2016 Dec 11^th

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.