More Fill in the Blanks / Mehr Lückenprüfungen

Today was my Schlusstest (final exam) for my German course. We still have a week of classes, but for some reason, the test was now. Last week, Herr Baumgartner gave us a list of topics that would be included on the test. It was a mile long, almost all very technical grammatical things, with conjunctions and adjective endings and vocabulary and all sorts of verb conjugations (regular, irregular, present tense and past perfect). Peter could not believe how many different topics were going to be included. That did not boost my enthusiasm at all, to say the least. And worst of all, it was going to be another fill-in-the-blank test. Ugh.

I studied. I don't know why I felt compelled to study so much. After all, what does this test really mean in the big scheme of my life? Absolutely nothing. It's not as though anyone will ever care how I did on my German exams here in Salzburg, and yet I found myself falling into college-student-mode where an exam matters very much. And so I studied some more.

All language learning is frustrating. I actually find German somewhat easier than when I studied Spanish. German usually seems more logical than Spanish and there are so many connections with English. When I am stuck trying to think of a word, I usually try Germanizing an English word. Want to go jogging? Just say jogging (with a ch sound for the j). Want to stop a running child? Just shout stop (with a sh sound for the s)! And if you need to take a test, well, just call it a test! These really are German words.

But there are also crazy things about German that even made Mark Twain verrückt (insane). Why does the word sie mean her, you (one person you don't know very well), you (a group of people you don't know very well), AND them? And why does ihr mean her but also yours (for that individual or group you don't know very well) and theirs? I mean, really. And why can the be der or das or die or sometimes den or dem depending on how it is used in the sentence. Give me some Esperanto, please.

The test today was hard with four pages of blanks of various sizes. The smaller the blank, the harder the answer, at least I think so. But, do you know what? Even with sie, sie and sie and ihr, ihr and ihr I was able to make sense of most of those blanks.

Now if only I could complete a fill-in-the-blank test when I'm trying to order something at the deli counter in Spar, life would be grand!