I learned German as my L2. I remember feeling incredibly awkward in the beginning, stumbling over sentence construction, trying to find the right word, using the appropriate verb tense, knowing if I should use "der, die, das, den, dem, derren, dennen, dessen"... all too much, or so it seemed. Then I got over the embarrassment of stumbling, and started asking others to help me with my language acquisition. Eventually, with much interaction and practice, the speech came more readily, fluently, and comfortably. Responses to basic every day conversation ("Wie geht's?", for example) became reflex rather than thought provoking. Ordering food in a restaurant wasn't an ordeal any more, where I would usually end up eating 'schnitzel' and 'kartoffelsalat', because it was the only thing I could read on the menu, or the only thing I could understand the waiter describing to me. I started to participate in social conversation, coming out of my position of silent observer.
Sure, I still made mistakes, but that started to become how I learned. Another thing that I learned to do when speaking was, if I wasn't sure on what to say or how to properly pronounce what I wanted to say, I would 'swallow' the word - say the word incoherently so that the listener had to rely on their sense of context to fill in the word I hadn't spoken clearly enough. I did this until I learned how to say the word properly, and would then proudly speak the word out loud and clearly. The moment for me when I realised I was speaking autonomously (without deliberate thought or reflection) was in a restaurant one day.
I was with a group of German friends and we were enjoying our meal and each others company, telling jokes and relating stories of the day. Our waiter, who also happened to be the owner, had apparently been listening in to our conversation as, when we were preparing to leave, he started a conversation with me that focused on my (German) accent. He asked me what part of Germany I was from, as he detected a slight accent in my pronunciation. I asked him where he thought I was from, and he said "Muenchen oder Frankfurt" (Munich or Frankfurt). I told him I was actually from England, living in Germany with the armed forces. He laughed, as he apparently thought I was sharing a joke with him. It took a great deal of convincing for him to finally believe that I was actually English, and I had to speak a couple of English quotes for him to hear. I'm not sure that he totally believed me though, as he commented that I had a really good English accent!! It was then that I realised that I was speaking German without thinking about the speech process. The words came naturally, my thought processes followed the conversation, predicted what would be said, and allowed me to participate with independent thought and opinions.
Welcome to the world of Autonomy!!
TTFN
