My fourth language

So, now that there's a visit from Torsten's parents in the works, I've been motivated to hit my Rosetta Stone pretty hard in the past couple weeks. I've battled my feelings about German being too slow to learn by just doing one or two lessons whenever I have a couple minutes, even if it's just waiting for water to boil or something. And as a result, I'm learning a lot.

My vocabulary is expanding rapidly and I am slowly starting to understand a bit of the structure. Just bits and pieces here and there, but it's helpful, and I can envision it all coming together a bit more solidly down the line. My comprehension is already decent, and this will help me be able to actually participate in conversations instead of listening but not being able to contribute.

But holy crap is German grammar hard. I can't even get my head around it. There are all three genders and all these different cases and the word order makes no sense and the articles take different endings depending on a bunch of confusing factors that I don't really understand. As far as I can tell there are a bunch of rules and there isn't any trick to learning them... you just have to know them. Even Torsten, a native speaker, has trouble answering me when I ask him to explain why a word is one way when it was another way in the previous lesson.

For example, articles take a different ending in sentences if the sentence could answer a question that starts with "wen," which means "who," except there's another word, "wer," that also means "who," but if the question starts with wer instead of wen, then the article in the answer doesn't take the different ending, and I have no idea what the difference between wen and wer even IS, and the article applies whether or not anyone has actually ASKED the freaking question to begin with.

AND THE WHOLE FREAKING LANGUAGE IS LIKE THAT.

(I just showed Torsten that paragraph I wrote about the wen/wer thing, and asked if it was right. He read it and said, "Exactly." Which, HAHA, exactly WHAT? Exactly yes this is insane? Exactly yes German is unnecessarily complicated? Exactly yes it is impossible to understand and exactly yes I have indeed summarized this ridiculous rule accurately? ARGH. EXACTLY.)

Luckily, I have a natural affinity for new languages, and that is helping me because my mind makes connections that I don't even know it's making. So, when I go through a grammar lesson and it's asking me which of the three genders a particular word takes, sometimes I just know, I can just tell what sounds right, and it turns out that I've seen the word once or twice before and somehow my brain has clung to that knowledge. THAT is what saves me from going completely insane.

The other thing is that I'm trying not to worry too much about the grammar. Complete fluency isn't the goal here--it's about communication. And I don't think anyone will care if I use the wrong article as long as it's clear what I'm trying to say. So I just keep reminding myself every time I make a mistake on a grammar question that yes, I want to learn it, and yes, it will get easier, but in the meantime, I'm learning words and sentence structure that will allow me to communicate with my in-laws and, eventually, understand my children even when they aren't speaking English. And that is key.

Also, I think it's weird that only just now, many many lessons into this, have I learned how to say "My name is" and "Nice to meet you." But, better late than never, right?

Ich heisse Jess. Nett, Sie kennenzulernen.

(SEE? The word for "meet" is about 17 times longer than it needs to be. And it's not specific to this phrase. You can also kennenzulernen someone in the street. Why? WHY?)