Learning German is hard. We all know that. But back when I was in my first German class in 2012, I remember learning a few basics about grammar and verb conjugation, and thinking to myself, “Hey, maybe I’m making some progress! Maybe I’ll actually learn this ugly bastard!”
Oh silly little American nerd — I had no idea what I was in for. German keeps getting more and more complex the deeper you go, and unless you’ve been doing a perfect job of memorizing those godforsaken gender-based articles along the way, you will make mistakes every single time you open your yap and try to speak it.
But my wife, God bless her, has been 110% supportive the entire time. Never a discouraging word. Always telling me how great I’m doing, how I’m learning so much, and how I will become fluent someday. She’s fantastic like that. She still has to correct me when I make big mistakes, however, which is why our conversation back in May of 2012 went like this: We had just come home from a trip to the beach and were unpacking our bags, when suddenly I had to go poop really bad. Like, Red Alert bad. So I dropped the bags, pointed my finger to the sky and proudly announced:
ME: “Ich gehe zu scheißen!” (“I’m going to shit!”)
…to which my wife replied…
THE WIFE: “Good job. That is right, but it is very rude.”
Oh God, My Wife Is German. 
I often get very mad at non-Spanish speakers who try to speak the aforementioned language; I don’t mind the different phonetics, I don’t mind the lack of usage of extra characters, but I do mind when they don’t differentiate between masculine and feminine or destroy the grammar completely.
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My one and only complaint about Spanish Learners is those who are pretty far into their education and still pronounce “ella” as “el-uh” and not “ey-ah”. How’d they get this far doing that? I don’t even mind other words with the double L that they fudge up on, but something about “ella” being mispronounced makes me want to punch things.
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Hilarious! Well, probably not at the time, but you know what I mean…Anyway, I’m also trying to learn German (using software that firmly believes in the conversational method of teaching as opposed to teaching the rules–yeah, I’m stupid), so I feel your pain. Keep at it,though–I need to know I’m not the only one making painful and embarrassing mistakes! ;-)
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Right on Timewalkerauthor! We’ve both got a monumental task ahead of ourselves, and it’s nice to have company. Good luck to you too!
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