Back to School!

*I just want to point out that the kid in the blue shirt in the middle of this picture is so excited to be going back to school that he isn't even touching the ground at all. Has anyone in the history of human society ever been this excited for anything?

Hi everyone.

I started classes last week! I must admit, it is wonderful to have a routine in my life again. Of course, when my alarm goes off, I usually grumble about it for a while before stumbling into the shower. But it feels nice to be actually tired (exhausted) at the end of the day. I have always had issues falling asleep, and now is no exception. But, it has been perhaps a little bit easier.

I have been to all of my classes so far, of which there are 9. Six of those nine classes are Vorlesung ("lecture") classes. These are an anomaly to me. At Humboldt, these lecture classes are worth 2 credits each. But all I have to do is show up and listen. There is no homework. No project. No test at the end. Only half of my lectures have attendance checks, so I don't even have to show up for the others. But I do anyway, because I need the practice.

So, since I signed up for six lectures at 2 credits each, 12 of my 28 semester credits would fall into the "very easy" category.

Yes, I said 28 credits. One class, called a Hauptseminar ("advanced seminar") is worth 10 credits because I have to write a long paper at the end, and give a presentation to the class. My advanced seminar is absolutely the scariest class I am taking this semester. It is about the National Socialism movements in 1920-1945, and how it spread outward from Germany across Europe.

And then yet another class is worth 4 credits. It's called an Übung, which means "exercise/activity," and concerns itself with the "Everyday life of students in Berlin in the 19th and early 20th century." Apparently we will just have discussions and stuff, which I am somewhat self-conscious about because of my accent. Just knowing words, and being able to say them, is not enough anymore. I must also have the confidence to inject my personality into what I am saying. And while I do possess said confidence, I have been feeling somewhat like Chinese exchange students must feel at universities in America... This feeling of alienation is almost totally unfamiliar to me, despite having been here for 10 months now. I must concentrate very hard on what is being said at all times, which eventually gives me what I call "language headaches."

When I get a language headache, all I want to do is sit and an episode of Heroes or read the New York Times so that I can relax a little bit. I am assuming that this level of intensity will pay off in short order. I already feel like I am comprehending more this week than I did last week. The road to fluency is a difficult one, apparently.

Two of my classes (1 lecture and 1 Proseminar ["undergrad seminar"]) are in English. The lecture is about British cultural history and the seminar deals with the various tribunals and courtroom proceedings against Nazi war criminals. These classes are interesting and fun, and require very little effort.

There are many strange, small differences between the atmosphere in European institutions of higher education and their American cousins. One interesting one is that students always applaud at the end of class, to show respect. But they do not clap their hands. Instead, they rap their knuckles on the desks to create a cacophony of knocking sounds. The first time I experienced it I actually chuckled to myself a little.

So, this is what I wanted! Grad school with the added difficulty of language acquisition/development. I knew not how vastly challenging this would be in practice. But I honestly believe that if I were taking such classes in America right now that I would feel significantly more bored with it. I just have to push through the remaining language barriers.

I miss riding my bicycle. It is getting very cold and graylight is mostly all that I get to see of the Sun during days which grow ever shorter as winter descends.

I am going back to Florida in 2 months to visit my family and some friends. I am looking forward to that, having not been back since I left right after Christmas last year. Unlike most people, I am not at all a fan of the holidays. I am not necessarily an Ebenezer Scrooge about it, but I don't find myself excited at all. I look forward to seeing those people that I care about, and those that care about me. The fact that it will occur over the holiday season is just a coincidence.

I have more to write about, but it will have to wait. My landlord needs me to translate for him again. Someone from the Romanian Embassy lives in my building (in an apartment that is easily twice as large and luxurious as my own) and his wife speaks English but not German.

False Friends // Falsche Freunde

While one is learning German, we eventually hear about something called "False Friends," or "Falsche Freunde."

Otherwise known as Übersetzungsfallen (übersetzung = translation; fallen = mistakes), False Friends can make the language very confusing.

[[edit- if you are reading this and you already know German, this post will not be that interesting, so you can skip to the end.]]

Yesterday, Billy commented on my last post with:

< "I read yesterday that the term "U-boat" is "U-boot" in German, which is short for, "underseeboot." Seriously, how difficult can it be to be fluent in German? We'd all probably be fluent in it if we could stop laughing long enough to remember anything." >

While I appreciate William's mockery of a language spoken by over 100 million native speakers, plus another 80 million non-native speakers, his comment spurred the idea for this post. Hats off to Mr. Farmer, who may or may not also be a "False Friend."

While some German words are almost identical to English words of the same meaning, many are not. But first, let's have a look at a few words that are hilariously similar to their English übersetzungen.

praktisch = practical
typisch = typical
Auto = car
Straße = street
Lampe = lamp
Reis = rice
Wein = wine
Stoff = stuff
unter = under

And then we have Billy's example, the U-Boot, which does in fact mean unterseeboot.

