Relearning German

Once upon a time, I spoke German. Oh, I wasn't fluent, but I could speak well enough to make myself understood, and to follow along in a conversation. Truth be told, my listening and reading skills were much better than my speaking skills. When I visited with our German exchange student, Lena, and her family at their home in Freising, I could follow the conversation without anyone having to translate for me. I even had to do some translation of my own. When my the tour bus company accidentally sent us a non-English speaking tour guide, I had the joy of translating his commentary about the sights we were seeing. Let me tell you - I learned both Hochdeutsch (High German, the equivalent to the Queen's English) and a Bavarian dialect. This man was a good 40 years my senior and from Austria. It was like being a non native English speaker who suddenly has to converse with someone who only speaks in Ebonics. Both the age difference and the difference in region made it to difficult for me to understand him, but somehow we managed.

Anyway, that was 6 years ago and since then I have not used my German at all...until this week.

I happened upon the website www.livemocha.com. It is a cooperative language learning website, where members help members. There are courses one can take in various languages to learn the vocabulary and basic grammatical rules, but in addition to that members can grade and correct each other's assignments, as well as converse directly with one another through an instant messaging feature. It's even possible to speak to the other members, so I've been able to have both written and spoken conversations in German!

So far it's been a great asset. My German is coming back faster than I imagined; while the courses are helpful, I find that simply speaking with a native speaker is what is helping the language to come back. I made a friend, Steffi, who lives in Germany. We IM each other, me speaking in German and she in English. We are helping each other, and since we both speak some of the other's language, we're able to help with words that aren't easily translated.

Ricky is thinking of using the site to begin to learn Mandarin. While I'm not quite that adventurous, I think I will use it at some point to learn some Spanish, which will be quite helpful at school. In the meantime, though, I am enjoying speaking German with various people from around the world.