"You" versus "you" and other language issues

Ahhh, the German language.  I have, of course, never thought so much about language as I have this year, nor fully appreciated my native-tongue proficiency:  in English I simply have a vague notion in my head, I open my mouth, and out it comes, fully formed and usually comprehensible.

While it's exciting and rewarding to be able to (more or less) communicate and converse in a language I learned only in the second half of my life, I miss the spontaneity and humor of being able to just speak without thinking... Possibly I'm sort of slowly getting there in German, but here is a partial list of what slows me down!!

Sie vs. du:
OK, this shouldn't be so hard, since I did learn French as a child, and second person singular has the same choices as in German.  Formal "you" is Sie, and informal "you" is du, but I realize I never really spoke much French outside a classroom, where it was abundantly clear who was "vous" (the teacher) and who not.  In real life, of course, it's not so clear when and if to use the formal or informal case, and at what point you can change.  To any stranger older than 16 or so, it's generally Sie.  But actually not so clear... since in my gym everyone calls each other du whether they've ever seen them before or not, and in my choir all the singers call each other du, but the director is definitely Sie (and he uses Sie for most of us, but du for some he seems to know better...)

by Dale Askey, from http://bibliobrary.net/2010/01/04/when-to-use-du-and-sie/

This chart is only partially a joke.  Other than maybe the last choice box, it's actually pretty relevant.  For example, the blood-relations/saying-du-to-the-spouse thing was a bit weird for me last weekend when I met a bunch of Thomas's father's cousins (without Thomas there, he's in India), all in their 70s or so, whom I'd never met before.  I tried very hard to avoid saying "you" in any form before I figured out what they were calling me, and that was also not clear.  I think they didn't really know how to address me either.  Argg.

[I have a theory related to this:  I think the language differentiation in the forms of "you" may explain the initial reserve of most Germans upon first meeting you, at least compared to the (possibly excessive and sometimes insincere) early friendliness of North Americans.  If one is used to keeping people at a distance with Sie, and only switching to du upon getting to know a person quite well, maybe that  translates into holding back on the heart-to-heart small talk until one qualifies as a quite familiar acquaintance, if not friend.
My choir experience supports this.  In the first few months of rehearsals, the other singers were cordial but mostly ignored me.  Only after the intensity of Christmas rehearsals -- and maybe also due to my German getting better -- did people start joking and chatting with me.  Now, I banter
(as well as I can) with many of them and feel like I have made several good friends there.  It's great, but it took longer to feel part of the gang than it would have at home, I think.]

Gender of nouns:
My father-in-law used to have a joke for me when I would continually confuse the three genders of nouns:
"Das(s) die der Teufel hole.  Ein Wort, drei Artikel!"
The first sentence roughly translates to "May the devil take them" but it sounds like, as the second sentence says, "one word with three articles!"... (For those in blissful ignorance of gendered nouns, the three forms of nominative "the" are das [neutral], der [masculine] and die [feminine].)

from http://mosaicmercy.org/german-articles-chart/

It's hard enough trying to remember the gender of words, but then you throw in the case usage on top of that and I really have to (or used to) think hard to get the simplest articles or adjective endings correct.  For example, take a word I use all the time, like the U-Bahn.  If it's the subject of my sentence, say
Die U-Bahn ist grossartig  ("The subway is great")
then, being feminine, there is a die in front of it.
However, people usually end up talking about the train in the dative case since it often follows the word mit, as in
Ich fahre mit der U-Bahn ("I'm taking the subway" or literally, "I'm traveling with the subway")
and then there are the bazillion people talking on their phones while riding the train, and often saying something like
Ich bin jetzt in der U-Bahn ("I'm in the subway now")
both of which put a der in front of U-Bahn because UNFORTUNATELY the dative form of die is der!  Which gets me very confused since then when I'm trying to speak quickly I remember hearing "der U-Bahn" a lot, and think it must be a masculine word, so I over-correct and say something like
Ich fahre mit dem U-Bahn (wrong) because the dative form of der is dem...  Arrrg.
 (I won't go into more details of grammar -- enjoy looking it up if you want...)

Separable verbs:
For the most part, I've made my peace German grammar -- most rules of gender, case, and the various adjective endings which depend on them are reasonably logical.   (Although I have to say here that "n-nouns" drive me crazy -- those are the masculine nouns that decline according to case, usually with the same ending that would also make them plural...)
BUT, really: I de- verbs that separate, delaying the prefix that contains all the subtly important information, leaving the root of the word dangling precariously by itself with no meaning of its own, until you finally come to the very end of the sentence -test!
 [With apologies to Mark Twain...]

Prepositions:
These are not so surprising, probably.  Listen to any non-native speaker of English and you are also likely hear mixed up prepositions.  They're very specific to each verb they accompany in each language.  Here, for example, are a couple literal translations of some German verb-preposition combinations:  "I'm happy over the gift", "He's interested for modern art", "Her house lies in Maple Street" (which does not mean it's blocking traffic).  Similarly to English, there are no rules to clarify which preposition follows which verb, so you just have to memorize the combinations if you haven't grown up with it.  Ugh.  It's humbling to know I sound this funny when I'm speaking German but I just can't think of / about / over the right word fast enough.

Long words:

The Jack Daniels ad has a 21-letter word warning you
to drink responsibly

So much has already been said, and made fun of, over German compound words I won't elaborate here.  (Although did you see the news story a couple weeks ago about Germany dropping it's longest word?  They thought 63 letters was pushing it.)
In some ways I see now that compound words make a lot of sense, and allow for very specific descriptions.  However, for reading, it's slow work (although sometimes amusing) to try to figure out where one word stops and the next begins.

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I could go on (and on...) but these are my main stumbling blocks.  Every so often, especially when I get frustrated, I read again Mark Twain's essay called "The Awful German Language", which is a fabulously funny treatise on his struggles with the language when he studied in Heidelberg.  I can only be a pathetic echo of his wit, and his writing is all the more funny for being so true.  (When Thomas first gave me a printed copy of the essay, I literally fell to the floor with tears rolling down my cheeks.)

Here is my favorite quote from Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language":
Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, sie, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six -- and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.


I hope this little riff of mine has not offended anyone, and my apologies if so.  Writing in my native language provides here a bit of a release valve to the obstruction of often feeling tongue-tied in German.  But... I'm not so bad as all that, and indeed in the right circumstances I can even have a roughly normal conversation!

Ehrlich gesagt, (truly said), it has been a delight and a privilege to learn to speak German here in Germany.