German language

I do a lot of writing.  I write white papers, brochures, presentation texts, speeches.  You name it.  Working on a contract basis for the past couple of years, I have had the pleasure and challenge of writing in many different voices for many different audiences.  It is a great mental exercise.

Today, I had an experience which turned out to be an exercse which I recommend to any of you who write — for fun or for a living.

Take a walk with someone who does not speak your language.  Friend of a friend, colleague of a colleague — it shouldn’t take too long to find someone who has at best rudimentary skill in your language.

I did this with a dear friend just this afternoon.  She is trying to learn French.  I work with French-speaking companies and have been fluent (or nearly so — I’ll let others decide that) for most of my life.  I learned while a student at a school where the rules were strict: only the target language is spoken in the classroom.  This rigorous discipline enabled me to become fluent in French and conversational in Russian, German, and, yes Latin.

We took a walk through a local nature preserve — the Moncrieff Cochran Bird Sanctuary — and I decided to conduct the walk entirely in the target language.  It was fascinating as a mental exercise for me as a writer.

My student had a very small vocabulary, but nature provided plenty of examples to begin to expand that: leaf; bird; grass; rock; sky; green; blue; grey.  I learned quickly that I had to cut away complexity and embellishment: only use the present tense; avoid language that exposes the “exceptions.”  Keep it extremely simple.

How refreshing.  How obvious.  What a powerful exercise.  And how pleased was the student who, immersed in the language for a couple of hours, felt so much more confident with her new language.

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