Confessions of a German Major

It was Monday morning, and Razan greeted me, “Hi, we have a German group at 2:30. They don’t speak English. Can you do the tour?” Surely I can do it, I thought, with my usual self-confidence. I mean, there are some people I work with who give tours in several languages.

Rodrigo, for example, a 20-year-old Brazilian volunteer, gives better tours in English than I do. He also speaks Portuguese and Spanish fluently, and today he gave his first tour in Hebrew, which he has been studying for less than a year. If he can do that, surely I can do a second language, right?…

Secretly, though, I had been dreading this moment. On my application to work at Nazareth Village, I listed German as one of my abilities, and since I did not claim fluency, it was not quite a lie. And yes, I had had the German script for a few weeks now, but I was kind of hoping that my German skills would never be really needed.

I didn’t want to back down from a challenge, though, so I spent the rest of the morning stretched out on a couch in the break room studying the script, or wandering through the tour mumbling German phrases to myself.

The time came for the tour, and I had been giving myself little pep talks all day, in addition to cramming my brain with new, specific vocabulary such as “Oberflaeche,” “Schriftgelehren,” and “Aufruhr.” But only moments into the tour, my resolve broke down. I noticed people exchanging amused glances as I struggled over sentence structure, word recall, and adjective endings—pretty sure they weren’t being mean, they just felt embarrassed for me. I was feeling pretty embarrassed myself, and as I got more nervous, my errors increased… I foundered.

The group’s pastor came to my rescue. “I can translate into German if you would like…” I still wasn’t quite ready to accept defeat, so I tried again, only to collapse into nervous giggles after yet another roadblock in my speech. Yes, nervous giggles, it was that bad. “Would this be better if I just said it in English?” I asked the group. They agreed enthusiastically, a little too enthusiastically for my pride, but I had no choice but to swallow my humiliation and try to finish the rest of the tour on a positive note.

I was able to use my German to some extent during the rest of the tour—giving directions, answering questions, carrying on conversations with individuals. But when it comes down to it I just have to admit that there is a limit to my German language, and I am currently just not up to the task of appearing as an expert in front of a group.

But why, several coworkers asked (with only friendly intentions and curiosity, I know), didn’t I end up doing the tour in German? These are people who spend their daily lives alternating between Arabic, Hebrew, and English, and it shamed me to say that I am really only competent in… one language.

I am spoiled, I realize, by my own academic abilities and do-it-myself attitude. I am just not used to being unable to do something that other people can do. I can remember having this feeling of failure only a couple of other times in my life. Once was in seventh grade volleyball. As competitive as I was and as much as I enjoyed the game, my mediocrity compared to the other girls was a hard truth.

There was also the moment I gave up my dream to become a translator. I realized at some point in high school that other people in the world were learning so many more languages than I was, and I wouldn’t be able to compete.

That’s not entirely true, though. Yes, I was far behind, but let’s face it, I wasn’t working very hard in Madame Tour’s high school French. And that’s where my spoiled nature gets in the way of actually excelling: I am terrible at studying, and I often rely on natural talents rather than hard work to get me where I want to go. I love learning languages, but memorization and practice are just necessities for achieving fluency, and I can be seriously lazy when it comes to those two things.

…So these days, I’m trying to accept my lack of language accomplishment, and to feel like I’m still an ok human being in spite of it. It’s good lesson for me to be reminded of my weaknesses and shortcomings, but it is intensely embarrassing for someone who is used to doing things right, the first time, by myself.

The other day Rodrigo made an analogy for spiritual discipline and following God’s commandments, but it struck me for its truth in and of itself: In both learning languages and playing instruments, he pointed out, freedom to express yourself stems directly from your level of ability. And your level of ability results from the discipline to practice and to train yourself.

Training and discipline--> freedom of expression. …I had a flashback to standing in front of the group, seeing a mental image of where the word I wanted appeared in the script, but not being able to quite grasp it. Frozen, knowing what I wanted to say, and knowing that if I had studied just a little bit harder, I would have known how to say it too.

This reminder of my own shortcomings is a good prelude to my month in Germany. I really want that freedom to of fluency in a second language, so my goal is to speak only German the entire time I am there. Maybe the lessons I’ve learned from language challenges I’ve faced here in Nazareth will be the catalyst I need to make that really happen. Ha…Maybe.