Word Salat

Many of you may be wondering how my Deutsch is going - but you have been polite enough not to ask, so in return, I thought I might share a bit.

I seem to be incapable of producing the 'ch' sound.  Every time I say 'Ich' or 'nicht' or any word that requires you to clear your throat simultaneously while speaking, one of the kids looks at me and says, "No Mom, chhhhhhhh."  I reply "kkkkk".  "No", they say, chhhhhhh".  Unfortunately, this means there is no detectable difference between words such as 'kuchen' and 'kuken'.  During the Christmas holidays, I accused my children of eating too many baby chickens (kuken).  I meant 'kuchen'.  They found it very funny and could honestly say that they hadn't had any kuken at all...  They have a friend named 'Nick', which is truly unfortunate. (In German, there are two main negations.  One is 'kein', the other is 'nicht'.)

People do seem to understand some of what I say.  I come home from the grocery store with mostly the correct items.  I have learned a few of the most necessary terms for dog owners, such as 'maedchen' (girl), 'junge' (boy), 'freundlich' (friendly), 'angst' (fear), 'rasse' (breed).  Most of my chatting has centered around either groceries or dogs, so these vocabularies are slowly improving.

The worst trouble (other than actually making the correct sounds, which is nearly impossible, and I may just give up getting that right), is that I don't seem to be able to remember words very well.  Acquiring new vocabulary seems to be incredibly difficult for me - and may be related to my increasing inability to remember English words.  I also have always been notoriously incompetent when it comes to remembering names, which is pretty much the same thing.  As usual, numbers come easily.  Ask me J's teacher's phone number.  The house number of his friend L, or his other friend E.  What bus does Z take to school?  I see a number and it stays.  Seemingly forever, often long past usefulness.  But words?   I hear them, or see them, and an instant later, they are all fuzzy, kinda like those letters you have to type to prove you aren't a robot (does anyone else find those impossible to read???)

I find that some people are a whole lot easier to talk to than others.  One of my favorite people to converse with is L's mom  (friend of J).  She listens carefully to what I say, and then repeats my sometimes broken German into complete sentences for me.  Oh, how I wish everyone would do this. I am going to try to remember this when I speak to people who are learning English.   I guess it is exactly what one does with small children... perhaps that is partly why kids learn language so easily?

The upside, is that I am a really good listener, auf Deutsch.  I don't interrupt people, or steer the conversation onto some tangent, then another, then another (a friend in grad school used to call me 'Tangent Janice'...).  I just smile and nod and look sympathetic or laugh...

Perhaps another skill I could try to transfer...