2016 Dec 11th
After listening
to Reince Preibus trying to worm his way out of acknowledging Russia’s playing
about in our election, I decided to reach into the memoir bag. Here is my disastrous
experience learning German. From “And Yet Again…”:
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
My father’s
ancestors were German. When they immigrated to Pennsylvania they were called
Pennsylvania Dutch, the “Dutch” was a corruption of Deutsch—for German. When
they got here, like most immigrant groups they stayed to themselves and kept
their customs and their language. In fact, the historical record shows that old
Ben Franklin was very upset about this “race” coming into Pennsylvania and
corrupting the English language. I guess times don’t change at all—think Miami!
You would suppose
that I might have had some genetic predisposition to find German grammar easy
to learn. I did not. “You have your wife a ring bought,” is the German
equivalent of “You have bought your wife a ring.” There are far worse examples. I first took
German when I transferred from one college to another and discovered that the
college to which I transferred required two years of a modern foreign language.
I thought I might want to go to graduate school, and if I did I would have to
have a reading knowledge of German. Naturally, I signed up for German. I
considered Spanish, but I had two years of Spanish in high school and I managed
to learn very little Spanish. I have always been able to pass courses and earn
a respectable “C” without learning much of anything. It is a skill I share with
some high government officials and with my sons.
My German
instructor was a sixty-something woman who was very enamored of German
“Kultur,” culture that is. Many of the men in Miss Bachmann’s class were
veterans of WW 2 and their experiences had not led them to become wild about
German kultur. Even so, as you will see, it was an easy sell. Miss Bachmann
taught her class recitation fashion. The first twenty minutes or so were
devoted to instruction in German syntax, grammar and other exotica; the last
thirty minutes were for translations. She would start around the class and we
would translate the German text that we had been assigned for homework. You
kept translating until Miss Bachmann had formed an opinion of how well you
understood what you had read. Fortunately, she did this by going right down the
rows. We were seated in alphabetical order. This made it easier for her to
identify us and to give us a grade. It also let us figure, out a little in
advance, what section of text we would be called on to translate. By whipping
out the little pocket dictionary we could translate enough to survive even if
we’d never looked at the assignment before. We had learned that if someone,
usually a vet, brought up a question about German customs, or German history,
or German anything which would give Bachmann an excuse to get into German
sociology, recitation was cancelled for the day. (Bachmann also taught the
introduction to sociology class. There she was known to pause occasionally and
instruct the class on some of the peculiarities of German grammar. It was an
interesting college; I have written about it elsewhere.)
I eventually
graduated from that college and managed, as was my wont, to have a “C” average
through two years of German while learning very little. I did develop a
splendid German accent which helped me perform the role of a German professor
in, “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”
When I started
graduate school the PhD language exam was of no concern; it was impossibly far
into the future. Well, futures have a way of becoming imminent if you wait long
enough. After I got my master’s degree and passed my PhD comprehensive exams my
advisor told me to sign up for the language exam and get it out of the way.
Sure, I’ll do that.
I discovered that
the test was really very simple. You were given two pages of German and a very
generous amount of time to translate it into English. Moreover, you could bring
a dictionary into the exam with you. I flunked it anyway. I was accustomed to
failing things in my previous academic incarnation but not anymore. Graduate
students rarely get “C”s let alone “D”s and “F”s. A “C” is a failing grade in
most graduate schools. If you get more than two “C”s in your coursework you
will probably be terminated from your graduate program. If you fail your
doctoral comprehensive exam you are gone. There are no do-overs. It isn’t
written anywhere; it’s just common knowledge.
Fortunately for
me the language exam was seen differently. My advisor was very casual about
this. “Just take it again next time it’s offered,” he said. OK, I’ll do
that—and maybe I’ll do some reviewing as well. The exam was given three times a
year by the German department. I got some vocabulary flash cards and tried to
learn what was on them. I became very familiar with those German words that I
saw over and over again but I didn’t learn their English equivalents. I flunked
the exam again. That’s not all. I flunked it a third time. Keep in mind they
didn’t give us the same couple of pages to translate each time we took the
test. I was getting desperate. I was finishing my dissertation. I had a job
offer. I had to pass this damned test!
I decided to get a tutor. I called the German
department and told them I’d like to hire a tutor for a few hours a week. They
gave me a name and a price I could handle because I had to. I was to meet the
tutor, a part-time faculty member, in her office the next day. I arrived
promptly at the appointed hour and met Miss Hannah Stern. I recounted my
pathetic previous attempts to pass this exam, and how important it was that I succeed on
this try. We got down to business at once. She asked me how much German I‘d
had. I told her I’d had two years of college German but that it was some time
ago and that I hadn’t done very well in the class. She gave me a German novel
and told me to begin translating. I stumbled through the first sentence and
Miss Stern took that novel away and gave me a textbook instead. This was much
easier. I got through the first three sentences when Miss Stern said, “…and you
have had two years of German?” She was
incredulous. Then she said, “We have a lot of work to do.”
The next exam was
six weeks away. The tutor was engaged three times a week. I went back to the
flash cards with renewed intent. That didn’t last long. I hated the damn
things. This seemed to require not so much understanding as rote memorizing. I
gave it my best shot and waited for doomsday. Exam time came soon enough. Fraulein
Stern (She insisted that we communicate in German) wished me “viel gluck,”
which is, very approximately, “good luck.” I needed it.
The exam was just
as it had been on its three previous incarnations. I took the full three hours
and was one of the last to leave. We were allowed all the time we needed but
the examiners could not imagine anyone needing more than three hours to
translate two pages of simple German. We were not given a selection from Kant’s
“Critique of Pure Reason.” Now I had to
wait. I was not optimistic Oh well; the results wouldn’t be out for a week so
I’d be anxious for a week and after that I’d be depressed.
The day after the
exam my phone rang and it was Miss Stern, “Mr. Klugh,” she said, “I have called
to tell you that you have passed your German examination.”
“That’s
wonderful,” I said, “but I thought the results wouldn’t be posted until next
week.”
“That’s true,”
she said, “but I corrected your paper and I thought you’d like to know the
results now.”
I don’t remember
the rest of that conversation but rest assured “danke” was very prominent in
it.
It has been more than
60 years since I passed my German exam and got my PhD. I have never, in all
that time, not even once, needed this “tool of research” and that is a very
good thing.