114. English, rubbish, Klapptisch

Lost in language learning.

Dec 09, 2023

Dear Reader,

I used to tell people that I speak two languages: English and rubbish. Now, though, I can speak several.

With our close proximity to France, just 22 miles off the coast of Dover, the modern foreign language most commonly taught in UK schools is French.1

And we started young, too: I remember my first lesson in the subject with Mrs W when I was eight, when we each had to pick a French name for ourselves to be used in class from a selection written on the blackboard.

Justin was Jérôme, Lucy became Loulou. Charles chose Charles, and pronounced it ‘Shaaaaaaaaaaaaaarl’ with such elegance that I immediately resented my parents for not christening me with that name in the first place.

🙄

Rebecca, with a throat-scraping Gallic ‘r’ at its onset wouldn’t do; I felt it didn’t sound pretty. Yet I couldn’t decide on a name from the board.

‘Alors!’ said Mrs W, briskly. ‘Let’s find your new name together. Pick a number between one and ten.’

‘Seven!’ I replied.

The whole class was called upon to recite the numbers from one to seven in unison, with Mrs W pointing to each name on the board in turn. The seventh was rather too similar to the name of a girl I disliked. I shook my head.

‘Pick another number!’ said Mrs W, losing patience.

‘Ten!’

Starting where we’d landed the first time, we counted again.

‘Ah, Marie-France!’ Mrs W grinned. ‘Alors, tu t’appeles Marie-France! Très bien!’

I loved the exotic feeling that learning a foreign language gave me. I did my best to get to know the pretty diacritics of written French; to not mix up an acute accent with un accent grave; to remember that the little hat on top of a letter was called a circumflex, a diaresis – two dots above an ‘e’, an ‘i' or a ‘u’ – indicated that that vowel should be pronounced distinctly from the vowel preceding it, and to not get too exuberant when squiggling my favourite, the cedilla, under a ‘c’ to render it from a hard sound to a soft one:

I got along okay in Mrs W’s class but felt I’d never be able to communicate with anyone who was actually French.

In my second year of senior school we began to learn German. Our teacher was a terrifying chap and his classroom a daunting place to be. Umlauts peppered letters u, a and o (although, frustratingly, not all of them), a double s was represented by a funny ß symbol, and every noun began with a capital letter regardless of its position in the sentence. What’s more, incomprehensible charts and tables of words papered the walls.

grayscale photo of people sitting on chair — Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Instead of the comparatively straightforward ‘le’ and ‘la’ of French to indicate the gender of nouns, suddenly we had three options to contend with: ‘der’, ‘die’ and ‘das’.

And there were other three-letter words beginning with d- which would be brought into play depending on whether the noun they related to was the subject or the object of the sentence; whether it needed to signify possession or indicate that it was the beneficiary of an action.

Say what?

Well, Mr T’s charts and tables – according to him, at least – explained it all.

One of his tables of data contained four columns and four rows: a column for each singular gender and one for plural, and a row each for the cases – nominative, accusative, genitive and dative. Here’s what it looked like:

From top to bottom: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative. Letters and letter sequences shown after the dashes represent adjectival endings. Der gute Hund = the good dog. Ich mag den guten Hund = I like the good dog. Der Ball des guten Hundes = the ball belonging to the good dog. Ich gehe mit dem guten Hund spazieren = I’m going for a walk with the good dog. 🤯

Reader, I had no idea. None.

An early lesson required us each to describe our bedroom, for which we were furnished with a list of the appropriate vocabulary.

‘Der Klapptisch’ (folding table) was our favourite word, not that any of us possessed such a piece of furniture. Outside of German lessons we took to using it as an adjective to describe all sorts of things we disapproved of.

‘What did you think of yesterday’s chemistry lesson?’ someone would ask.

‘I didn’t understand any of it – Mr D was talking absolute Klapptisch!’ would be the response.

I wouldn’t say the words were always easy to pronounce, but I found the sounds required for German much more accessible than the ones I needed to master for French, and the words themselves made more sense to look at.

Some sounded lovely, and I’d enjoy saying them over and over in my head even if I wasn’t required to read them out loud.

‘Knopf’ – button – was a favourite: I loved how each letter had to earn its keep. No silent ‘k’ like in ‘knot’ or ‘knock’.

‘K(er)noppff!’ I’d say. Then I’d say it again.

