as of late

I have been noticing an increase in the number of times per day that I get this question:

“you have been living in Germany for three months and you don’t speak any German?”

ahem.  excuse me.  I know some German.  I can say hello and goodbye and excuse me and thank you and “can I please have a baguette?” quite well.  E and I just learned how to say “I don’t speak German” last week too.  apparently “sprechen sie Deustch” means “do you speak German?” and that doesn’t really make sense.

we tried at the beginning to learn a lot of words and use them at stores and restaurants.  but more often than not people immediately knew that we didn’t really speak German and they would switch into English.  something about the way we say the words must not sound authentic or maybe it’s a facial expression thing.  I’m banking on the facial expression.  I mean why else would people laugh when I say nein?  how could I be saying that wrong?

eventually I just stopped trying.  so no, I don’t speak any German.  I regret not learning more of the vocabulary but I am convinced that you really need to enroll in classes or get a tutor to entensively learn and master a foreign language.  the concept of just “picking up” a language is outside the realm of my understanding at this point.