The linguistic elevator ride

I called to order pizza last Friday night. That doesn't sound remarkable, except that year ago I probably would not have done it. For a long time our only delivered pizza came via online ordering systems, where I could take my time and plug the names of mysterious toppings into Google translate ("yes, they really mean you can order one with both corn and tuna").

A year ago I could have ordered the pizza. I knew all the words in German and would have understood all the questions, at least after asking the pizza man to repeat himself a few times. But I would not have called; I was scared.

It's humbling to go from a fully functioning adult who called government agencies and banks and - heaven forbid - Comcast all the time to being afraid to ask for a large cheese and mushroom. But now that I have progressed to a roughly 2nd or 3rd grade German vocabulary, I can do it.

When I got off the phone with the pizza place last week, Brian said, "you sound different when you speak German."
"How do I sound?" I asked.
"German."

While a real German would certainly disagree, it is true that different languages make you feel... different. This new article from the Economist is about whether our personalities and behaviors change depending on the languages we speak. The argument is that a language is more than vocabulary and grammar; it's a worldview.

I love speaking Spanish. I've always liked the way it gave me access to a culture that I wasn't born into. I have this special pass to know people and music and books that were never meant for a Midwestern white girl. Speaking German here is different - instead of being in my own culture and confidently stepping into another, I am just trying to figure out the one around me. Even a few months ago, I mistakenly ordered the wrong appetizer at our wonderful Turkish doner restaurant. I asked for the right item, but didn't speak loudly enough and the waiter misheard. It's not logical - the doner guys know us and shake our hands and bring us free desserts when we eat there. It would have been the best place ever to make a nice loud mistake. But since I know I sound funny, my voice gets unintentionally quieter.

When we were in Ireland, several people asked whether I spoke German fluently. The answer is: not yet. But how do you know when you get there? It's not like an elevator that goes up and up and suddenly a bell rings and a door opens, and you've arrived at the level of fluency. Thinking and dreaming in a foreign language are the closest thing to knowing that the language has sunk into your brain and started to live there. I slept really poorly a few nights ago and had one of those half-asleep dreams and in it, a couple of people (including me) were speaking German. That doesn't mean that I am fluent, because I don't think that I understood what I was saying in my own dream. But it's a start.

Learning German in Germany as an adult is not like riding the vertical elevator of languages to reach a higher level. It's a more lateral kind of education. Yesterday I learned all the words for parts of a tree: trunk, branches, twigs. I also learned how to say either-or and neither-nor. I don't really care about writing formal documents or reading 19th century novels, but I would really love to chit-chat with the florist on the corner, or explain to my neighbors that it's not ok to park the bike with the baby seat in Brian's spot.  Forget Goethe, this is the kind of stuff we are dealing with.

I wish there was a set of flash cards for building confidence. Maybe tomorrow I will learn the how to say "hold the pickles and hot dogs on my pizza". But not the arugula - I kind of like it.