The Side Effects of Endorphins

An adage somewhere says practice makes perfect. I had a practice marriage where I was married to a German. Yes nothing lasts forever, but it certainly sent butterflies fluttering, in all directions in my life.

For clarification, the Title of this ramble is called the butterfly effect. Butterfly is a beautiful word in many languages. I believe it is Mariposa in Spanish. I could be wrong, but I when I use another language I occasionally am.

My ex who is German speaks better English than I do. It is amazing what you learn from someone who’s learning your own language. I I cleaned up a lot of my English, just by knowing her.

Let’s Speak a Little Pennsylvanian

It don’t matter what we learn as I should have went to the store, but I ain’t going to go.

I have no idea how I got into grad school speaking like this. It would be interesting to read my entrance essay to various schools.

Auf Deutsch

By learning another language, you learn a lot about your own language. You also got a lot of things mixed up. In English, sometimes I capitalize nouns as it’s done in German. In English it is frowned upon the use the passive voice, but in German they use it all the time.

And my German is getting incrementally better. But I need to do some speed work. That’s how I improved my running so that makes sense to me. But that might be like comparing apples to Apfelschorle.

Two of our children are completely fluent in German, as is my little sister and her family. I spend a good amount of time in Germany and I do want to speak like a native. I have a habit sometimes if I do not understand a word I obsessed on that word and do not hear what comes after. In case you did the same Apfelschorle you can’t really find in United States? It is simply apple cider and sparkling water..

In two Weeks

I’m going over to Germany to help my daughter with some childcare and visit her as well. One of the more perplexing situations for me is taking Yafa. to the playground.

It is mostly mothers with their kids at the playground. And they are all speaking German. I’m glad I wrote this essay because I should practice some playground banter in German.

I barely touched the surface here and I could probably talk about this forever. I have so many antidotes where I screwed up the language or in some case got it right. I’ve learned a little bit of Spanish along the way and not enough French. Here is a little essay I wrote earlier about the trials and tribulations over encounters with other languages..