Hi everyone! I have been dating my boyfriend for almost a year. He lived in Germany until he was around 12 and then moved to the US, so he knows the language and speaks it in the home. I know he has always been iffy about it and won’t speak it around me.

I have started to learn German for around the past month and have really been enjoying it just as a subject. Of course, it started out because I eventually wanted to speak it with him but now I am interested in it on its own. I haven’t told him I’ve been doing this yet.

I’m fairly “into memes“ (sounds cringe to type out haha) and sometimes i run into ones in other languages (lately mostly german ones) and think they’re pretty funny!! My favorite one right now is the vertikal rotierender fisch one! Please look it up if you haven’t seen it before, but it’s definitely more abstract humor. I also like the animal ones where people voice their actions in a different language. I send these to my boyfriend sometimes and I always get a thumbs down emoji in reply. I always thought this was a lot more lighthearted and I was just jokingly teasing him. Especially , because I genuinely found these memes funny.

Today, I texted him “Ich bin vertikal rotierender fisch” while he was at work and he got annoyed. Again, I thought he was just playing and I have been learning “ich bin” and “ein” and all that so I followed it up with a “ich bin eine katze” which means I am a cat (i think it’s funny and I was just playing around). And I think I made him even more annoyed. :(

I brought it up to him later and he said that it genuinely annoyed him. I tried my pronunciation at it and I had practiced earlier to try and get it as close as I could, and his reaction was just “oh that’s really really bad.” that hurt my feelings a bit because I tried really hard and asked him if he really meant that, and he did. I just laughed it off but I was definitely a bit off for the rest of the conversation.

A couple minutes later I asked him what if I learned German and he said that he would never ever speak it to me which kinda hurt my feelings. I still want to continue to learn but not if it means he will get mad at me for it. Maybe I do not understand where he’s coming from because I only speak English and I’ve lived in one state my whole life. AITA?? Should I have not even touched the language in the first place?

TLDR: I have been learning german for a month and haven’t told my boyfriend. I brought up me learning german by telling my boyfriend a german meme and it made him annoyed. He said that he will never ever speak german with me, even if I learn. I don’t know how to approach this subject.