Ich Leibe Deutsch

In the 4th grade, I fell in love with German. My classmate Will was half-German; he was a blonde beanpole. His dad spoke German fluently, of course, and he came to our class one afternoon to teach us basic vocabulary. We learned how to count to 20, and to this day, my favorite number in German is 20, "zwanzig." He taught us colors; I liked red and green, "rot" and "grun." (Grun should have an umlaut.) He taught us goodbye, "Auf Weidersehen."

Something lit up inside me that day, and I don't know why. What makes people attracted to one culture or another? In my experience, nearly everyone hates German, and nearly everyone loves French or Italian or some other Latin language. While many people think German is cacophonous and harsh, I think it sounds utterly beautiful. Forget about soft trills and Romantic cadences; I like the structure of German, the dropped R's, and S's that sound like Z's.

Just listen to the opening monologue of Mostly Martha; it is wonderful. Or wunderbar.


Thing I'm thankful for: sunlight and breezes