Incoherent Scribblings

Rostig

That is the German word for “rusty.” Now, I will admit that I don’t remember if one uses the concept of being rusty at something to describe being out of practice, but in keeping with the spirit of Denglish, today I am going to.

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Today, while working at the Information Desk, I had a lady come in to register for a community borrower card. Because I am still learning all the nuances of the different services we provide at the Information Desk, at this point I had to bring another librarian in to refresh my memory as to the next steps in the community borrower registration process.

When we first spoke at the desk, I thought I had detected a German accent in the prospective community borrower’s English and as we began filling out all the necessary paperwork, it came to my attention that she had a very “German” name.

However, it wasn’t until she was looking over her registration information and mentioned that our computer had not put an umlaut over the “a” in her last name that I took the plunge.

“Sprechen Sie Deutch?” I inquired.

Why, yes, as a matter of fact she did, she replied in German. She then asked me if I was German. In German, I replied that no I wasn’t, but I had lived in Germany for four and a half years. (Seriously, it’s the blonde hair, it gets them every time!)

At this point she had been entered into our system so we collected her annual fee and then briefed her on our community borrower policies and did a little demo of the online catalog. As this was the first time I had been involved in registering a community borrower, I mainly observed as my colleague instructed her on the catalog and how to renew books online. Near the end of the demonstration, the phone rang so I left the scene.

She spent a few minutes browsing the catalog but before she left, she came back over to the desk and started chatting away with me in German.

I was very excited to be speaking German again but was also nervous and as a result, I was embarrassed at the rustiness of my conversation.

Although I understood and responded correctly to the questions about how long I had been living in and what brought me to West Texas Town, I completely misunderstood the question she asked about whether I had come directly from Munich. I stumbled over my past tense helping verbs (haben vs. sein) and was surprised she understood anything I said as the order of the words in my sentences were enough to make me cringe as they tumbled from my mouth.

I apologized profusely for my German, but told her that it was because I hadn’t been practicing. Minutes later as we parted proper in German fashion, I couldn’t help but hope that I had made a contact that would help me fulfill #48 on my 101 Things list: Continue practicing my German in the US.