‘Gabel’ was a lovely word, too. This word – fork – was pronounced ‘gaaaaahhhhble’, and was even more fun to say as part of the portmanteau word for forklift truck.

a large warehouse filled with lots of pallets — Der Gabelstapler (literally – *fork* *stacker*). Gaaaaaaaaahhhhbleschtaaaaaaaaahhhhpler. Photo by AFINIS Group ® - AFINIS GASKET® Production on Unsplash

German and I began to get along, and soon my German prowess equalled my French. When I chose my A level options in summer 1990, a time of huge significance2 to European politics and economics, I thought I’d board the language train in the hope that it would eventually get me across the Channel into future employment in mainland Europe. One day, I thought, I might be working in Brussels!

‘You know,’ I said airily as I ticked the ‘French’ and ‘German’ boxes on the A level options form. ‘1992 and all that!’

Aged sixteen I was asked to join a school trip for the GCSE German students in the two years below me not just for my own benefit but to provide support and assistance to the teachers. As a lofty sixth-former, although still very much a pupil, I was to be viewed as a staff member by the younger members of the party.

It was summer, and in the pretty town of Trier I got to experience European café culture for the first time. We sat at tables outside and I engaged in some people-watching. People-listening, too. I was amused. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how we’ve come all this way in that minibus and yet we might as well have stayed at home!’ I commented to the other students at my table.

They looked at me, confused.

‘Well, everybody around us is speaking English!’ I said.

‘PARDON?’ said one of the boys in an incredulous voice. He nudged his friend. ‘What is she talking about?’

Reader, that had been my thunderbolt moment. At that café the cogs of vocab, Mr T’s tables of noun genders, cases and adjectival endings and the interminable nineteenth-century novella ‘Die Judenbuche’ by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, which along with two other set texts had been taking up so many of my teenage evenings, had suddenly slotted into place. I realised that I could understand the German being spoken around me without even thinking about it.

After my A levels I headed to Germany to work as an au pair, living with a host family in Bonn with a nine-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son.

I could already hold my own in German conversation, and my adult hosts took great care to speak slowly and clearly, choosing easy-to-understand expressions to get their point across without risking any misunderstanding on my part.

Yet when the family were talking between themselves I would very quickly be lost. I wasn’t au fait with childhood vernacular, and would find myself repeating ‘wie bitte?’ – pardon? – on a fairly constant loop.

Domestic vocabulary was very different to what had been on those long vocab lists I’d pored over at school. I hadn’t once used the word ‘Klapptisch’ in its proper context, but here with my host family in Bonn I was curious to know what ‘Lorbeerblatt’ and ‘Zimt’ might be; words that I’d come across while cooking with my host mother.

On the kitchen wall one morning I noticed a white picture frame had appeared. It surrounded a large board covered in a sheet of pink paper, and had a black marker pen dangling on a string from one of its corners.

‘Lorbeerblatt’ and ‘Zimt’ had been written on the board. I grinned.

‘Vielen Dank!’ I enthused. ‘Tolle Idee!’

Thanks a lot! Great idea!

In a quiet moment later I added ‘das’ to precede ‘Lorbeerblatt’, and ‘der’ in front of ‘Zimt’. Underneath the words I wrote ‘bay leaf’ and ‘cinnamon’.

When she got home from work my host mother looked disappointed. ‘You don’t need to translate the words into English; you already know what they are! You’d recognised the bay leaf immediately, and a sniff of the Zimt had told you it was cinnamon!’

She put the kettle on. ‘Besides, you’d never say ‘der Zimt’! It would be eine Prise Zimt, or einen Teelöffel Zimt, wouldn’t it? A pinch, or a teaspoon, of cinnamon.’

Coffee made, she continued. ‘Why don’t you write ‘eine Prise’ on the board? Just the German, mind!’ I soon found that German words were easier to remember when their English translations weren’t on the board to slow me down.

That October when I started university I was complimented on my ‘excellent German accent’ and ‘impressively idiomatic’ use of the language, although the latter got me into trouble pretty quickly with my rather stiff German professor.

He’d assigned a small group of us with a task which was set to make us late for a tutorial in the next building. My fellow students and I weren’t best pleased. ‘Well?’ asked the professor, wanting us to get started. He wasn’t known for his patience.

‘Wenn es unbedingt sein muß!’ I replied, choosing exactly the expression of which my 7-year-old au pair charge had been so fond of saying to me every time I asked him to do any of his chores.

‘If I absolutely have to!’

‘Ja, es muß wohl unbedingt sein!’ replied the professor, shaking his head as he walked off.

