Awkward

My senior year in college, I took Psychology 101.  I remember reading in my textbook that some emotions seem to be universal (happy, sad, mad, etc.), while others seem to be cultural phenomena.  Why else, argued my textbook, would the German language have a word for Schadenfreude and not English?  My textbook concluded that people from English speaking cultures traditionally didn't feel this emotion or at the very least didn't deem it important enough to mention.  For English speakers unfamiliar with the loanword Schadenfreude, it is not "spitefulness" as an online translator might tell you.  It is joy derived from someone else's misfortune.  If English speakers don't feel and/or talk about Schadenfreude, then Germans don't feel and/or talk about awkwardness.

In my last post, I mentioned in passing that the German language has no good translation for awkward.  Since I have never actually discussed this on my blog, I chose to link to my friend's post.  I will now take the time to contribute my own awkward German moment story, even though it doesn't top hers.  I've had plenty of awkward moments in Germany, but one that sticks out is when I was trying to help someone with his English.

To understand our conversation, first you have to understand German grammar.  German has no present progressive.  In fact, I would say German verb tenses do not have the precise and complicated subtleties that English has.  Because of this, learning certain verb tenses remains a challenge for some German speakers.

On this particular day, this person I was helping wanted me to explain the difference between simple present and present progressive.  Only he didn't know the words for these tenses.  Instead, he asked me to tell him the difference in meaning between these two sentences:
I am making love.  vs. I make love.
Yes, he knew full well what "to make love" meant in English.  Now, being a 20-something American who spent most of her recent years in Boston, I suppose I am fairly liberal.  But not nearly liberal enough to feel ok using that example in public.  Or anywhere, really.  I immediately felt incredibly awkward.  I proceeded to give an explanation of those tenses, only I used the difference between "I am eating cheese" and "I eat cheese".  This person, proceeded to attempt to switch the conversation back to his example, while I continued to talk about eating cheese.  Honestly, I lost count of how many times he tried to switch back to his example, but I left the conversation somewhat mortified.

Later, I explained what happened to my German friend.  I told her it was really awkward and said "Americans do not feel comfortable talking about "making love" so casually!"  She immediately looked incredibly alarmed (I think this friend worries that I think all Germans are crazy-people.  I don't, I meet equally strange characters in the US all the time.).  She said to me, "We don't either!  I would never do something like that!"  I then asked for a German word to describe my feeling of awkwardness.  She had no word to offer me.

I should probably end this post clarifying that most Germans refrain from making incredibly awkward statements and that Americans probably say an equal number of awkward things to Germans.  However, the German language simply offers me no way to clarify the awkwardness.