Behold, I Have Returned from Learning German

When one Duolingo session makes you a multilingual philosopher

Photo by Kinga Howard on Unsplash

Friends, family, followers—gather whatever posts you possess of your basic English conversations and monolingual Instagram captions, and lay them at the altar of my nascent polyglot superiority. I demand a sacrifice! There is a new intellectual force dominating your social media, clad in the sophisticated armor of Germanic linguistic mastery, as Goethe himself foretold.

If perchance you were wondering which of your acquaintances exchanged intimate whispers with the German language this weekend, while also conquering its legendary complexity in an assertive display of mental athleticism, it was I.

If you were wondering who among you felt the sweet satisfaction of correctly pronouncing "Eichhörnchen" on the thirteenth try, it was I. Fear not. I have returned intact—with several dozen Duolingo screenshots and the unwarranted belief that if you didn't decline a single German noun yesterday, your intellectual life is essentially worthless.

For I, your former linguistic equal and now multilingual idol, have learned German. Gaze upon my progress charts and weep.

Go ahead, scroll through this selection of my Duolingo achievements, and question the superficiality of your monolingual existence. It seems quite primitive, does it not? I even included one photo that doesn't feature my 38-day streak or a glimpse of my "Perfect Lesson" badges.

Instead, it's a screenshot of me successfully translating "Der Mann isst den Apfel"—a sentence that I assure you required way more cognitive effort than it appears, or maybe of my first German comment on Instagram that I thought looked really sophisticated. I added it to convey the majesty of language acquisition, because this experience wasn't just about me—although I look incredibly intellectual holding my phone with German text visible—it was about all of us.

That's right. I just referenced the collective human experience. I waded deep into the primordial waters of Germanic syntax, and now I'm like Heinrich Heine or Friedrich Nietzsche. Suddenly, I have strong opinions about how you should lead your linguistic life and I want to text them to you in German (with English translations, because I'm considerate like that). That English-only existence is a cultural prison, mein Freund. Get out and break free! Release that fluffy, domesticated vocabulary somewhere it can truly thrive—in actual conversation with native speakers.

I've moved beyond the world you live in. I cut the monolingual tether. It was just me, the great Germanic language family, and the Google Translate app I relied on heavily for navigation, documentation, and a podcast to take my mind off how much my brain was sweating from trying to remember whether "table" is der, die, or das Tisch. Nothing can compare to the type of awareness you feel when you realize you've been confidently saying "I am a butterfly" instead of "I speak German" for seven consecutive conversations.

Behold, my picture of my first successful German text exchange! While I've mastered several linguistic poses—such as Confidently Using "Ja" in Response to Everything, which exhibits the resilience of the learning spirit, and Nodding Knowingly While Having No Idea What Was Just Said, which suggests that swimming in a sea of incomprehension is just one of those things that make me chuckle—they weren't quite right for this occasion.

I have instead selected Screenshotting My Conversation with Hans from Munich, because there was a moment of actual mutual understanding and this linguistic landscape is just a playground of frigging wonder. You're welcome. Also, yes, Hans mostly responded in English, but I assure you that my "Guten Tag" was more authentically pronounced than your pathetic "Gesundheit" when someone sneezes.

Join me, friends. It's not too late for you. You can still be like me. I could loan you this book on German grammar that explains why there are nineteen different ways to say "the" and somehow they're all wrong in different situations. There are only linguistic storms where we're going. We could start a study group. I'll bring the flash cards. We'll begin early, of course. Shall I pick you up at, say, fünf Uhr?

That's five o'clock, by the way. See how naturally bilingual flows from my lips now?

Tschüss, peasants.

---