‘Yes, you absolutely do!’

Reader, I was mortified.

😳

I’d spent the third year of my degree course in German and Linguistics at a university in northern Germany. Missing my friends and my then boyfriend I travelled back to my UK university city to spend time with them over Easter, my trip badly timed to coincide with a streaming cold.

I woke up one night in considerable distress, my eyes watering and nose running like a tap. I couldn’t reach the box of tissues which was on the floor beside C’s single bed; the one which he was reluctantly sharing with me and my germs.

white tissue paper in blue box — Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

I woke him up. ‘Quick, I need a tissue!’

He looked at me.

‘Like RIGHT NOW! Please pass me the box of tissues!’

Was he half asleep or something? Why was he looking at me like that?

‘MY NOSE IS RUNNING! Come on!’ By now I was really cross.

C sat up in bed. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re saying, because I don’t speak German’, he explained calmly. ‘Here, have a tissue. Your nose is running, did you know?’

🙄

That event did nothing for our relationship, but hey, I was clearly thinking in German.

The time I’d spent living with a German family and later, during my year of studying in the country, had given me a really good ear for the language.

‘You actually sound like you’re German!’ said the Swiss lady who’d been tasked with assessing my language ability at my interview for a job with a German firm in London. I was delighted. By then I had the accent but also the confidence required for fluent communication, and I was happy that they showed.

After a couple of years at the London office I was sent to work in the Cologne branch. The business operated in a niche industry with specialist terms which hadn’t ever really tripped off my tongue in English, let alone German.

My colleague answered the phone one morning.

‘No, it’s because she’s English’, I heard her say. She listened for a moment, then laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t say anything. I’ll put you through.’

‘It’s Herr M’, she told me. ‘He’s asking for that lady who’s got a funny way of expressing herself.’

After that I took care to always mention to new contacts who wouldn’t necessarily recognise from my accent that my mother tongue was English, and ask them to excuse any linguistic anomalies that would inevitably be creeping into the conversation.

‘I wouldn’t mind’, I grumbled to a friend, ‘but after years of learning this language I’m annoyed that the first thing I need to say to people is ‘By the way, I’m English’, just so they don’t think I’m a German who can’t speak properly!’

the flag of germany is waving in the wind — Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Years later, during lockdown in 2020 I found myself making all sorts of plans for my post-Covid life. The pandemic had quickly put paid to my glass art business; what might I do instead, I wondered?

‘I know!’ I dared dream. ‘I’ll train as a modern languages teacher!’

Aware that I’d need to offer two languages – and that English and rubbish would count as neither – I needed to brush up my French. I knew that my qualifications made me eligible to apply to train to teach German up to and including A level, and French up to and including GCSE, but in the thirty years that had passed dust had settled as thickly on my confidence as on those exam certificates.

I hit Google, and before long had found Busuu, an online platform offering courses in over a dozen modern languages, including French.

a close up of the colors of the flag of france — Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Lacking any kind of confidence in the language I decided to start from absolute scratch. By September, after working on my French for several hours a day, I successfully completed my Level B2 assessment with a grade of A+, scoring 100%. My Busuu certificate reads:

The learner has demonstrated that they can:
Understand the main ideas of complex text on a range of topics
Interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity
Produce clear and detailed text on a wide range of subjects
Explain a viewpoint on topical issues, giving advantages and disadvantages

Reader, this was utter Klapptisch. Yes, I’d reengaged with French using the platform, but all I seemed to have learned was how to pass an online written assessment with flying colours. At no point did a single cog drop into place, nor did I have any confidence at all in holding a conversation.

I engaged an online tutor. My daily routine at the time had included participating in lockdown exercise classes with family members over FaceTime, and I had one morning got so carried away with a particularly intensive session that I’d left it far too late to shower and change before my first tutorial with J, the young chap from Lyon I was due to meet online for French conversation.

‘I’m sorry I’m late!’ I gabbled once I’d finally logged on. ‘And I’m in my exercise gear!’

J looked horrified. Was my screen having issues with colour or contrast, or had he actually gone pale?

‘Non, non, non, Rebecca, I am not a sports trainer! I am French.’

🤣

I’m not blaming J for my giving up on my French studies soon after that, and I don’t mind in the least that I did. Reader, I am delighted to report that my passion for the German language endures, even though I still have no use for its word for folding table in its proper context.

My French, on the other hand, remains absolute Klapptisch.

Love,

Rebecca