Turnaround

You know, I think my German is actually better than my Mandarin Chinese now.

(And if Kaci ever reads this, she will not only understand but also instantly fall on the floor laughing at what an understatement this is).

Meerrettich

Because of the following story, I will now never forget the meaning of this word.

I've known J. since we were both 5 years old in the same Kindergarten class, and only until college did we go to different schools. Two weeks ago, she and her boyfriend came by Regensburg on part of their vacation through Europe. We walked around the city during the day, and in the evening, I took them to Alte Linde ("Old Linden Tree"), a well-known beer garden in Regensburg situated on a small island on the Danube with a great view across the river. As with most beer gardens, it serves lots of beer and lots of very traditional German food.


The two of them don't speak any German, so we went down the menu and I translated for them. J. pointed to an item under the Brotzeit menu (traditional German meal where cold cuts, cheeses, bread and other spreads are served on a wooden cutting board) that had a long list of sundry items that came with it. One of the few words I simply couldn't remember was "Meerrettich", because I just hadn't encountered it much. But the other items sounded alright, so J. went ahead and ordered it for dinner.

After a while, our food finally came, and in front of her was a big variety of the items mentioned above. We sat there trying to guess what everything was, because I haven't actually ordered Brotzeit much and wasn't entirely sure. Then she scooped a bit from a small white mound, spread it generously across a piece of bread and took a big bite. We were eating when she suddenly sat up in a panic, flailed her hands and desperately started guzzling some beer (there weren't any other options on our table).

The white stuff, Meerrettich, is horseradish.

And German horseradish is strong.

Oops! Sorry!

It won't happen again!

God Morgon!

("Good Morning!", Swedish)


If only Swedish was more widely spoken (approx. 10 million speakers worldwide). Between knowing English and fairly good German, I feel like Swedish would be, comparatively on the overall language learning scale, merely a skip away for me. I'm no expert yet, but I get the feeling that if you have at least English and German, Swedish doesn't have an overly difficult pronunciation system nor grammatical structure, and there are close cognates all over the place.

Alas. I don't think I've ever even met a Swedish person.

Not to mention the fact that most of them have smashing good English already. But at least if it were more widely spoken, it would be fun to learn!

The Misconception

When foreigners, or at least Americans from my personal experience, think of Germany, the first images that pop up in their minds are NAZIS, war, the military and a harsh, guttural and supposedly very unpleasant language.

In one of my classes where we recently discussed cultural symbols or stereotypes, one classmate said:

When I was young, my family lived in England for a few years and I went to primary school there. Even at that young age, one of the first questions all of the other kids asked me when they knew I was from Germany was, "Are you a Nazi?" We never were and never will be Nazis, and we have absolutely nothing to do with the Nazis. But I will never forget that memory.

One of the problems that is the root of stereotypes likes this is that the large majority of media, primarily films, released or made in other parts of the world outside of Germany portray and only portray scenes and events from World War II. Consequently, the majority of the public only gets to see the strict military codes, the cold, barked commands from officers (but what military doesn't bark and yell its commands?) and the cruel, merciless reality of war. And so, Germany gets less and less opportunities to elbow past the onslaught of black-and-white war films and show its true beauty to those who misconceive its image.

The taboo subject misconception. To clear this for many of you, once and for all, it is not taboo or forbidden to talk about Nazis, Hitler, the events surrounding World War II, etc. in Germany. To put this in a different perspective, it isn't taboo for Americans to talk about historical slavery or the extreme segregation in earlier centuries of the US. Nor do we want to be singly labeled as a country for those great, terrible years in which another major group of people was also treated poorly, to the point of deep shame. Talking and teaching about it helps those today understand the past mistakes and learn from them, and Germany does not censor the subject from its populations. You wouldn't want to be labeled for the mistakes of your parents, and you wouldn't want to be labeled for the mistakes of your precursors.

Germany is not all a hard, industrialized country of concrete jungles, but also miles and miles of beautiful natural land, and still and silent woods, and perfect balances of mountain and water, and breezy fields as far as the eye can see under endless blue skies. The German people may be naturally more guarded and distant on the outside, but are usually genuinely friendly and warm-spirited souls on the inside. The German language is not an ugly, churned out mash of discordant syllables, but a language with its own music, flow and timbre, as any other language, and beautiful and incredible in itself, as any other language.

You only need an open mind and open heart to see these things, and not only in the German culture, but in each and every culture in the world.

I Have My Sources...

A small revelation from the past year is that having capabilities in more than one language leads to the ability to extract more information on the same topic from multiple Wikipedia articles written in those different languages.

