It wasn't until I turned around 16 that I actually spoke English with some fluency. Hindi during my primary school was a nightmare, it was a pain to write it with my already slow and horrible unreadable handwriting and I ended up either failing a lot or scoring incredibly low grades, the latter was more common thanks to my generous Hindi teacher. I never picked up Hindi again in my life after my primary school which means I haven't written it at all in the past 8 years. Similar case with Telugu, didn't write it after I passed out from high school.

Despite me being trilingual, the only language that I can speak with a good fluency is English. Most say I speak Telugu with an English accent and don't get me started on speaking Hindi -- It's even worse. Welp, why does this all matter you may ask? The thing is I haven't picked up learning a new language for the past 16 years. For the past 16 years I only studied these 3 languages at school.

I'm getting closer to graduation, I got about a year left and the biggest question is what I'm supposed to do next. Finally, after a lot of Fuck Around Find Out, I understood that I won't be able to do what I wanted to do if I live in India so the only option is to head outside. Now the question comes... which country? I was initially thinking of going to the United Kingdom for MSc + PhD but I eventually understood how the country is pretty much in a decline + it wasn't financially viable.

The second best option is Germany and for this I have to learn German within just one year. Out of all English speaking countries out there, why Germany? You might ask. It's because Germany has a really good education system and it's also highly regarded for its engineering innovations and Germany also felt like a good place that I can culturally integrate into.

I initially took up German classes on NPTEL in the second year, a Government of India initiative aimed towards providing additional engineering courses outside regular classwork but had to drop out due to a hectic college schedule. This time I had to do something different. I tried self learning via some course books and work books but that didn't quite work out either.

Then I sat down and thought about my childhood and just about myself for a few minutes. I realised that I never actually learnt English from school, it was purely based on my interaction with people on the internet and me watching a crap ton of Hollywood movies. I always had the high scores in any English exam and I still don't know what an adverb is. I also realised how quick I'm at picking up things when it comes to languages.

I also recalled this incident during UbuCon Asia 2024 when a street vendor in Jaipur approached Till Kamppeter when he was speaking in German over phone. This vendor spoke fluent German with him for like 7 minutes straight until his cab arrived. He spoke it as if he was from Austria because he spoke about a lot of things that only a man living in Austria would know. I was extremely surprised and asked him how he could speak so fluently. He then gave me a tip "See the world through the eyes of a German, think in German". That tip was pretty useful but I never got around to learning German.

Turns out that I have a special interest in Germany. I spent a lot of time during my childhood learning about the German history especially WW2 in detail but I never got around to learning it. I figured it's long overdue and decided to go for it on Feb 15, just a day after the infamous Valentine's Day, a day which was just an ordinary day.

I realised what I was doing wrong. I was learning German the conventional way like everyone else -- enrolling in a course and writing assignments. I forgot that this clearly wouldn't work for my broken brain. I also forgot that the only way I can learn something is by creating a personally tailored method of learning that fits my brain because I have one of the weirdest heads out there.

I had to go unconventional -- which means a road not taken. It was a challenge and I was once a man who feared challenge, but now I want it more. I adopted my self created philosophy -- "Hear German, Speak German, Think German, See German until it eventually makes sense". This also meant I won't limit myself to a specific level of German aka A1 or A2.

For the next few days, I was 100% into learning the culture, language was secondary. I watched a ton of videos about Germans, their etiquettes, their behaviours and I picked up a few sentences here and there. The more videos I watched, the more I realised that I share more things in common with Germans than I do with Indians and I'm not joking. My phone had its locale set to German too and I started doing Duolingo for additional practice. I started tailoring an entire schedule of my own for it.

A week later, here I am. I watched a video German videos and movies -- what felt like gibberish to me actually started making sense to me all of a sudden. I was able to understand some sentences and most partially and they weren't limited to A1 or anything. I finally have a favourite band -- Rammstein. Rammstein has the right amount of rock music for my ears and I've been looking for that for years (Thanks to my German friends for introducing me to them). Even the noise and the voice in my head started speaking German which is great progress. I heard enough German in the past one week for my brain to throw random sentences in my head to practice it. I guess this is a successful experiement so far.

The reason why I failed to learn German in the past was because I was just doing it like everyone else and what works for everyone else never works for me. I was also a bit stressed back then and kept learning it for the sake of it. But now I love the semantics of German and the culture associated with it. German isn't scary or intimidating when I managed to understand the culture behind it.

Being a trilingual speaker, one thing that I understood is that the language skills that courses teach you are only for passing exams. The real language skills develop when you connect with the culture. I might take Goethe at the end of this year to see where I stand but won't make passing an exam my entire goal of learning German.