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When do you master a language? Even a foreign language? Or is it the language that masters the speaker? German words are skilled at giving us the run-around. The art of learning to a language like a native speaker lies in being ready for a masked ball – and taking pleasure in a feast of the senses. By María Cecilia Barbetta

When I lived in Argentina, by hook or by crook I wanted to attain perfection in the German language. Back then, I was not only downright obsessed with this absurd desire, but at the same time a victim of the mistaken belief that with the necessary hard work – after having attended a German-Argentinean school – I would become completely skilled in the foreign language in the course of German as foreign language studies, yes, I would one day “master” it.

I had convinced myself that the processes required were controllable. I liked the idea that German grammar is based to the most part on clear, logical structures and mechanisms. German is a safe bet, practically mathematics, and not a mystical one-times-one – that is what I thought. I had no idea. My perspective was lacking in one thing in particular: a horizon. I had never left Argentina before; had never had a chance to visit Germany even once.

In 1995, half a year after graduation, I make good for this thanks to a four-month scholarship from the Goethe-Institut. On my arrival in Munich, a new and yet somehow familiar world opened itself to me. I was so excited I didn’t know where to go first. I decided on the Deutsche Museum, probably the name seemed like a promise to me; the embodiment, the quintessence of the culture that I had committed myself to hide and hair.

I studied the Herzlich-Willkommen-im-Deutschen-Museum flyer, which, given to me along with my entrance ticket seemed like the ultimate ticket to a second home, whose fabulous inspection would stretch from a ground floor, a basement, a first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth floor.

Fourteen years have passed since that visit. I now live in Berlin; last year my first novel, written in German, was published. A few months ago I travelled to Munich as I was invited to read from by debut novel as part of a literature festival. I took the opportunity to visit the Deutsche Museum a second time. Clutching a new Herzlich-Willkommen leaflet, I walked up the stairs to the third floor, which has housed the Mathematical Cabinet since 1999 – so I had not seen it before. I lost track of time, dived into a parallel world and admitted to myself – in view of the tetrahedrons and double tetrahedrons, the pyramids and cubes, the octahedrons, icosahedrons and rhombohedrons and the fantastical shadows they projected on the wall – that I was absolutely happy.

An author in the cabinet of the German language

It is difficult to jump over one’s own shadow: In the Mathematical Cabinet I pondered a possible cabinet of the German language. Ever since I have made my home in Germany, and feel at home in Berlin, in my eyes, words have lost their one-dimensional qualities and have become “polyhedral ideas.” German nouns, verbs and adjectives develop their strength on different levels, are composed – like geometric forces – of two, three, sometimes even four different surfaces; and they are moody, unpredictable and playful.

Up for an experiment? Come with me and let us enter the cabinet of the German language together. In the first room, there is a board divided up into black and white fields. You place upon it a queen (Dame), a bishop (Läufer) and a pawn (Bauer)... As soon as you are finished, you tell me it’s my turn (Zug). Yet I have long disappeared into the cabinet’s second room and it’s all Greek to me (ich verstehe nur Bahnhof). I make myself comfortable in my train (Zug) compartment.

The window is not closed completely and there is a bit of a draught (Zug). Across from me sits an elegant lady (Dame) conversing with a farmer (Bauer), who seems to have leased countless fields (Felder). Under our feet – we’re travelling first class – lies a fancy, long rug (Läufer). In the corner, I notice a piece of wood (Brett), which must belong to the farmer (Bauer). “The journey is heathenishly fun (Heidenspaß),” he mentions somewhat effusively. “The devil’s in the details (Der Teufel steckt im Detail),” warns the lady. “Pardon me ... where exactly are we headed?” I want to ask, but hold it back.

To be after something “like the devil”

I have always been chasing after the German language, but I have now come to admit that I am and will always be a foreign speaker. What at one time I hesitated to say paradoxically revealed itself to me as the key to which I owe my access to the German language. Once I let it go, the scales fell from my eyes, and I believed that I could for the very first time awaken to the language in all its beauty and poetry.

Over night, words lifted from the page and became characters; I could observe them from every side and watch as they grew. It makes no sense to grasp for words or try to catch one, because due to their many lines of perspective they will escape every time.

It’s almost jinxed and that’s a good thing. For the fact that the German language does not allow itself to be captured, that it constantly slips through my fingers, means that it is alive and will remain so. In turn, my heart's desire to near it at least as closely as possible, to lessen the insurmountable distance that separates us, keeps me alert, hence also keeps me alive. And if we are both still alive ... well, then we’re still on our journey.

Change of perspective

The same train of thought (sic) that reveals to me that I cannot control the German words, but rather that it is they that deftly give me the run-around, incites the need in me to look at the old topic of “the German language, identity and multilingualism” from a slightly different perspective. If anything has become clear on my long, long journey, it is this:
It is not a matter of my identity as a foreign speaker.
It is not a matter of my multilingualism.
It is solely a matter of the identity of the words in German of their multilingualism.

German words are like characters; they have personalities. They are both “typed faces” and living entities with a body and a soul and mainly they have their own minds and usually get their own way. On the written line, where they rest from all their exertion, they reveal one of their many faces. Who can be certain that it’s the true one? The words used are bolstered, since other signifiers are behind the lines. No, it’s not a matter of indecision, but rather a distinct sign of multilingualism, of plurality and potentiality.

Not even a short noun, a relatively plain substantive made up of four letters like “Ball” leaves one alone. It can hardly remain still on a second reading but the spherical body is already rolling on its own momentum along the line, flattening a particle here, oh dear, an interjection, such a need to move must be stopped. At some point the ball reaches the end of the sentence and bumps full pelt into a full stop.

From then on it begins to lose air. It doesn’t take long for it to entirely deform and become a straight line, a surface that we can now dance upon. A masked ball, there you go, a feast for the senses: the German language! And I, who have been speaking in a foreign tongue all along, ask you, dear native speaker, remind you that it’s up to you to let this spectacle melt in your own mouth.

The article is from the magazine of the Goethe-Institut, where you can find all sorts of exciting stories about “Languages, Identities and Integration.”