So I’m trying to learn German.  It isn’t logical since, living here in North America, the sensible second language for me to try to pick up is Spanish.  But the illogical motivation is way stronger then the logical one and I know when to give in.  It’s not just a certain someone I know.  I get intensely curious about a thing and then it becomes an obsession.  Photography was like that.  And computers.  Everyone who knows me knows how I get when something grabs my attention. 

German is a puzzle.  In a way that Spanish just isn’t.  I was down in Mexico last year for the first time and while I could barely speak a word of it, I found it wasn’t too terribly hard to intuit the meanings of some words and phrases.  In part, living here in North America, I have been exposed to a lot of fractured Spanish.  Amigo.  Gracious.  Por Favor.  Dónde está el baño?  But I also found I could read things like signs down there pretty well, even for words I would have had no clue about. 

For example.  It was hot down in Puerto Vallarta and I wore my sandals a lot as I strolled through the town with my camera.  They were a new pair…I’d bought them down in Key West just a few months previously.  So I was still breaking them in.  I noticed one morning I was starting to get a blister on one heel.  The last thing I wanted was something to keep me from walking around comfortably, so I started looking around for a place that sold bandages ("patches", as I’m told the English call them…).  The local convenience store chain, OXXO, which was everywhere down there, didn’t seem to have any.  I wandered around for a bit and then I saw a little store tucked in the middle of a block with a sign above it that read: Farmacia.

Hmmm…sounds like "Pharmacy"…  And so it was.   I wandered in and saw a shop that differed little from any small in town U.S. drugstore I’d ever seen, other then some of the brands were unfamiliar.  Now then…let me go to Google and get a quick translation of pharmacy in German.  Ah…Apotheke… 

Well…actually I think I’d have figured that one out too.  But the point is many common Spanish words sound like English words.  I don’t need that.  No necesito que.  German, not so much.  And I’ve spent my entire life with Spanish hovering in the background.  Half my family tree is in California.  I am no where near conversant in Spanish, but its sounds are familiar to me.  Beautiful even.  German just sounds…odd.  And the rules are confusing.

There are two words for "you".  Sie and Du.  And you better get the context of using them right or you’ll offend someone.  Sie is the more formal.  When in doubt with Germans, use the more formal language.  So Sie is "you".  Except when it isn’t.  Like "excuse me"…Entschuldigen Sie.  I think that’s you excuse me…but I’m not sure at this point.  And…just look at that damn word.  Entschuldigen.  Try to pronounce it just by looking at it.  Go ahead.  Then there is this little oddity: Do you understand?  Verstehen Sie?  I understand.  Ich verstehe.  Verstehen.  Verstehe.  It’s the same word.  But it isn’t.  Or it is but only sometimes.  I see that e – en difference in a lot of German words and I think one pronunciation is when it’s about you and the other when it’s about someone else.  Why?  Just…why?

I’m not complaining.  I’m…puzzled.  And my head just wants to crack it now.  There’s a certain someone down in Florida who I would love to impress by speaking a little German to him next time I see him.  But that’s almost beside the point now.  How the hell do Germans understand each other?  I’m not complaining.  It’s bewildering and I won’t have that.  At some level the rules must make sense to them.  I just don’t get it. 

But that’s where you always start from.  Not getting it.  I have some language lessons on my iPod that I’ve been going over.  And over.  And over.  Two weeks now and I’m still stuck on lesson one.  But I made a conceptual breakthrough of sorts the other day.  I’m not so much learning a new language at this point, as learning some new words.  The language is in the rules…the syntax…the grammer.  I’ll learn that when I get enough new words into my head that I can play with it. 

It’s like music isn’t the notes…it’s the melodies and harmonies.  It’s the song.  I already had two ways to say "excuse me" in English.  Excuse me.  Pardon me.  Same thing, mostly.  Yes, there are shades of difference.  But there it is.  Two ways of saying "excuse me"  Now I have a third way.  Entschuldigen Sie.  Three ways to say it.  Two of them are English, and one is German.  But it’s the same thing.  The point is, you don’t learn the words by linking them to other words (what’s German for ‘excuse me’…?).  You have to link them in your brain to meanings.  Imagine yourself in a situation where you mean to say something…(excuse me)…and then say the new word until it digs into that meaning along with the other words that you know, that express that thing…(Entschuldigen Sie).  Then you’ve got it.  The word that is. 

Language comes later.  Language is how the words make sentances…how they link together to tell you a story.  A language is a way to tell a story.  Entschuldigen Sie.  Verstehen Sie English?  Please…because I only know a few crumbs of German…