Foreign Language Follies .
It is perhaps the ultimate love-hate relationship. Something that requires time, effort, a lot of practice, a good deal of patience and a really good dictionary. I'm referring, of course, to that seemingly eternal pursuit we all have in common: learning German. And long before we ever get a chance to utter "der, die, das, dem, den," a plethora of pitfalls ensnares the most well-intentioned among us, making us sound like babbling idiots. A simple mispronunciation or misspelling can have you asking what time Mass is at the cherry (Kirsche) and searching for church (Kirche) marmalade. A friend of mine complimented her mother-in-law on the festive Christmas dwarves (Zwerge) hanging on the door, when she should have said Zweige (greenery). Words like Zehen (toes), Sahne (cream) and Zähne (teeth) are slippery ground for hazardous accidents. Has anyone been to the dentist to have their toes or cream cleaned recently? Maybe you've ordered a chocolate kitchen (Küche) instead of chocolate cake (Kuchen) at the bakery. Or you've told people you're going to book a flight at the Riesenbüro (giant office) and stop at Burger King for a traveling (Reisen)Whopper and fries. Most of these bloopers are usually met with blank stares, laughter, or the "head scratching" effect - while Germans try to figure out what you really wanted to say. Don't worry, you're not alone, and now we've got the funny stories to prove it. So read on and remember this helpful advice: when it comes to learning German, nobody's perfect. Just grin and bear it! THE LOGIC OF IT ALL First visits to Germany can be real adventures, especially for those who don't speak the language. Tricky word pairs hit you at the most inopportune moments. Having just set foot in the country, one woman needed to use the restroom. Since Herren contained the word "her," she reasoned it must be the one for women, and in Damen she deciphered "men" - so she marched straight into the wrong rest-room. An American tourist was getting increasingly irritated as he looked repeatedly at his city map and at the street sign in front of him. Finally, he said, exasperated, "We must be lost. I just can't find this Einbahnstraße (one way street) anywhere on the map." Another new arrival had heard Germans say "Mahlzeit" (Enjoy your meal) around the city. He figured it must be a regional greeting, like saying "Hello." So he said it to everyone, including bus drivers, at all hours of the day. IT'S A MATTER OF WHERE YOU LOOK If you do your homework, you expect good results. One Munich newcomer went out to dinner armed with a list of helpful words he had studiously looked up in the English-German section of his dictionary. The time came to pay the bill and he confidently called to the waitress "Schnabel, bitte!" Her bemused reaction made him even more persistent. At this point his response was to mime what he was trying to say. "Ah," the waitress said finally, "Rechnung." Later, still puzzled, he looked up Schnabel, this time in the German-English part of the dictionary. It revealed that Schnabel means bird's bill, or beak. That isn't the only animal anecdote around. Another dictionary devotee was having a problem with moles in his backyard. So he went to a garden center to ask how he could get rid of them. But instead of using the word Maulwurf, he said Muttermal (skin moles) and was directed to the pharmacy for a remedy. Getting intonation right is not always easy, either. Even admirable attempts at communication can be tanked by something as minor as inflection. One brave soul was talking to a waiter and attempting to use his best German to round off the meal when he said, "Ich möchte einen Nachtischwein." (I'd like a dessert wine.) But when the words passed his lips, the out-of-place accents turned his request into "Ich möchte ein nacktes Schwein." He was politely ordering a naked pig. A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY A dictionary isn't always to blame. Take the case of the man who asked a hot dog vendor for Seife (soap) instead of Senf (mustard) for the wiener. The vendor brought him a well-worn piece of soap from a little sink in the back of the trailer, assuming perhaps, that the customer wanted to wash his hands before eating. Another woman thought she was asking her male neighbor if he was moving out (ausziehen). Putting the word in the reflexive, however, changed the meaning. "Ziehen Sie sich aus?" (Will you undress?), she asked him brightly. Slip-ups are not limited to the spoken language. A woman writing a letter to her German friend wanted to say that she had been to a party and got a bit drunk. But instead of writing betrunken she used ertrunken, leaving her friend to wonder how she could have written the letter if she had in fact drowned. A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE IS A DANGEROUS THING Even seasoned speakers mix up so-called "false friends," German words that are perilously similar to English ones, but have a completely different meaning. Take bekommen (receive) and werden (become), for example. Not long ago, an exchange student mixed up the two verbs, boasting to a gathering of German-American club members that in her year abroad she had become a child of Munich: Dieses Jahr habe ich ein Münchner Kindl bekommen. (This year I had a Munich-born child). Trying to figure out new words can get you in trouble, too. A woman getting a chest x-ray for an Aufenthaltserlaubnis (residence permit) was asked by the nurse, "Steht ein Niederkunft bevor?" The foreigner, with a couple years of German classes under her belt, thought, "Aha! A compound word. Let's see: Herkunft is where I come from and sich niederlassen means settle down, so it must mean something like "am I going to stay here for awhile?" She answered, "Yes." This caused the nurse to gasp aloud and call off the x-ray. Eventually it became clear: Niederkunft is a euphemism for childbirth; the nurse only wanted to know was if she was "expecting." CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR And finally, sometimes it all comes down to articles. When properly chosen they can land you in the German-speakers Hall of Fame. When wrongly picked, they can give an entirely new meaning to your sentence. A driver was exiting a parking garage, but his car died out before he could pass under the raised gate. He pressed the intercom button and declared, "Das Auto ist ausgestorben. Bitte machen Sie den Schrank auf." (My car has stalled. Please open the gate.) Nothing happened. After repeated requests the gate, at last, lifted. Later, German friends explained: die Schranke is "gate" but der Schrank means "closet," and absterben means "to stall out," while aussterben is "to become extinct." So what he had really said was, "My car has become extinct. Please open the closet."