Language Barrier

If you’re learning a second language, you’ll find that it’s much easier to understand than to form your own sentences. Here, as long as people are speaking slowly enough and don't catch me off guard, I can understand almost everything they say, but when I try to contribute, it’s a mess. Therefore, I think people assume that I don’t know much German at all, so I have to actively show that I understand what they are saying.

That means I do a lot of nodding, a lot of mmhming, and a lot of saying “ja” or “okay” every time the speaker pauses. Here’s what a normal conversation with me looks like:

German: Gestern...
Me: Ja?

G: Ich war im Kino...
M: Mmhm
G: Und hab ein Film gesehen...
M: Okay
G: Und es war sehr lustig...
M: Mmhm
G: da der Hauptdarsteller eine komische Frisur hatte.
M: okaaay... (drawn out so I have time to process)

Apparently saying okay is an American thing. Germans, and especially the older generations of Germans, don’t really say it. I, on the other hand, have say it all the time, and others have started to pick up on it. For example, my host mom is a teacher, and she said her students at school have started asking why she says “okay” so much these days.

The way I pronounce words is also, of course, distinctly American. One of the hardest letters for me to articulate is the r. In the US it’s arr, in Germany it’s err with a slight tongue roll, which many of you know is impossible for me. Once someone asked me to say “r”, and I responded with the American arrrrrr., to which he said, “no, no, errrrrr!” “Oh, I can’t do that.” “Haha I know, guys, she can’t do that!”

But my host sister and I are working on my accent, I read out loud and she corrects me. We’ve made it through about a page and a half of Sofies Welt, a 606 page fiction book about philosophy. Plenty of material to last the year.

Wichtige Wörter

• vorlesen - to read out loud.
• Ich verstehe - I understand. I see. I know what you're talking about, you don't have to try to switch to English to explain it to me.
• Ich verstehe nicht - I wish you would explain that to me in English.