A chance encounter...

I recently had a chance encounter in a park which improved my confidence in German a little. I was playing with my daughter in our local park when a young girl came up and wanted to play on the see-saw too, so she climbed on board. Her dad came over and watched her and then a group of three women, busily chatting away loud enough for me to realise that it was obviously in German... Then the father also spoke a little German with his daughter.

Here was my chance...

When they went to the swings, after a little encouragement from my wife, my daughter and I went too, and as we were playing on the swings I decided to strike up a conversation with the father. I spoke to him in English first once, and then I said in German "So, you are all German, right?". He looked a little surprised, so it took him a second to switch to speaking German with me, but then we had a brief conversation about where he was from, where and when I started learning German, etc. He even made a comment about my German being good for the amount of time I had been learning it. All very brief and simple, and then his daughter was off to the next piece of play equipment :-)

The best part about it was just that I was very relaxed and starting speaking with him in German as though it's the most normal thing in the world. Which it is, of course, except that it has taken me a while to realise that! Even when I speak with my Austrian friends who are very friendly and supportive, before that meeting I was almost never relaxed and flowing, even when I was speaking about familiar things. The next evening I had another briliant class with Lene and I felt much more comfortable speaking in German, especially when it was about something familiar. I made more chit-chat and had less awkward moments where I stopped to think of what to say. It was a geniune step-change in my output. It hasn't become fluent at all, but I definitely have felt the change and it was a great feeling. It's hard to relax and let the words come out on their own, but I can feel that bit-by-bit my speaking is actually improving.

I'm sure I'll feel like I've gone backwards again sometime in the future, but hopefully I'll have had two steps forward by then!