction), the question of how to transfer it safely in and out of the building (I mentally engineered a pulley system from my deck, like casting away a lifeboat), and the fact that if I capsize the thing, my own comfort and ability to swim equates to that of a thrashing, drowning cat - even with a life jacket on.

Although thankful that I won’t be at work for a while, it feels like the grip of boredom and a mindset dulled and numbed by previous stessors has to be shaken off me in a drastic and desperate manner: like Houdini escaping from a straight-jacket in a tank of water kind of deal.

I have eight more days to reckon with all this.

*- I struck this out, not because it was a thing I had already accomplished (I’m sad and sorry to say), but because, if I weren’t travelling alone, if I ever did reach Europe, I’d ideally be traveling with a female companion, and I wouldn’t think she’d approve of this sort of frolicking and cavorting on my part. Secondly, of all the things on that fantasy list, this one would probably be as likely to happen as me being struck by lightning not just once, or twice, but thrice!

** - Buddha himself allegedly found enlightenment just sitting meditating under a fig tree, so perhaps it’s not some sacrilegious hyperbole to say such a thing. It makes me wonder if he indeed partook and relished in eating its ambrosia-like fruit.