Welcome to Wander We Go. I’m Alex.
I write about life in Zürich, travels throughout Europe, and musings on both.
All tagged Learning German
Moving to a new country is equally thrilling and terrifying. It’s an opportunity to call another country home, learn a new language, and foster your own independence. It also means you’ll be far away from friends and family, will be surrounded by a completely unfamiliar culture, and will need to build a whole new community from scratch. It’s exhilarating and exhausting and frustrating and adventurous and lonely and heart-burstingly full all at the same time.
I’m at the point. THE point. If you’ve learned a foreign language, you know this point. The point when you can understand much more than you have the ability to speak. Even if I don’t recognize every word of German that is spoken, I can generally understand the comprehensive meaning of what was said. However, when I’m left to my own devices to reproduce the words, I’m at a loss. Ugh. Welcome to phase two.
The first class was rough. Actually, rough is putting it lightly. The first class was a train-wreck. Even though I’d been in Zurich for six months - and I’m embarrassed to admit this - I hadn’t picked up any bit of the language at all. Not Swiss German, and definitely not hochdeutsch.
