30 Day Writing Challenge: Day Eleven

Something about which people seem to compliment me

Aaaaaah, finally something I can lash out about. It's not that I don't enjoy the odd compliment every now and then -- it's nice to be noticed, really -- but if every single freaking person on the PLANET continuously tells you how wonderful you are at something, it really gets on your nerves, doesn't it? I mean, please tell me it's not only me. 

My thing is my "greatest asset" on the job market, according to my mother (who also compliments me about it, but not to me, to OTHER people): The German language. I can speak it, yes. I'm fairly fluent, yes. I can understand dialect and old German and I can even speak in slang, yes. I write a mean essay when I'm forced to in German, OK!! Just because I can do all that doesn't mean I'm a freaking lingual wonder! If you take any Tom, Dick or Harry (really trying not to laugh at those three names right now) off the street, stuck him in a country where he didn't know the language at 12/13, made him go to a tough school every day, then you can be damn sure he'd learn the language as fast as he possibly could, too. 

I'm no oddity. I'm no genius. Do I possibly have a knack for languages? Maybe. Do I fee like gloating about that fact that I can speak two languages? No. (Although I have the feeling my friend Casper would disagree ^.-) I really, truly do not like it when teachers compare me to my classmates when I happen to have a better grade than they do in German. You know why I have the better grade? It's because I study and I try to do well and I've just learned all the crap we were tested on so it's fresh in my head. If you asked someone in America to explain the freaking past progressive to someone else, chances are they'd be one of the 95% that can't, because they never really learned it. They know what it is, how to use it in a sentence, when to use it in an essay, but they couldn't tell you exactly why or how to build it! 

I have been here in Austria for seven years now, and if I couldn't speak the language, I would be stuck in some menial job with my head up my ass because I know that to survive in a country you need to learn how to communicate. And I was not the best German speaker when I got here!! I made so many stupid mistakes that I cringe when I read old writing samples. And I haven't stopped making mistakes. By no means have I perfected the German language. I still get tongue-tied and confused sometimes, I still err in my writing. I couldn't tutor someone in this language. 

If people here don't know me and I initially speak German with them and then tell them later that I'm actually American and have only been here for 7 years, the look on their face is priceless. I do enjoy that look. And I enjoy hearing "you have absolutely no accent!", because it's an accomplishment and it's like they're accepting me as part of their culture. But when my German teacher tells me after every damned test that she wishes she could speak English as well as I spoke German, she'd be happy -- bitch, get out of the way because I want to explode! I can only smile and nod pathetically and wait and hope and pray that she gets done and I can go back to my seat, clutching my grade. 

Anyway, I have ranted and I am finished. Happy reading & writing!

--Cassy

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