L! is for the way you-- Language

Sometimes, I've thought to myself, Self, you know what would be useful? Having a German boyfriend. People who have partners who speak the language that they're studying always pick up so many little things, and at a faster pace. Sometimes it's very noticeable. And that would be really useful. I'm sure of it.

Unfortunately, the sheer hell and hassle of being in love and romantically involved with someone eventually shoots the whole idea in the face, so I'll still have to settle for the current other methods of linguistic osmosis.

Come to think of it, the only probable relationship that could currently work between me and a guy, in which we cuddled all the time, spent every possible moment together and absolutely adored each other, is if the male in question was a puppy.

(... And they're just as cute, or cuter!)

Sound Effects

Naturally, every language has its own intonations. They add to the unique flavor of the language. Foreign speakers often reveal themselves through lack or misplacement of the intonations. They are subtle yet so significant.

Alex, who is German, and I are both good friends with Ilona, who is Czech. We can all speak German and English in common, but of course, we bring our native language intonations into each. And of course, there are also expressions that we use which do not involve words. Sometimes, these are a language of their own.

In American English, and in German as well, to some degree, we use the sound, "Mmm?" to express something along the lines of, "I didn't hear what you said," or "What was that? Say it again."

It took us all ages to figure out that for Czech speakers, this nearly-identical sound is actually a wordless affirmation -- the equivalent of American, "Uh-huh," or "Right." The result of this is that Alex and I (even to this day!) will hear Ilona say this during conversation, and we frequently then reiterate what we had just said, as if in clarification. Meanwhile, Ilona has already understood what we said.

We can't even help it. It's an automatic, vicious cycle.

Subtle, yet so significant.

Seuchen

("Epidemics")


Today at the library, I picked up an Eyewitness book (I loved these books when I was a kid!) in German about Epidemics (book cover).

I am fascinated by how much I understand without the dictionary. To be practical, it's probably in part because it's such a specific topic, and many of the words are simply used almost universally in the field (i.e. "Backterien"). But even so, there has still been a surprising amount of vocabulary that I've had no need to look up. Read: "environmental pollution," "contains" (as in material in the virus head), "anchored" (as in the small legs that a virus uses), "spreads" (as in, what mosquitoes do with disease), "nucleus," "culture/nutrient medium," "single-cell," "outbreak," etc.

Good news! Progress in German is, verily, taking place somewhere in my skull.

Language Globalization

Chinese and Spanish get high rankings out of sheer numbers, but otherwise, English is arguably the most influential language used in the modern world.

You've undoubtedly heard of English-speakers going overseas and finding that a remarkable number of those that they encounter abroad can already speak a respectable amount of English.

I grew up in the States, or in other words, a country where a dominant world language like English is the primary/dominant language. Lately, I've been thinking about what it's like to grow up in a country where there is a very big influence in your own country's language from a a language like English. For example, Germans here use "PC" (Personal Computer) and "SMS" (Short Message Service, or in other words, an SMS is a text message) in their everyday language.

But wait, scratch this entire post. I guess English has plenty of external influences that are now used completely subconsciously. I mean, virtually anything in English ending with "-ble" probably has more or less an exact counterpart in at least Spanish, or French, or both, just as an example. Don't even start me on "Schadenfreude" and "kaputt". Every pasta you eat that doesn't specifically come from Asia has some form of Italian ending on it. And kudzu is a transliterated derivative from the corresponding Japanese word.

Okay, so my argument turns out to be moot. Or maybe I'm really wondering more about growing up in a country where you actually start learning a second language early on (*ahem*, America, the late onset of your language learning system is bizarre), and you also grow up actually using it to some degree. (Note how many students in America have supposedly studied a language for ump-teen number of years, yet can barely speak it in conversation. This is not necessarily their fault, but the point here is about growing up with a much more functioning second language that you've learned in school that isn't just a letter on a report card).

Anyway, this is probably because English is a bastard language, who mugs other languages in dark alleyways and steals their vocabulary.

Deuglish - Gear Change

I have only recently noticed a subtle brain change. I find that often now, when I read things, it almost doesn't occur to me anymore whether it's in English or German, unless it's particularly complex German. If you asked me about a bi-lingual webpage that I read the day before, I might not be able to tell you whether I read it in German or English. I feel that it used to be a conscious gear change between German and English when I came across either one in text form. Now, it's as if my brain has gone from manual stick-shift to automatic. That's actually an extremely fitting analogy to describe the feeling, to say honestly.

(This is cool!/Das ist aber toll!)