I first became acquainted with the German language when I moved in with my host family in Dachau. My first German word was “Ananmeldung”. I had never learned German in the Ukraine, everything here was new to me. During the first three months, I kept writing new vocabulary in my exercise book when I spoke to my host family. It became my goal to learn the language and as many unfamiliar words as possible as quickly as possible.
Since the end of June I have finally been able to attend an adult education course. Before that I had written a test and it turned out that my language skills were already better than the absolute beginner level. In the course for advanced beginners, I suddenly had a teacher who only spoke German. My first thought was, “Oh dear, how am I supposed to follow the class when the teacher speaks a language I’m just learning?” But I quickly found out that it can be very valuable and helpful to learn from a teacher in your mother tongue.
Some classmates in the language course have been in Germany for five years
Nevertheless, I often have special questions about German grammar and sometimes I would like an explanation in English. For this reason, I constantly ask my German friends about the grammar – but they often don’t know the answer themselves. For one simple reason: they have been talking like this since childhood and do not need to think about the rules. I, on the other hand, despair of the articles alone. Why, for example, does it say “The girlfriend gets a gift”, but then suddenly in the dative “He gave the girlfriend a gift”? I thought “der” is the masculine article. I find that a bit crazy about German.
There is only one other Ukrainian in my language course, because only our language level was sufficient for level A 1.2. Our group is definitely international, there are people from Syria, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Romania, Serbia and from the Arab world. I was surprised to learn that some of my classmates have been in Germany for three, four or even five years and still haven’t reached an intermediate level of German. Sure, the German language is difficult to learn with its grammar and the pronunciation of long compound words. But for people who spoke English before, it’s actually much easier.
So until the end of July, I always rode my bike to my three-hour German course at 8 a.m. and felt a bit like a schoolchild again. During the breaks between classes, I met my compatriots at the adult education center in Dachau. I’ve been attending an evening course since October because I’m studying law online again during the day at my university in Kyiv. It feels like it’s getting more complicated with every hour in terms of grammar and vocabulary learning. But my goal remains that one day I want to feel self-confident and free when I speak German. By the way, my favorite word is: squirrel.