I will never forget the time Caylah pointed excitedly at
the smooth purple fruit in the box at the grocery store and said, “Look, Mom,
it’s a Zwetschgen! I don’t know the
English word for it, but we learned about it in Deutsch class!” Or the time I was on the phone with my mom
and she asked what flavor of “Kool-Aid” the kids were drinking. The word that came out of my mouth was
Himbeere; it was only a few hours later and long after I was off the phone that
the word raspberry even entered my mind.
German language is a part of our everyday life. I find the longer we live here that I think
certain things in German more often than English. One of these is my grocery list. Obviously, everything at the store is labeled
in German, and we look for it in German so it just sticks in my head in
German. The other situation is ordering food
at a restaurant. In fact, we often ask
for the German menu because we don’t understand what the English menu is
offering for choices. Fried pork steak
and Wienerschnitzel are just not the same things. We have a few conversations we throw around
at home and sometimes we will have simple dialogues in the language. Bethany corrects us when we make a mistake in
pronunciation or word usage.
The three kids have a much better knowledge of German and
Joe has his high school classes to fall back on so I am usually the least
well-spoken of the group. I also find
that if I don’t know the word in German, I can often throw in a French
vocabulary word that comes from the depth of my high school memory and confuse
everyone. The kids have classes in
German at school from 3 to 5 hours a week, and although we are not immersed in
the language, it is part of our daily experience.
So why am I giving all this information about the German
language? Because we will speak German when
we are in the States. It is a part of us
and we can’t remove it. We may not even
realize we are doing it, we may not be able to remember the English word or
there may not be an English word equivalent. We will not do it to make you feel stupid or
inadequate or as a way of “bragging” about our “infinite” knowledge. It is a part of our everyday existence. Among all of the people we interact with each
day on a regular basis, it is very normal to throw German words and phrases
around.
We do understand that this habit might get annoying after
a while and you may feel uncomfortable around us. It is always acceptable to ask us politely to
not speak German around you and we will do our best to comply with your
wishes. Please also show us a bit of
grace and understanding because it is never our desire to alienate anyone but
we have been changed by the culture in which we live.
Now if you want to hear some real language bragging, you
can ask the girls to sing “Jesus Loves Me” in Korean or ask how many languages
in which they can greet one another.
They could probably sing songs in several different African dialects,
too. At this point, you are welcome to
roll your eyes and ask them to move along.
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