I don’t have much to show for my two years of German in High School. I know how to count to ten and how to sing, “I’m a foreigner and I don’t speak German very well” to the tune of “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain,” neither of which are all that helpful.
However, I do have a random German phrase stuck in my head. I can say, “Sprechen in die pausen nachs,” which means, “Speak in the pauses.” I can do this because our teacher used to play a cassette tape (yes, I'm that old) with a woman speaking German sentences. After each sentence, the woman on the tape would instruct us to “sprechen in die pausen nachs,” and we were then supposed to repeat her sentence. I apparently didn’t learn any of the other sentences, but I can tell someone really well to “speak in the pauses.”
And maybe that’s a good sentence to know.
In the middle of the sheer chaos of life, to choose to use my one sentence.
"God, I am stopping. I am stopping everything.
Come speak in the pause."