Here is the full transcript of poet Harry Baker’s TEDx Talk on How Learning German Taught Me the Link Between Maths and Poetry at TEDxVienna conference.
TRANSCRIPT:
I applied to university to study medicine but switched courses to do maths so that I would have more time to write poetry. Thank you for laughing at my life choices.
And, apart from one of the first poems I wrote, being a love poem about prime numbers, I told myself that the two weren’t really that linked. I liked maths because there was always a definite right answer, and I liked poetry because there wasn’t a definite wrong one.
But for me, when I switched courses to do maths, I was given the option of doing maths with a year abroad, and I thought that would be a fun way to live in another country and experience another culture.
So for a year I lived and studied maths in Germany, and I thought it would be a good idea to try and learn German because I’d heard it was really popular there. When I arrived in Germany, my level of language speaking was approximately: “Hallo, mein Name ist Harry. Ich bin English Sprechen Sie English?” “Nein” – “Scheiße”. Thankfully, as the year went on, my language skills improved slightly, and I’d like to share a couple of things that I learnt along the way.
Now, I am aware that I am talking about learning German in a German speaking country, whilst relying on everybody to understand my English, but don’t worry, “Mein English ist unfassbar gut.” What struck me about learning a second language is that whilst everybody has that same destination in mind of hopefully becoming fluent, the journeys that we go on are very different.
So I began to set up my own milestones for when I knew that I was making progress. The first was that once those basic building blocks are in place, being able to trust your instincts. I remember explaining a story to a friend where everything had worked out in the end, and come together nicely, and I found myself using the words, “Alles hat geklappt.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word before, but as I said it, it kind of made sense to me, because if you clap, that’s a very literal coming together of your hands.
But also if you make a plan and it works out, sometimes you feel like giving yourself a mini-round of applause. The difference was that when I said these words, I knew that it was the right word to use in that context because it felt natural. Up until that point, if I didn’t know what a word was in German, I was just trying to say the English word with a German accent, and try and get away with it. But more often than not that left me looking like “ein Idiot”.
The second stage for me was when you first begin to dream in another language. A lot of people talk about this, as for all of your external efforts, this is the point when you know it’s finally started to sink in. And the first dream that I had in German, I dreamt that I was in a German classroom learning some new vocabulary, which meant that not only had my subconscious taken in enough German that I could understand so that I could dream about it, it had also taken in some German I couldn’t yet understand and was trying to teach it to me in my sleep.
Now, whilst I don’t think this is the most foolproof method of learning a language, it was quite exciting at the time. But the third stage for me, and the moment when I really knew everything would be OK, is when you were able to either understand or make jokes in another language.
I absolutely love puns, and whenever any of my non-English friends are able to make puns in English, I’m always really impressed. So, a moment came when I was speaking to my German friend who was a poet, and he was talking about how, when he has ideas, they begin to snowball into each other into a kind of ideas avalanche. And he told me that the German word for “avalanche” was “Lawine”. Without skipping a beat, I said to him, “Hey, if there was a lot of snow between the months of March and May, would that be called an ‘Avril Lawine’?” And he said, “That’s hilarious. You should definitely put that in your TEDTalk. They’ll all laugh lots.”
I think being able to play with another language is a very exciting thing, and it’s not something you always get an opportunity to do, in particular, in grammar exams – well, they don’t give you bonus marks for puns, anyway. What I was experiencing was something that I had experienced before – something that at school, me and my bitter maths rival/best friend Luke had called “the nerd rush.” This is the feeling you got when you first wrapped your head around a concept, or were able to solve a problem in a particularly neat way. This is a feeling I later experienced when I started writing poetry, whether it was when the words just seemed to fall into place, or whether it’s coming up with a particularly satisfying rhyme, or maybe even just thinking of a ridiculous pun.
For me, the difference was now that I was getting this in day-to-day conversations. Whether it was the thrill of being understood by the person in front of me, or just having a kind of slight idea about what they were talking about, piecing together simple sentences became like mini-equations to be solved there and then it involved the pattern recognition and attention to detail that I love from maths, and it combined it with the creativity and the ability to think outside of the box that I really enjoyed about poetry. It combined the two in a way that I had not previously thought about. And in many ways, German is quite a logical and mathematical language.
I remember asking my housemates what the German word for a kettle was. And I said to them, “How do you call the thing that cooks the water?” And they said, “Das ist ein Wasserkocher.” And for me, it just made perfect sense, and there were all of these moments where I would be really excited. I remember when I found out, I came home and I said to them that the German word for glove is “Handschuh” – because it’s like a little shoe you put on your hands. And I thought, that’s incredible.
And they said, “Why are you so excited about gloves?” But I came up with this whole list of my favourite words. My absolute favourite: I learnt that the German word for “turtle” is “Schildkröte”, which is like a kind of “shield toad.” And when I found that out, I immediately looked up what a snail was, because I hoped that it would be a kind of “shield worm.” It turns out that the German word for “snail” is “Schnecke”, but the German word for “slug” is “Nacktschnecke”, because it’s like a naked snail. And I thought that was fantastic.
And my housemate said, “Why have you brought snails home?” But in a way, this sticking together of words could be quite poetic. I remember learning that the German word for “iris” is “Regenbogenhaut”, which translates as “rainbow skin”, which I think is kind of quite beautiful and still has that weird sort of logic to it.
Similarly, I found out the German word for “nipple” is “Brustwarze”, which means breast wart, which, whilst less beautiful, has still got that weird kind of logic to it. So I thought it would be fun to try and invent my own words. And where I lived, in Hannover, there’s quite a large Turkish population.
