I went to Germany it was culture shock, Germany language, adult in the language⁽¹⁾! intensive German, six months 2,000 bucks, totally worth it, because I now speak the language like a three-year-old.

With a severe speech impediment, I could not talk for three and a half years, that was Germany, my friends would ask "what's it like? what's Germany like?" - "well it's like I've had a stroke."

I could not talk, I thought I'd learn the German, my friends told me, I would, well not all my friends, just my friends only speak one language, they know how easy it is to learn a second language.

And they'll tell you, "oh you pick up on the Germany? Bengt? because you'll be immersed in people speaking Germany."

Well guess what buddy, you're not immersed in people speaking German, you're immersed in people speaking English, there's a German accent.

So no progress, this is my German, but amazing progress this my German accent now, I am not bilingual, but I can sound bilingual. Yeah wunderbar⁽²⁾!

It's great! Now I use my accent to impress a random strangers, I can just use it here to impress people, "Yeah, I feel Texas fries Mr. Hamburger." "Thank you for the good questions you're making now."

"Your english is excellent!" "Why? thank you Wow! first time I hear this, wow thank you!" "It's just cuz english, isn't your native language." No that is because I am from Utah.

I never had this before, couldn't complain either, not learning German, you can't complain this what'll happen.

If I complain about not learning German, that's what I get, "well, be grateful you're not learning chinese." - "Grateful? why would you bring up someting I could never do? I'm not even learning German."

Why would it hit me be grateful? - "You stink! It's something that's kind of easy, you got that going for you, you could be failing at something that's hard, but see, this way you feel stupid and disappointed, you should be grateful."

Chinese is harder than German, German is technically kind of easy, grammars hard but they're similar words to English, same alphabet, whereas Chinese is insanely difficult.

There's no similar words or sounds, and you have to learn their alphabet, we don't share an alphabet, and it's not just 30 40 letters, you want to be pulling chinese, you are going to have to memorize about 44,000 subtly different drawings of sheds.

Broken furniture, yoga poses, occasional walk line, that's what I see, like if I look at the menu, "how spicy is your broken television?" "Really? well then I will take the downward dog."⁽³⁾

Again, I'm a menu coward, Chinese is crazy, so many shed drawings, I think Chinese is the only language on earth in which you can write an entire sentence accidentally.

You can just "whoops! I'm literate! how did that happen?" sometimes a shed drawing will be a whole phrase or sentence, you have to memorize the shed with the sentence.

Oh okay, the broken stepladder next the guys were in the golf club, with the two seagulls on the park bench, for the roof shed drawing, "My foot hurts."

Oh wait, there's a chimney on the shed, your foot hurts, there's a chimney, it's your foot, when it wait there's smoke coming out the chimney, we've got a new pope⁽⁴⁾.