Writing Privacy

Usually, for everyone’s sake, I tend to avoid the things I‘m not very good at. Sometimes they are unavoidable, and this is one time when I’ve had to stick it out.

I’ve been learning German for exactly one year. I should say ‘re-learning’, having studied it for three GCSE years at school, but what little I remember from 24 years ago has meant effectively starting from scratch.

Either way, there’s no escaping the fact that I’m terrible at it.

I’ve always found languages difficult, but attractive too. I took German as far as GCSE (16), French to AS Level (17) and Latin to the first year of my undergraduate degree. Languages were something I wanted to excel at. Yet, each in turn became a weakness that was compromising my grades and had to be dropped.

I’ve always tried to make excuses for it. Unlike some other pupils at my school, I didn’t go on trips to France, or skiing. Our family did love a trip to the Costa del Sol, so Spanish might have been helpful. It wasn’t available. Maybe the lack of need for the languages I took just dialled down the priority in absorbing them.

At times, I would also think – look, you were learning multiple languages alongside eight other subjects. Of course it was going to be hard. Of course, not all of it was going to stick.

But those excuses would eventually get unpicked and debunked.

In 2007, I got a job in Geneva and moved to Switzerland. I was a researcher by then. I had motive. I had purpose. I had six years of French in the locker. Surely, I would pick up the language again and be fluent in no time?

Alas, no. After a year of dabbling, the university’s annual summer language school placed me at B2 – upper intermediate – after nine intense weeks. Not awful, but not brilliant. I struggled my way through.

By contrast, somebody else who had recently joined the department and decided to take the final three weeks of the summer school placed straight in at C2 (native speaker). That’s closer to where you needed to be to pass the written and oral requirements to continue in post.

So, hitting a ceiling in French (admittedly a low one), along with some chronic health difficulties, brought an end to my time in Switzerland in 2009.

Fast-forward almost 10 years, and I’m dating a German lady. It felt written in the stars a little, though not quite like falling in love with a German band in late 2000 just after dropping the subject. (That would at least have given me something to associate with and talk about.)

For six years of our time together, I’ve made no attempt to touch the language again. Partly because there was no immediate need, and partly because there was no sign of us moving to any German-speaking country or spending any extended time there. Covid put a long hold on travel, and there were work, health and life concerns that dominated the landscape.

That changed last year when I knew I was ready to propose. The German side of the family don’t have a lot of English. It became a bit of a responsibility at that point.

So, I signed up for Duolingo, and quickly became captivated by the short exercises and quirky characters. I paid for a year’s premium to make sure I use it, and I certainly have done that, averaging slightly under an hour per day and amassing almost 300,000 XP (the app’s competitive currency).

I do find German hard. The regular verb-to-the-end construction and three genders for nouns remind me of Latin (and there is no way I would have contemplated trying to speak that). Prepositions change around subject, object, genitive and dative. There are particular nuances to the way expressions are formed. Talented linguists also find German uniquely challenging, so there is some small solace in that.

The challenge for me is that my partner likes everything to be correct (which is fine), but I make far too many mistakes and don’t remember nearly enough – and then get frustrated at those shortcomings – for that to be a sustainable endeavour.

The good part about the app is that regardless of whether I’ve had a good or bad day, sober or drunk, good or ill, fair weather or bad, it has become routine. I just do it. I don’t even think about it anymore. And it’s completely under my control. My choice, my routine, my neuroses, my problem.

The relevance of the themes for my needs vary quite wildly – from hosting dinner parties one week to immigration admin the next, to cheating in a school classroom the week after. I find certain things more difficult or more tedious than others. But I grind it out. That’s part of the commitment.

My hope has been to chip away on the app, to practise bits and pieces regularly, and to trust that the number of hours might somehow organically sprout some improvement. It’s not a great method, but it is a method.

A year on, I wonder if this too has been in vain. Aside from a mixed bundle of vocab (and the way the exercises repeat should help more to stick than is happening), I’m not really learning a lot. I still struggle listening to German songs or radio. Every time I try to compose a sentence, I freeze as I desperately try and work it out before I start.

There are some good accounts of the limits of apps and the unhealthy behaviours the gamification features can elicit. Someone wrote that Duolingo was turning him into a monster.

But even knowing all this, I still cannot quite get over the fact that I’ve put in around 360 hours and I’m barely scraping A2 (upper basic) standard. I recently re-took a test from the Goethe Institut that I first attempted six months ago. I scored 16/30 then, and 19/30 now. That’s not progress.

I hate being this crap at something, and I wouldn’t put myself (or anybody else) through it unless I felt I had to. I know that my ceiling probably isn’t far above where I am now, and those 360 hours per year could be spent on something more productive – or anything other than building more frustration.

But it’s too important just to give up. I somehow manage to be both stuck, and sticking it out. Hence, I let off steam and we go again.