Je ne comprends pas.

Like most students these days, I had to study a foreign language in high school. My first choice probably would have been German, but my school only offered Spanish and French. I chose French and studied it for two years in high school; when I got to college, I studied the same two years all over again. It was never easy for me, but I muddled through it and got passing grades.

Several years later, I decided to try learning German on my own. I figured I wouldn’t get very far, because I didn’t have anybody to practice with, and because German is supposed to be such a tough language to learn (three genders, four cases, and tons of contradictory rules). I started with Barron’s Foreign Service Institute German, and later picked up Pimsleur’s comprehensive German I.

Fortunately, it looks like I was wrong. We went to Germany this summer with friends, and we weren’t always in large towns where English flowed freely. And Mike paid me a terrific compliment while we were there: “If it weren’t for Ben, I don’t think I would have eaten or peed all week.”

Hey, I’ll take compliments where I find ‘em.

I attributed my relative success in German to a few things:

• No matter how good your teacher, you just don’t get enough listening or speaking practice in a classroom, unless the other students are a lot more advanced than you.
• Pimsleur is the best method EVER for learning languages. It’s exactly the way you learned to speak English. (BTW, these aren’t cheap, but check your local library to see if they keep a copy of the CDs or tapes.)
• The internet lets me listen to honest-to-God foreign radio programs spoken by honest-to-God native speakers.

We had such a great time in Germany that we’re planning on a similar trip to France in the summer of 2007. So armed with my new-found language tools, I start brushing up on my French. This oughta be easy now, right?

Oh man, how wrong could I possibly be?

Turns out German, for all its massive quantity of grammar rules, actually follows its own rules. It’s phonetic. All nouns are capitalized always. The only diacritical mark is an umlaut, and it only ever shows up over three vowels.

French has half as many rules, but it doesn’t follow any of them consistently. The pronunciation is screwy, and I can’t keep an accent grave separate from an accent ague. And don’t get me started on cedillas. Who in their right mind could possibly think this is more sensible than German?

Ich möchte ein bier.