“Merry Christmas“

Hi ihr lieben,

It’s January, you blink once, and it’s the 24th of December. The time in between … eternal and an instant at the same time. Our time is weird like that.
Blink again and it’s summer 2021 and we’re all on some beach somewhere, or in a forest, or in a city doing what the oracle predicted. And you’ll be like:

“Damn, I can’t believe it’s already June. But wow… a lot has happened and mein Doitsch ist viel besser!”

Yeah… I clearly had some wine :). I originally wanted to write something festive to wrap up the calendar, but there’s actually no need for it… because you all did it!
Your comments from yesterday were just unbelievable – so loving, heartwarming, funny, joyful, hopeful, empathetic and witty. I was really really happy after I read all of them.
And this confirms a suspicion that I have been holding for a long time – that people who learn a foreign language tend to be … good people.
Of course this is a gross generalization and blah blah blah but in order to actually try to learn a foreign language you need to have a certain degree of open mindedness. You can’t take yourself overly seriously. And there’s something humbling about stumbling through a sentence at the early stages – we have to accept being “vulnerable” in these moments. We also get to experience that other people really don’t care that much about us being perfect. What matters is that we get along and can exchange ideas. So trying to read a foreign language, or hear it or write it or speak it when we’re not good at it yet is a “low-ego” experience. And that’s great.
I mean… not that ego is bad.
It’s fun to feel proud about having reached fluency. But you can’t get there without feeling stupid, untalented and embarrassed about making like 5 mistakes per sentence.
So if you’re at that stage… savor it! It has value, no matter if you ever get fluent.
And if you’ve made it to fluency… flaunt it, show it around :)!! But remember that it’s not your “cool” self that got you there. It was your humble self.
Did I mention that I am drinking wine?
Seriously though… all you are awesome and I am really happy and honored that you come here to read about German.

Thanks a lot for following throughout the years, or year and thank you for making the 2020 calendar as epic as the other. If not epicer.
I hope you enjoyed it and I wish you a relaxing, calm Christmas season (or rest of the year season, if you don’t celebrate Christmas :)

Vielen Dank für alles
und frohe Weihnachten!

Ps.:

“darkmode” is now officially a thing. I did some design around it and I actually kind of like the look of it now.
If you don’t know what that is… it switches the background to black and the font to white and it can be relaxing for the eye. I don’t know how many of you will actually use that, but yeah… the switch is on the left of the menu bar on desktop and I’ll add it to the mobile menu as well in the coming days.

It’s not perfect yet, so some pages might look weird. Particularly, I didn’t adjust the quizzes so far. But yeah… I hope at least some of you use it :)