...it drives me CRAZY. Verrückt. Ganz verrückt.
I know I said I might write something about German, so I'm surprising everyone (myself included) by actually writing a post about German.
I have come a long way and am doing relatively well, but that doesn't stop me from being completely bewildered by the German language 90% of the time. As I frequently tell my natively German-speaking friends, the grammar is a hot mess. I have yet to come up with a better way to describe German grammar, and if you've ever studied German you know what I mean. It's so funny because like, 90% of the time you read or hear something, you don't even know what the sentence means until the end because that's where all of the relevant verbs are. I usually translate German into English exactly how it's written because it helps me understand the word order better, but it just sounds so weird.
It's really frustrating/challenging because whenever I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of it and maybe this whole learning another language thing isn't so bad/so hard/etc, something comes up that reminds me that I'm still very much a beginner. It's not a bad thing though - it just makes me want to work harder to get to the point of actually using German conversationally. I did have what could *almost* be qualified as a conversation in German with one of my friends and I've worked through my overwhelming fear of using German with native speakers (mostly, still freaks me out sometimes) but progress, I say! Progress!
I guess when I started working on learning German, I didn't realize how much there is to learning another language. I feel like I can say/read/understand a lot of German in one minute and in the next, I'm looking a German text and wondering what language I'm reading because it's obviously not German - if it was, I would understand more than 3 words. It also gives me so much respect for anyone who has learned a second language. It will take me a LOT longer than a year to become even close to fluent (unless I were to move to a German speaking country) so I feel like that goal was biting off a bit more than I could chew. On the bright side, there really isn't a huge rush and I have several people who have been willing to help me out, without whom I would understand even less than I do. And I do understand more now than when I started, so that's something.
Above everything else though - how crazy it makes me and how frustrating it can be, I LOVE being able to even say anything in another language. I feel like a better person because of it. Hopefully I keep trucking along and eventually get to the point where I can legitimately say that I'm fluent. :)
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