We started German lessons for our three and four-year-old as soon as we learned we’d be moving to Germany. I sat in on those lessons, mostly to make sure they were listening, but also so I could learn with them. I came in knowing, quite literally, one phrase in German- “Auf Wiedersehen,” picked up in college from watching Heidi Klum dismiss candidates from Project Runway each week. I didn’t know how to count to three. So I started from zero with my children. Frau Lich asked questions only in German, referencing pictures on her screen. Where is the cat? (Wo ist die Katze?) Where is the hot air balloon? (Wo ist der luftballon?) Is this blue or yellow? (Ist das blau oder gelb?) Even knowing that children acquire language at an extraordinary pace, I beamed every time they answered correctly, and so did Frau Lich- Sehr schön! Sehr gut! (Very nice! So good!) she’d smile in encouragement. It was a marvel how fast they were picking it up.
Now that we’re here, I’m finding that each new word helps me string together little bits of conversation I’d otherwise miss entirely. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but when I learn a new word, it seems to come up again almost the next day, and I thrill every time, at understanding or at being understood.
We arrived with suitcases only. Everything we own will be delivered in a few months, so most of what fills our house right now has come from thrift stores, temporary furniture on loan, and Ikea, a few pieces at a time. It turns out that furnishing a life this way, slowly and out of necessity, has quietly doubled as language practice.
For every kind interaction with a stranger, I ask for a new word. I bought a dress and asked the cashier how to say dress (Kleid). The next week, a woman told me, “Du hast ein schönes Kleid an” (You have a pretty dress on). She had to repeat it once before it landed, but when it did, I was euphoric. At a thrift shop, I asked how to say pillowcase. The following week, at the same thrift store, I asked the owner if she thought I could wash the stuffed animal I was buying for my children. She said yes, but put it into a pillowcase first. A pillowcase! I thought. I know that one!
One afternoon at the park, I watched a little girl yell at my son in German. Neither of us understood her. I wondered if he’d tried to play with her toy, and she was telling him not to touch it. He was also on his heels, not knowing what she’d said or why she seemed angry. I walked over and pulled up the translator app on my phone. I pointed at it and gestured for her to repeat herself. She leaned in and spoke again, and we realized she wasn’t angry at all. He had a bee (Biene) on his back and she was warning him. When she realized she’d been understood, she gave me a small nod and a grin. The next day, I was sweeping our patio and said good morning to my neighbor. He’d told us before that he was a beekeeper and had given us a few small jars of his own honey, adding Honig to our German vocabulary list. “Guten Morgen,” I called over. “Guten Morgen,” he called back, and then, with a wink, added in German, “I say good morning to my bees, too.” Bienen! There it was again! Learned just one day before from a 6-year-old (going on 7, she’d told us).
It feels like a puzzle and a treasure hunt happening in parallel. Slow ground gained, and a small buzz of electricity every time a sentence resolves into meaning. The German people I interact with seem quietly approving, and their patience and encouragement feel like a kind of grace- meeting real effort with real warmth, no matter how small.
One of the first things I looked for here was a yoga studio. I found one nearby, taught entirely in German. Years of practicing has rendered itself into its own kind of fluency. I have heard the cues teachers give in class over and over. “Deine Hand unter deiner Schulter” (your hand under your shoulder) landed the moment I heard it, partly from the words sounding similar across the two languages, and partly because it is so familiar. It felt like watching a comfort movie I’d seen a thousand times, voiced over in German. Some cues I catch nothing of. Others hand me a new word outright — slowly (langsam), in and out (ein und aus), left and right (links und rechts), deep breath (tief atmen). Each class I leave with a little more than I came in with.
When I told a colleague we were moving to Germany, he mentioned he’d taken German in high school. I asked if he had any useful phrases he could teach me. He laughed and said the one that had stuck most was “in the corner,” (in der Ecke) because of a class assignment to describe a dream house. One classmate, a sixteen-year-old boy, of course, had put a toilet in the corner of every room. “Eine Toilette in der Ecke,” had come up so many times in his presentation that my colleague never forgot it. We laughed about it and I filed the phrase away as a joke, not thinking that it would come up again.
To my surprise, in der Ecke turned out to be useful four separate times in one week. The yoga studio was around the corner. Customer service was around the corner. The tax office was on the corner. And then, most thrilling of all, during a yoga class: “Place your right hand on the left corner of your mat”- the longest collection of words I’d strung together yet and understood in real time, right (rechts), left (links), your (deine), hand (Hand) and, absurdly, corner (Ecke), all landing at once.
My first round of language acquisition felt wholly different. I moved to Costa Rica at twenty-two, having majored in Spanish. I knew quite a lot technically, and very little practically. I had enough language to competently navigate my new life, but I stalled in more complex conversations. I’d arrived with unrealistic expectations of myself. I thought having a Spanish degree meant I should immediately succeed in every conversation. When I couldn’t follow something, I wasn’t just confused, I was frustrated that so many years of study hadn’t taken me far enough to understand everything.
In Costa Rica, I expected fluency I hadn’t earned, and every gap between that expectation and reality landed as failure. This time, I arrived with zero expectations- just the ability to count slowly to twenty, name some colors, and gather stray words like treasures. There is nothing to fall short of, so every small success is pure joy.
There’s something else, too, in how I’m learning these words. They’re not just a vocabulary list- they’re attached to real people. The cashier who taught me dress. The thrift store owner who taught me pillowcase and then handed it right back to me the following week. A child who taught me bee, and a neighbor who reinforced it. Each word is connected to a person and a little story, which, I think, is why they surface again so quickly. Why finding them again feels less like retrieval and more like recognition, like running into someone I’ve met before.
I’m realizing that this time, I’m learning the language the way children learn language- one word at a time, then two strung together, then a few more. I sound like a child, and for the most part, people respond like they do to my children’s efforts- with encouragement and delight at every attempt. Most of us only get to learn a language like this, with permission to be a beginner, and to be cheered on for it, once. It’s not lost on me what a gift it is to get a second turn.
Stephanie Cork
Stephanie Cork is a consultant who partners with ALTA Language Services on client experience projects, helping turn client feedback into a smoother testing process. She’s currently based in Germany.
