Free Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

response to the final question is “I’m fine, and you?” In German it’s answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by “Not so good.”
    I mentioned this to my German friend Tilo, who said that of course that was the response. “We can’t get it through our heads that people are asking only to be polite,” he said.
    In Japanese I, lesson 17, the actress who plays the wife says, “Kaimono ga shitai n desu ga!” (“I want to go shopping, but there’s a problem and you need to guess what it is.”) The exercise is about numbers, so the husband asks how much money she has. She gives him a figure, and he offers to increase it incrementally.
    Similarly, in the German version, the wife announces that she wants to buy something: “Ich möchte noch etwas kaufen.” Her husband asks how much money she has, and after she answers, he responds coldly, “I’m not giving you any more. You have enough.”
    There’s no discord in Pimsleur’s Japan, but its Germany is a moody and often savage place. In one of the exercises, you’re encouraged to argue with a bellhop who tries to cheat you out of your change and who ends up sneering, “You don’t understand German.”
    “Oh, but I do,” you learn to say. “I do understand German.”
    It’s a program full of odd sentence combinations. “We don’t live here. We want mineral water” implies that if the couple did live in this particular town they’d be getting drunk like everyone else. Another standout is “Der Wein ist zu teuer und Sie sprechen zu schnell.” (“The wine is too expensive and you talk too fast.”) The response to this would be “Anything else, Herr Asshole?” But of course they don’t teach you that.
      
    On our last trip to Tokyo, Hugh and I rented an apartment in a nondescript neighborhood a few subway stops from Shinjuku Station. A representative from the real estate agency met us at the front door, and when I spoke to him in Japanese, he told me I needed to buy myself some manga. “Read those and you’ll learn how people actually talk,” he said. “You, you’re a little too polite.”
    I know what he was getting at, but I really don’t see this as much of a problem, especially if you’re a foreigner and any perceived rudeness can turn someone not just against you but against your entire country. Here Pimsleur has it all over the phrase books of my youth, where the Ugly American was still alive and kicking people. “I didn’t order this!” he raged in Greek and Spanish. “Think you can cheat me, do you?” “Go away or I’ll call the police.”
    Now for the traveling American there’s less of a need for phrase books. Not only do we expect everyone to speak our language; we expect everyone to be fluent. I rarely hear an American vacationer say to a waiter or shopkeeper in Europe, “Your English is so good.” Rather, we act as if it were part of his job, like carrying a tray or making change. In this respect, the phrase books and audio programs are an almost charming throwback, a suggestion that the traveler put himself out there, that he open himself to criticism and not the person who’s just trying to scrape by selling meatballs in Bumfucchio, Italy.
    One of the things I like about Tokyo is the constant reinforcement one gets for trying. “You are very skilled at Japanese,” everyone keeps telling me. I know people are just being polite, but it spurs me on, just as I hoped to be spurred on in Germany. To this end, I’ve added a second audio program, one by a man named Michel Thomas, who works with a couple of students, a male and a female. At the start, he explains that German and English are closely related and thus have a lot in common. In one language, the verb is “to come,” and in the other it’s “kommen.” English “to give” is German “geben.” Boston’s “That is good” is Berlin’s “Das ist gut.” It’s an excellent way to start and leaves the listener thinking, Hey, Ich kann do