The Immediate Linguist

Several years ago, I visited a friend in Berlin. It was such a fascinating city to me, full of history and different cultures all crowded into one place. I think it would be an exciting place to live some day. If I could instantaneously know a language, I think it might be German.

Mark Twain wrote an essay about "That Awful German Language," bemoaning how impossible it is to learn. I have tried to understand a little bit of the language and would agree that it is complicated. It could be so useful to just wake up one day and know it without any studying required! My husband studied German years ago and has a mind like a sponge, so he remembers a lot of it. If I knew German, he and I could converse with our German friends and, some day, maybe move to Berlin to work with our friends there. There are a lot of other countries that use German as well. It would have been so helpful to know it when I lived in Hungary! It may be a complicated language, but I think it would be worthwhile to know.