Language milestones become far more important when you take the language out of the classroom. Photo (cc) flickr user -Georg-

Foreign language milestones during school never seemed particularly important: you pass another vocabulary test, you manage to stumble through another book with a little less dictionary hopping.  Ho-hum, another day of school.  But when that language becomes the currency of your life, those milestones suddenly become monumental.

The first time you manage to order dinner at a restaurant completely in German is so exciting that you e-mail your friends to tell them about it.  The first time the woman behind the counter at the bakery asks you something and your reply doesn’t make her switch automatically over to English you buy an extra celebratory pastry.  And when you finally manage to make a telephone call without breaking into a cold sweat or causing an epic misunderstanding you’re ready to throw a party.

No matter what language you're trying to learn, you're going to make mistakes. Don't let them get you down though, have a good chuckle over them instead! Photo (cc) flickr user revecca

Once upon a time when I was an English teacher in Frankfurt I had a lot of German students intent on mastering small talk. So we would practice talking about nothing. “How’s the weather been lately?” I would ask them in a role play. They would respond, and ask me about my family. What they needed to practice wasn’t so much the English itself, but the art of pointless conversation. Which meaningless subjects were appropriate? Which subjects were taboo? And why the hell would anyone want to waste ten minutes talking about nothing in the first place? It’s a concept many Germans can’t wrap their heads around.

The author enjoying a walk through a small town in northern Germany. You can read more about her adventures at www.clickclackgorilla.com. Photo (c) ClickClackGorilla

I listen to Rumo by Walter Moers as I wash the dishes, and I remember.  I remember buying a one-way ticket to Frankfurt, Germany.  I remember that Frau Cole (my host mother where I would spend a year au pairing) met me at baggage claim in a long skirt and that I felt befuddled by the change of time and place.  I remember buying a copy of Faust at the bookstore between the Zeil and the River Main to indulge my fantasies of reading it in the original (it is still sitting on my to-read shelf).  And I remember asking the Cole’s oldest son to recommend a good German science fiction or fantasy book for me to try reading.  He gave me Rumo.

Learning German isn't just about reading books: you can learn just as much by watching television shows. Photo (cc) flickr user Lubs Mary

I’m dreaming in German now. Ah, so it has come to this. Last night I dreamed that it came out in a shocking news story that America was using fresh Dachshund (wiener dog) meat in its sushi. I expressed in this dream my shock and dismay – in German – with an Afghan woman from my class.

In other language-learning news, I’ve found in the past month that watching children’s TV is an excellent way to learn the language. My new nightly ritual is to tune in every night at 7:45 for the kid’s version of Nachtrichten (news) on KiKa. This is where German children learn at an early age to be knowledgeable and serious citizens of the world.

Photo (c) Resident on Earth

This week I was contemplating how to say a sentence in German that involved the words German woman and American man when a German language concept dug in a little deeper. I knew this concept, but I was still thinking about it in English. I wanted to string together the language the way we do in English by adding the words for woman (Frau) and man (Mann) to specify the gender of the German and American. But German is efficiently built with the person’s gender in the words themselves:

■die Deutsche = German woman
■der Deutscher = German man
■die Amerikanerin = American woman
■der Amerikaner = American man

At the end of a six-month stretch of language classes, it was time for the B1 exams. Photo (cc) flickr user Alex France

To complete the B1 level (the halfway point in the language levels), we had a party with a veritable international food buffet from everyone’s contributions. While I’m happy to finally be wrapping up my intensive classes, and I’ve struggled with them from time to time, I felt a bit sad yesterday. We all had to say good-bye to each other, including to our instructor who has worked so hard for the duration of these classes. My routine is changing again. It seems strange to not be returning to class on Monday. And now the big question for me is…what next?

How not to butcher the German language at the butcher. Photo (c) Jen

One day last week, in a remarkable coincidence, my dear and wise uncle sent me an article about German meat and butchers. It must have been fate, because that very day I was contemplating how to go to the butcher nearby our apartment to get some ground beef so I could make some chili with some chili seasoning I brought to Germany with me.

First of all, I love that we have a butcher. Sure, I can just as readily go to the grocery store and buy pre-packaged meats – maybe the “easier” option for a non-German speaker like me – but as the article points out, Germany is renowned for its meats and its specialty butchers (which sadly is a trade that is in decline as more people opt for supermarket convenience).