Looking at all this, the beginning student of German begins to feel a brief sense of relief. Maybe learning this new language won't be so hard, after all! Well, I'm sorry to say, this is where the False Friends come in to fuck up your Christmas.

Now, I will give you all a different list. The infamous False Friends:

Gift = poison
Mist = "crap!" (used as a slang, child-friendly swear word: "Mist!")
Hölle = Hell (fire and brimstone)
hell = bright
breit = wide
weit = far
fahr = drive (a car)
Flasche = bottle (think "flask")
Kaution = deposit (like a security deposit)
aktuell = recent/current
Handy = cell phone
fast = almost
bald = soon
Rat = advice
Wand = wall
Stapler = forklift
stern = star
Rente = pension
sympatisch = pleasant, likeable
nett = nice
dick = fat
groß/gross = tall/big
Dusche = shower

I find that those last 3 are the funniest. There are a lot more, but I don't want to make this post too lengthy.

So, next week I start my Orientierung (another word that belongs in the first list) and then the following week I start classes. I will not lie, I have grown much more anxious about this as the initial euphoric glow of acceptance/passing the DSH has faded. I really hope that I am able to keep up with this grad school thing in a foreign language. I already know that it will demand so much more of my time than it would for, say, a native German speaker. But, I am going to give it my best shot.

I have been trying to ride my bicycle as often as possible. I did for the past 3 days, but it is raining and cold outside today. I really like the distraction of exercise. The endorphin buzz that follows is certainly pleasant as well. I am a little bit sad that Summer is over, because now about 6 months of graylight and rain/snow await me... just as I was incorporating the bike rides into my daily routine. Maybe I will join a gym. Or maybe I will just climb the stairs in my building to the 6th floor and back over and over, potentially frightening my neighbors.

This post also marks the first time since I resurrected my blog that I've posted more than twice in 1 calendar month. Try to contain yourselves.

Success: The DSH Conclusion

Well, dear Readership... The last time I posted I was stressing out because of the all-important DSH language test. I had tutoring, I studied quite a bit, I did not sleep enough at all. But last Friday the 11th, I had 3 sections of the test. Reading, writing, listening. As I left the University auditorium where the test was held, I tried to suppress the "Good Feeling" that I had about it, because I did not want to get my hopes up.

Yesterday, the 16th, I had to go see if I had passed the first 3 sections of the test, and to see if I needed to take the "Spoken" (mündliche) portion of the test, which was held today. I did, in fact, have to take the spoken exam, in order to determine if I passed overall or not.

Well, I did it! I passed the spoken section today, and my overall result should be a DSH 2. (The scale goes from 1-3, with a 1 being a "failing" grade.) I needed either a 2 or a 3, and I got it!

This means that I've got about 2.5 weeks left of my "vacation," which is now FINALLY coming to an end. I guess I jumped the gun 2 posts ago when I got my acceptance letter. So... yes, NOW I really am going to Graduate school here in Berlin, at Humboldt Universität! Woo!

This is the result of almost 9 months of paperwork, 2 language classes, 3 language tests, with lots of sitting around and waiting in between. Pride is not something that I feel very often, but I feel it a little bit today.

It means big changes are coming, for me. No longer will I spend the majority of my day wasting time on Facebook (which, despite what I said in my last post, happened all too frequently over the past couple of weeks) or other time-wasting activities. Instead, I will be up to my eyeballs in classes in a language that is not English. Thus, it will require great effort on my part. Although I passed the DSH, that does not mean that I am "fluent" yet. I wrote a blog post a while back about what it means to be "fluent" in a language, and I know Billy has covered the theme of fluency as well...

Fluency in a different language is difficult to achieve, and even more difficult to describe. To be sure, there is a certain baseline level of knowledge... the ability to react spontaneously without thinking about a word or an adjective... but it depends entirely on the situation.

There is an election here in Germany in 10 days, so that has been dominating the news here. I watch the news every day, because it is much less dilute and sensational as American media. The one show I watch every day is called the "Tagesschau" ("Daily Show," hilariously enough). It is exactly 15 minutes long. Very short, very concise and really everything one should know about events for that day. Anyways, they have been talking about the upcoming election a lot as of late, and although I do follow what they are talking about, I do not always know the words for what the hell they are talking about. It's politic-speak. And much like English politic-speak, it is verbose and complex. In these instances, I feel much less fluent.

But then, when I hang out with regular German people my age, I have no problems. So, I expect that being in school here will accelerate this process. But I posit that fluency is impossible to achieve. Instead it is like a muscle that you build up every time you practice, but conversely it can also atrophy if you neglect it.

I can't wait to have a routine again. I have also been riding my bicycle as much as possible, which gives me a nice endorphin buzz, and allows me to better grasp the geography of (at least my area of) this enormous city. After all, if I'm going to be here for the next 2+ years, I had better know my way around, right?