I thought I knew German, but then I went to Germany...

Prior Erasmus

I have been learning German since the mere age of 11. As of September 2016, I was ecstatic to finally have the opportunity to venture out to Germany and put my well nutured language skills to the test by studying at the Universitaet Leipzig for a semester. My confidence was booming and I was convinced that I would not run face first into any language barriers by believing that I could just waltz into a seminar and have all my fellow peers thinking that I'm just another german student. I wanted to just simply fit in and blend into the crowd. At this moment in time, I despised the idea of being seen as a foreign student. Prior to my semester in Leipzig, I did a little self preparation by skimming through all those nitty gritty, seemingly endless grammar rules which makes German, well German. I spoke to myself in German. I had a vocabulary list on my phone and I carried around a phrasebook 24/7. All in all, I thought that it was going to be a breeze!

Linguistic avalanche

However, it soon dawned upon me that my study abroad semester was not going to be a walk in the park and that I was basically the definition of naive. Yes, it's a worn out cliche but it was oh so true. I thought that my goal of wanting to achieve native level fluency in German was thrown directly out of the window as soon as I stepped onto german soil. I couldn't even tell the taxi driver where my student accomodation was. I was all flustered flipping through my pocket phrasebook and even when I read directly out of my book, the driver still didn't understand me. That was a horrific experience since the taxi driver thought it was futile to even attempt to understand what I was trying to say and thus he switched to English to make my life easier. This incident literally felt like a dagger in my heart (a little hyperbolic, I know), but I wanted to cry and get that first Ryanair flight back to the UK. I was instantly demoralised of my linguistic capabilites.

During the first couple of weeks, I attended my first lectures and seminars, attempted assignments and even tackled the tasks of registering myself at the home office and opening a bank account. Basically, I understood next to nothing whilst completing these tasks and even to this day I haven't the faintest clue as to how I managed to do such things. Heck, I didn't even comprehend the cashier at the supermarket when she asked me if I had a fidelity card. My first revelation was that spoken German was a lot more difficult to understand than envisioned, but that was only due to the fact that my ears were not well trained to hearing an actual German speak German. Since I was in a university environment, I had to contend with all those dialects and accents which just amplified the difficulty of understanding. I sat there in lectures wide eyed, straining my ears, with my pen in my hand and a blank notebook as if all of a sudden, I couldn't understand any language at all. Again, a little hyperbolic, I know, but it was personally traumatic not comprehending a word.

My second revelation swiftly followed the first when I realised that I couldn't string together even the most basic of sentences. My sentences didn't make any sense whatsoever and I got my words all tangled up like a pretzel. A 2 year old could have spoken better German than me. My knowledge of vocabulary and grammar rules was basically non-existent since I found it difficult to stick to the standard rules whilst speaking. Despite the fact that on a theoretical level, I knew every german grammar rule known to man off by heart. I could literally recite all those adjectival agreements. I recycled the same phrases over and over again and I was constantly translating in my head. I was so focused on trying to speak the most complicated, correct German that I ended up making more errors than if I just spoke without thinking. For me, every interaction in German had to be perfect because I was afraid that my conversation partner (and even myself in some cases) couldn't fully fathom what I was intending to say.

My advice

And that is when I had my third revelation. To just listen and speak. Constantly listening and reading German everywhere and anywhere gets you familiarised with how a standard german person speaks, you then realise patterns and key words and you pick up little language tricks without even knowing. In fact, what I learnt was that you should make as many mistakes as you possibly can. The more the better. As I changed my approach to speaking German, I soon noticed that my language flourished.

Furthermore, the charasteristics of a german personality facilitated my learning greatly as Germans are more likely to correct you when you're wrong. In the beginning, I tried to avoid all contact (even eye contact) with every German that crossed my path. In the end, I took advantage of having the occasion to study with Germans and I spoke to everyone. All my peers were so eager to help and even though my countless mistakes shattered my confidence at times, I look back and review as to how much my language skills have ameliorated over the short span of one semester. I did everything in my power to force myself into situations where I had to speak to a native because as the well known saying goes, 'practice makes perfect'.

Speaking of personality traits of my fellow Germans, from the dude who changes the lightbulbs, to the guy playing the acordian on the streets, to people who live across the hall, everyone speak a little English, which can be both a blessing and a hindrance. In the beginning, I would always speak back in English if I knew that they wouldn't mind, but my obvious piece of advice, is to simply not do that. They will respect you if you're being persistant on speaking solely in German which in retrospect, will benefit you in the longrun.

I joined the university tandem programme where I advertised myself as a learner of German and in return I provide help with English. Joining this programme made me ridiculously popular since literally every student wanted to practice their English with me. As a result I was meeting a new german student as my conversation partner every few hours or so like I was speed dating. Literally, I think I spoke to every student there was in the city.

6 months later...

So as I rewind once again back to September, it was utterly overwhelming as I had to think really hard on the proper way to compose a real german sentence without just simply translating from English. To think simultaniously on which tense, verb, form of conjugation and declension had to be used, it really does tire you out. It takes a lot of brain power to force yourself to think in another language. But over time it gets easier like German really is your second language. It will eventually just roll off the tip of tongue and that's a promise. I made that same promise to myself which is when I began to really love German and to be able to speak it like a pro.