I guess the first thing I should address is why I’ve picked German to learn, especially given that I’m living in Denmark! Before even leaving for Copenhagen, I registered for language courses and decided I would make a real effort to learn the language. I’m really glad I did, it was a lot of fun and I met some great people. Learning a language as an adult was a completely different experience to learning in high school. I can’t believe how well I did. I think the main difference was that I was really enjoying learning. Having fabulous teachers absolutely helped, but I still think my pure enjoyment of using a part of my brain that had been dormant for years was the real key to my success.
The few us of who stayed til the end of Danish class, and our great teacher yielding her pointing stick.
So why not stick with Danish? Well, there are a few reasons. As great as my language is in class, it is not very useful in the real world. Getting Danes to actually speak with me in Danish has been almost impossible. The only success I’ve had is when buying bread. “Hej! Jeg vil genre har speltbrød. Mange tak!” I don’t understand their replies, but assume they are offering me a bag and receipt, so I just say ‘Nej tak’ and all goes smoothly. Everywhere else they either reply in English immediately, or as soon as I try to get them to rephrase what they just said.
There are a few reasons why it is so difficult to speak Danish with Danes. From the age of 15 or so they all speak English. They love it when I try to speak Danish, they think it is adorable! But clearly they have a better handle on English, so they want to save me the hassle. Another reason for ditching Danish is I’m not sure how useful it is going to be long-term. There are five million people in Denmark, and Danish isn’t spoken much in any other country that I’m aware of. I’m here for the rest of 2014, but I doubt I’ll be living here again, so learning the language may not be the best use of my time.
If I wasn’t going to continue with Danish, I wanted to try to learn another language. It has been such a great challenge, learning a language is not something I want to give up. So why German? I’ve spent a lot of time in Germany this year visiting friends, mainly in Hamburg and also a couple of trips to Berlin. I loved Berlin the first time I visited in 2011, despite the fact it rained the whole time, and I loved it more this time around. I’m still not sure if I prefer Berlin or Hamburg, but both have everything I love about Melbourne and so much more. So I like the country, I like the people, they don’t all speak English like in Denmark, and they speak German in other countries too! According to Wikipedia around 100 million people speak German. That is rather more than five million!
Me checking out The Wall on the Berlin Wall earlier this year.
Another motivating factor in choosing German is their education system. I couldn’t believe it when a friend told me it is virtually free to study in Germany, even for non EU! Some provinces have totally free eduction, and most of the others might charge 200 – 500 Euros a semester. They also have a massive range of scholarships. And they have such a variety of degrees. I want to pursue a career in development economics, and there is a much larger range of courses to choose from than back home. So it would be cheaper for me to do a more relevant Masters in Germany than Honours in Australia. The Masters would be in English, but I think it would be nice to speak the language of the locals.
It was a close call between learning German and Spanish, but I am happy with my decision. I can always tackle Spanish next!
Language, Learning, Laughs 