So there’s a lot of places that sell kebab and döner and also falafel. I was really happy to find out the German word for “falafel” is “Falafel.” But the German word for “spoon” is “Löffel.” If you had a specific spoon that you only ever ate falafel with, you could call it a “Falafellöffel.” So I’ve written a poem called “Falafellöffel”, and it’s about a guy called Phil.
You might be able to see where this is going. It does involve some kind of call and response, which is entirely in German, but I think you guys will be slightly better at that than they are back in England. “Phil ist voll Die Nacht ist gut verlaufen. Phil sieht ein Geschäft und er fragt, was sie verkaufen. Falafellöffel Für Löffel voll Falafel” – which means Falafal spoons, for spoonfuls of Falafel – “Was?” “Falafellöffel Für Löffel voll Falafel” “Wie?” “Falafellöffel. Für Löffel voll Falafel.” Phil doesn’t speak German, so he’s left a little baffled. See there’s this fella Phil, and Phil loved falafel. In a falafel raffle he would snaffle all the tickets. He always answers in affirmative to offers of falafel; even if he’s awfully full, he’d feel awful if he didn’t.
And for us it might feel effortless to live a life falafelless. But Phil effervesces unless he gets his falafel fix. So if Phil was ever to be offered Löffel of Falafel he’d say “yes” despite not knowing what the F a Löffel is! For Phil a life of love and laughter will have a falafel after. So it’s “yes” despite not knowing what the F a Löffel is If a falafel fell off a Löffel, Phil’d feel awful, so it’s “yes” despite not knowing what the F a Löffel is.
A fluffy falafel is often iffy if he’s honest, but it’s “yes” despite not knowing what the F a Löffel is. If half a Löffel of filthy falafel is overly lethal, even as we leave Phil he’d still have a message for his kids, saying “yes” despite not knowing what the F a Löffel is, always “yes” despite not knowing what the F a Löffel is. So when I say: “Wie viel Falafel ist zu viel Falafel?” – which of course means: How much falafel is too much falafel? – could you reply in unison, as one: “Vier Löffel voll Falafel ist zu viel Falafel” – which of course means: Four spoonfuls of falafel is too much falafel! – If anyone doesn’t speak German, I can talk you through it, if you repeat after me: “Vier” –
Audience: Vier
Harry Baker: Löffel voll –
Audience: Löffel voll
HB: Falafel
Audience: Falafel
HB: ist zu viel
Audience: ist zu viel
HB: Falafel
Audience: Falafel
HB: Wunderbar! Wie viel Falafel ist zu viel Falafel? Vier Löffel voll Falafel ist zu viel Falafel Wie viel Falafel ist zu viel Falafel?
Audience: Vier Löffel –
HB: Lauter! Wie viel Falafel ist zu viel Falafel?
Audience: Vier Löffel –
HB: Schneller! Wie viel Falafel ist zu viel Falafel?
Audience: Vier Löffel –
Vier Löffel voll Falafel ist zu viel Falafel if it left him on his deathbed with a message for his kids saying “yes” despite not knowing what the F a Löffel is always “yes” despite not knowing what the F a Löffel is Phil war voll. Die Nacht war gut verlaufen. Phil sah ein Geschäft und er fragte, was sie verkaufen “Falafellöffel Für Löffel voll Falafel” “Falafellöffel! Für Löffel voll Falafel!?” “Ja – Falafellöffel! Für Löffel voll Falafel!”
You’ve got to make an effort when you travel! One of my favourite poets in the UK, called Disraeli, once said to me that learning another language is like learning to think in another colour. And I’ve spoken to other people who say they feel like they have different personalities in different languages.
And I learnt quite early on whilst learning German that when I express an opinion in English, I would often say things such as: “I think, maybe, if you want, we could possibly do this” Or: “I feel like, you know, if it’s not too much trouble, possibly we could do that.” And whilst in English that just makes me sound very unsure of myself, in German, it rapidly affects the sentence structure, and then I didn’t know where to put the verbs. The result of this was that the German Harry became a lot more decisive and direct about what he wanted to say than English Harry, purely because I lacked the language skills to be able to doubt myself in that way – which was an incredible thing.
Another side effect was that whilst in English I think I’m slightly more comfortable talking to a thousand strangers than one-on-one kind of small talk, in German, because I was so excited about learning the language, small talk with strangers became like homework.
I was really excited to ask questions and learn quite simple facts about other people’s lives because that was the sort of vocabulary that I could understand. Similarly, I was really excited to talk about myself because I needed to practise. And so whilst German taught me a link between maths and poetry that I hadn’t previously been able to imagine, it also taught me things about my own personality that I hadn’t expected. And I realized that these milestones I’d given myself in German, and learning a language, were things that I’ve seen before.
When it came to maths, whilst it might be difficult at first to get your head around the basic building blocks, once they’re in place, I think then you can begin to have fun with it and jump between them and trust your instincts whilst doing that.
When it comes to writing, if you can immerse yourself enough in the world of a poem or a story, then it becomes possible for these ideas to seemingly come from nowhere. I’ve often gone to bed, or just fallen asleep in the daytime, whilst writing a poem, and when I wake up, there’ll be a new idea there, that’s almost as if I’ve tried to teach it to myself in my dreams.
And the final thing was with these two things, as with learning German, as with many other aspects of my life, I realized that once you put the work in, you can get comfortable enough with something, and be willing to take risks, but also have fun with it. That’s when you can really start to put yourself out there. After I finished my year abroad, I came back to my final year at university in Bristol, and I was moved up from the beginners German class to the advanced German class.
And, whilst at the end of the year I did quite well in my listening and speaking exams, I still managed to fail my final grammar exam. I did, however, pass my maths degree, and since then I’ve been able to do the poetry full time, and travel around the world doing what I love doing. So in a way it’s been quite a unique and weird journey but everything has “geklappt.”
Thank you.
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