The ‘Grey Men’ of the language learning community are obsessed with speed. They promise that their methods will help me reach fluency in record time—B1 in three months, speaking in weeks—if only I use their system. But as I read Momo, I realized that my own process is a stubborn, forced slowness.
After more than two months of struggle, I finally finished Momo in German. Honestly, it was a bit beyond my current reading level, but it was recommended by a dear friend and I felt I had to read it. I encountered a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary and found myself re-reading sentences multiple times to grasp their meaning. Yet, I persisted without turning to an English translation. I made sure my eyes lingered over every word, sounding out each syllable even though I knew my pronunciation was quite accented and may not always have been correct. Knowing the importance of hearing the word while reading, I tried to follow along with the audiobook narrated by Gert Heidenreich. However, my pace was painfully slow compared to his. I eventually had to let the audio go so I could focus on sounding out the words one by one.
There were moments of pure joy when everything on the page suddenly clicked, but there were also times I had to simply move on; looking up every single word would have been far too time-consuming. I was living in that realm of the Nirgend-Haus—the “Nowhere House”—where one must sometimes step backward to get forward.
Denn Zeit ist Leben. Und das Leben wohnt im Herzen. (p. 64)
Because I couldn’t understand every word, I focused on the mood, the atmosphere, and the rhythm of the language itself. Unlike reading in English—where I can skim—or Chinese—where I can scan pictographs for a quick overview—German currently requires a slow subvocalization. Every syllable felt like a second passing, or a single heartbeat. It gave me a child-like immersion into the fairy-tale world of Das Nirgend-Haus and a contrast to the rushed, frantic world of the “Grey Men.”
Es gibt ein großes und doch ganz alltägliches Geheimnis. Alle Menschen haben daran teil, jeder kennt es, aber die wenigsten denken je darüber nach. Dieses Geheimnis ist die Zeit. (p. 61)
There is something truly comforting in this slowness. It is fine that I’m not going to be fluent in nine months or reach B1 anytime soon. An aspect of language learning has historically been tied to the prospect of financial rewards, whether it’s better job placement or the ability to travel and consume. Sounding out every word in my mind is my way of living the language. It is the same way I sounded out Chinese characters with ㄅ, ㄆ, ㄇ, ㄈ, or guessed the meaning of an individual symbol by looking at the characters around it as a child in Taiwan.
As a beginner, I cannot skim or make assumptions about a passage. I have to weave an image of the world syllable by syllable:
A-ber wie-der kehr-te das Ster-nen-pen-del um, und die Herr-lich-keit ver-ging und lös-te sich auf und ver-sank, Blatt für Blatt, in den un-er-gründ-li-chen Tie-fen des schwar-zen Tei-ches. Lang-sam, lang-sam wan-der-te das Pen-del zu-rück auf die Ge-gen-sei-te, a-ber es er-reich-te nun nicht mehr die-sel-be Stel-le wie vor-her, son-dern es war um ein klei-nes Stück wei-ter-ge-wan-dert. Und dort, ei-nen Schritt ne-ben der ers-ten Stel-le, be-gann a-ber-mals ei-ne Knos-pe auf-zu-stei-gen und sich all-mäh-lich zu ent-fal-ten. Die-se Blü-te war nun die al-ler-schön-ste, wie es Mo-mo schien. (p. 180)
The slowness in sounding out the opening of Stun-den-blu-men is fine for me for now. As Beppo the Sweeper says:
Man muss nur an den nächsten Schritt denken, an den nächsten Atemzug, an den nächsten Besenstrich. (p. 38)
With each breath, I will just tackle one syllable at a time:
Ich muss nur die nächste Silbe lesen, an den nächsten Atemzug denken, das nächste Wort fühlen.