The Halfway Point

As of today, I have lived in Germany for exactly five months, with five months left to go. It’s hard to believe my year is already half way over; I can’t imagine getting on a plane and flying back to the US. These were some of the fastest five months of my life, and I’m sure the next five are going to fly by as well. Living in a different culture has gotten increasingly easier, but I still have tons to learn, especially language-wise. Still, I no longer have to actively translate everything in my head to understand and speaking comes much more naturally. Since I’m bad at tracking my own progress and I know Germans to be a little more blunt and honest than their sugar-coating American counterparts, I decided to ask people at my school how they felt my Deutsch was improving. Here are some of my German friends delivering the honest truth on my language advancement:

“Well, at the beginning I couldn’t understand anything you said, but now we can talk to each other really well.”

“It’s better, it’s like you don’t have to think about it as hard.”

“Now you can say whatever you want to. You still have an accent, but that could take years to go away.”

“You’re a lot more fluent, at the beginning you spoke half English and paused a lot more, but now it’s easier.”

“At the beginning you had to ask what people were saying and to have them repeat things, but now you understand everything that we say.”

“Nope, not better. Just kidding. I don’t know, it’s hard to compare because we were all impressed by how much German you could already speak. But it’s easier for you know, isn’t it.”

So there you have it. On another note, yesterday I signed up to give a presentation on the Amish in my Religion class. Just spreading the Lancaster wealth.

Wichtige Wörter:

• am Anfang: at the beginning
• fließend: fluent
• die Sprache: the language
• verstehen: understand