I took Spanish in high school. While I have a good ear for sounds (thanks to my musical training), I had little interest in learning verb tenses and other grammatical intricacies. It was a struggle.
Fast forward to last year: I started playing around with Duolingo and have maintained a 474-day streak of practice. My retention isn’t great, but I’ve definitely become comfortable with a rudimentary ability to communicate in basic Spanish.
Then, for no apparent reason, I decided to change things up and direct my efforts toward learning German. Do I have any background in German? Aside from a business trip there many years ago (that’s another story for another time), where I learned “bitte,” “danke,” “kaffee,” and “mineralwasser,” I had nothing.
It’s been about three weeks, and I am having a blast learning words and phrases in German. It’s definitely a language with a lot of guttural sounds, compound words, and confusing pronouns. For example, the German word for ATM is “Geldautomat.” I think that’s kind of charming. My eldest granddaughter, who is almost eight, has listened to me practicing and I taught her the word for “water bottle”—”Wasserflasche”—which she now asks her mother to get for her.
Change always creates disruption, but that’s not always a bad thing. I could have continued improving my Spanish, but then I wouldn’t be having as much fun learning something completely different.
Prost!
