I’m teaching myself German. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this.

I’m (obviously) a lover of languages. I began this blog to chronicle my year abroad as part of my undergraduate degree studying Arabic, and then continued it when I travelled to Spain for 3 months to support the other half of my course. My family are French, and my parents met in India after they’d each spent several years globetrotting.

So naturally, I love languages.

But I definitely hate learning them. They are all so fascinating, and different, and clever, but they just don’t stick in my head. Grammar is so structured and sensible on paper, but my brain just can’t do it in practice, and I get mixed up between gerunds and adverbs (a worrying confusion, really) and end up spouting nonsense.

Nonetheless, I’ve begun practising German on Duolingo, and am currently (apparently) 17% fluent. Which is interesting because it keeps teaching me phrases like  “A man eats sugar with a dog”, and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t improve anyone’s fluency in a language. I’m also learning Italian which is of course waaaayy easier. And also has much easier pronunciation for my mouth, which gets very tangled in German words.

So despite my hatred of trying to understand case, I shall push on with the German, because life’s about doing what you love, even when you actually hate it.

Morals. You’re welcome.