If I’m being honest, I’m not exactly what you’d call a natural linguist.

At school, I struggled with French. Not in a poetic “language is difficult but rewarding” way — more in a “this is not sticking no matter how many times I look at it” way. I dropped it as soon as I was allowed to and never really felt the need to revisit it.

For a while, that was the end of the story.

But then life, as it tends to do, started involving travel.

And when you travel, you eventually realise there are two types of English tourists:

The first speaks only English, slowly and loudly, as if volume is the missing translation layer.

The second attempts a heavily overacted version of the local language, usually with an accent that makes things worse rather than better.

I’ve tried not to be either.

So over time, I started doing something much more modest: learning just enough of a language to not be completely useless when I arrive somewhere.

Norwegian, Italian, Icelandic — the usual holiday mix. Nothing fluent. Nothing impressive. Just enough phrases to order food, say thank you, and avoid looking like I’ve just landed from another planet expecting everyone to accommodate me.

What I found is that people don’t really expect perfection.

They notice effort.

In Norway, for example, I’d try a few badly assembled sentences and get the same reaction almost every time — a brief smile, a correction, and then a switch into perfect English. Sometimes better English than I could manage in my own language before coffee.

But that wasn’t really the point. The point was never fluency. It was participation. Even clumsy participation counts.

Then lockdown happened.

Like a lot of people, I started picking up random new things just to keep the brain occupied. I chose German. No grand reason at the start — it just interested me.

Then I discovered something unexpected: a German relative in the family history, a POW who later married into the family. That shifted it slightly. It stopped being just vocabulary and turned into something with a bit more weight behind it. History you can’t really ignore once you’ve seen it.

I paused for a while, then picked it back up again about two years ago.

I’m still not fluent. I’m not even close. But I can get by if I need to. I think. At least in theory.

And if I’m completely honest, that’s probably where it ends.

It hasn’t changed my life in any dramatic way. I haven’t suddenly become multilingual. I haven’t unlocked some secret version of myself who navigates Europe effortlessly chatting to locals in perfect dialects.

It’s just… there.

A skill in the background. A small advantage that may or may not ever get properly used unless I spend more time in Germany.

There is one unintended side effect, though.

Working with people from all over the world over the years has given me something far less structured than language ability — a patchwork collection of swear words and rude phrases in multiple languages. Completely unplanned. Entirely unofficial. And somehow, far more memorable than anything I’ve learned in a classroom.

So no, I don’t speak multiple languages fluently.

But I’ve learned enough to show willing, enough to get by, and enough to understand that most communication isn’t really about grammar anyway.

It’s about effort. Timing. And not shouting English at people as if it eventually becomes understandable if you increase the volume enough.

Stay safe

Bc