Life is to short to learn German

a linguistic misadventure

Once I was in a bar attempting to order a cola in German. Even on the odd occasion when I think I’ve pronounced something correctly in my own head, as soon as the other person hear’s my Aussie accent their head explodes, the wiring short circuits and they can’t compute a thing I’m attempting to say. Throw crowd noise and music in the mix and I’ve got about as much chance of receiving that cola as I do of playing for Manchester United. In fact when I’ve tried to order a cola in a quiet restaurant the it still hasn’t gone well. It’s coooola no cola. As the barmen and I got stuck on repeat and bounced back and forth like a game of ‘tische tennis’ a German bloke nudged me and said ‘life’s too short to learn German’.

Don’t get me wrong, I never came to Germany expecting to speak English, I even did a course in Melbourne before I arrived. The best thing about German class is… the friends you make. I made a friend, his name was Gary and he was a plumber. One class Gary was asked to read a long passage of text. As he stumbled through the words he sweated harder than he did when he fixed an old lady’s sink and at the end we all sat in awkward silence as he buried his head in his hands on the table. We sat in tense anticipation until he sat up and muttered the words ‘you can invent a language right, but why do you have to make it so f***** hard for?’ I felt for Gary, he’d promised his wife he’d move to Munich.