by Rebecca Baumgartner
“So why are you learning German?” I don’t remember who first asked me this, but over the following two weeks, it was a question I’d answer about 60 times.
And each time, I struggled to come up with a satisfying answer – and not just because of the limits of my intermediate-straining-towards-upper-intermediate German skills. The people around me, of various ages and life stages, had a variety of reasons for learning this language. Some had jobs in Germany or Switzerland and, although they mostly used English to get their work done, they felt excluded from casual conversations with their coworkers. Some had moved to a German-speaking country when their spouse found a job, and wanted to more fully participate in the culture they found themselves in.
Aside from a few people using the freedom of retirement and an empty nest to refresh a skill they’d last practiced during the Cold War, there weren’t many people studying German for the sake of studying German. When asked about my reasons, I usually said something along the lines of it being a hobby or something I was doing “just for fun” (a phrase that genuinely perplexed some people, usually after a 3-hour block of grammar lessons – “You think German is fun?”).
But the word “hobby” sounds too trivial, and the idea of having fun doesn’t really fit either. Every time I tried to answer this question, I butted my head against the walls of how Americans conceive of leisure time and what it’s for. Why am I spending my free time doing effectively more work? Am I just a masochist? What am I getting out of this, and is it worth it? Are my reasons less “real” than someone who needs to learn German for their career? Am I just a dilettante?
After describing my language learning as a “hobby” to one woman, she scoffed and said, “Lucky you. I need to learn German for work. I don’t have a choice.” In this view, you choose what to learn based on what you need, and anything extra is a luxury.
I’ve long chafed against this utilitarian view of education. Even when I was legally required to go to school, I was the sort of person who would have gone even if it wasn’t required. And when school became optional (and expensive), I gave precisely zero consideration to the job market or the future utility of my field of study. Learning isn’t something that needs a reason. You do it when and how you can, in the way that’s most meaningful for you.
But these sorts of answers, however sincerely meant, sound insufferable. Is there a way to talk about lifelong learning that doesn’t make you sound pompous and privileged? Is it possible to hear someone talk this way without loudly rolling your eyes?
Beneath the self-deprecating label of “hobby” lives a whole array of benefits that we (ironically) don’t have the words to talk about. We don’t have a way of talking about fulfillment and enrichment, or flow and connectedness, without sounding like a snob or a hippie.
So many of the unpaid things I do fall into this category. These things make it possible to stay hopeful. They keep me flexible. They give me something to talk about – a virtue not to be underestimated for those who hate small talk. They (hopefully) make me a more interesting person to know. They make me feel connected to something. They help me stay awake, literally and metaphorically. They keep me engaged when I feel myself languishing. They take me out of my competent adult role and provide me with an invigorating dose of failure.
It’s hard to convey all of this, but sometimes you find someone who gets it, someone who won’t roll their eyes, and then the limitations of our vocabulary about lifelong learning fall away.
In one conversation about the utility of learning German, and foreign languages more generally, I could tell that my partner got what I was talking about. “It makes life richer,” I said, and she nodded vigorously. “It has meaning even if you don’t use it,” she agreed. Of course, in that moment I was using it, and that felt uniquely satisfying.
The simplicity demanded by my lack of fluency forced me to say what I really meant. In English I would have over-explained. In German, limited to a working knowledge of about 4,000 words, I had to cut to the chase.
“It’s just worthwhile,” I said. I couldn’t believe I could say this with a straight face after just having played I-Spy and Twenty Questions with two other adults, but amazingly, it was actually true. Learning German is completely worthwhile, even if all I ever use it for is playing children’s games, ordering coffee, and understanding song lyrics.
We can philosophize all we want, but in the end, learning is just worthwhile, and maybe that’s all the reason we need.