Since we’ve been on the subject of language learning this week, let me share a recent thought I’ve had about learning German.

Now, when you’re learning a language, the books all talk about how as you learn, you wind up progressing through different levels of language knowledge.

For example, at the beginning level, your goal is to master simple things like introducing yourself and asking/answering simple questions (e.g. “Where are you from”).

You then progress to an intermediate stage, which is defined in terms of being able to understand the main points of “clear, standard speech” encountered in familiar settings, e.g. “work, school, leisure, etc.” (I’m quoting from a booklet I got at the German as Foreign Language department here at the University of Tübingen.). The criteria for first intermediate level (B1) mentions things like “I can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst traveling in an area where the language is spoken. I can enter unprepared into conversations on topics that are familiar, of personal interest, or pertinent to everyday life.”

Plus, another sign you’ve reached an intermediate level is the ability to talk around a word you don’t know (or don’t remember) by using a strategic approach in the target language.

For example, let’s say you want to buy matches because you need to light that lavender candle you bought to fight off the moths. To pick a not-so-random example from my recent shopping expeditions.

You go to a shop that you think sells matches, but you can’t find them on the shelves. What do you do? Well, if you were in a country where they spoke your native language, you’d just ask a clerk where to find the matches. But what do you do when you realize you can’t remember — or, as in this case, never knew — the word for “matches” in German?

Now, you don’t want resort to asking the clerk if they speak English – that would be cheating, somehow, and besides, the likelihood of a clerk speaking English in this store is miniscule, so your chance of success with that approach is slim. No, what you need to do is ask the clerk a question in German, but a question where you describe what you’re looking for without using the actual word (which of course you can’t use, since you don’t know it). A possible approach: “Excuse me, I’m looking for something, but I don’t know the word for it in German since my German isn’t very good. I need to find the thing you use to, for example, light a candle.” All said in your best German, of course.

Now, I can actually say in a mostly grammatical way that set of sentences like that in German. Which is nice, considering a year ago I was barely at that beginning level.  I have been able to do this kind of strategizing when speaking a foreign language for a while, actually, even when I couldn’t do it very grammatically. I have a habit, developed early on in Italy, of just plunging right in and trying to describe “around” the thing I’m looking for when roaming around a store in a foreign country.

I should note that early on in Italy it didn’t always get me exactly what I wanted, but that coffee scoop I wound up with in Italy now occupies a prized place of honor in our kitchen.

Anyway, being willing and able to strategize around what you really want to say when you don’t know a key piece of vocabulary is a sign that you’ve reached a certain level of language knowledge. And that’s good in its own way.

But it’s also somewhat daunting to be reminded daily that, for all that you’ve learned a lot of German over the past year, there are literally dozens of common everyday items for which you have yet to master the vocabulary. So you wind up either circling around the store, endlessly searching for the item in question, or you have to go into your little “I don’t speak German” routine with a clerk and hope you can figure out how to describe the item in question with the limited vocabulary you do know.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I should admit that while I make these types of convoluted questions many times every week, while looking for those matches, I actually did spend a lot of time circling around the store without asking a clerk for help. I was hopeful that I’d just spot the matches on the shelves, as I was tired and just didn’t feel like asking that roundabout question in order to find them.

So, getting back to the language learning levels, I find that I’m mildly amused when I look at the descriptions of what it means to be at the intermediate or advanced levels. They talk on about understanding complex, abstract ideas in books, or being able to understand a large percentage of TV shows or movies, or having the ability to make presentations using complex logical arguments that are appropriate to the context when you’re at the most advanced levels. And those sound like good skills to shoot for.

But what level is it when you actually have mastered enough of the everyday words so that you don’t need to construct those large work-arounds when you’re looking for stuff in a store? That isn’t ever mentioned in any chart I’ve ever seen, but it sure would be nice to be at that level.

Someday.