I know exactly how you feel
Ich weiß genau, wie du dich fühlst.When I moved to Vienna at 16, I didn't speak German. Not "a little". Not at all.
Suddenly everything happened in a language I didn't understand:
- school lessons where I couldn't follow the teacher
- forms and letters I couldn't read
- conversations where everyone laughed and I just smiled along
- simple things, like ordering at a café, that felt like an exam
I tried what everyone tries: vocabulary lists, grammar books, apps. I learned a lot of words, but when someone spoke to me, my head went empty.
Knowing words is not the same as speaking.
Then something changed. I stopped "studying" German and started using it every single day: short sentences, the grammar that I actually needed, real conversations, and people who corrected me.
Within a few months I reached C1.
I went on to graduate from high school in Vienna and studied Social Pedagogy, in German.