The first time I had ever heard of “Swiss German” was when I was preparing to move from Düsseldorf, Germany to Rapperswil, Switzerland. My German neighbors had me over for a farewell barbecue and they said to me: “Whatever you do, don’t come back and visit us speaking that Swiss German.” I was aware that the Germans had a somewhat love/hate relationship with their southern neighbors, but I had no idea the Swiss spoke some different form of their common language. In fact, I was quite confident with the German that I had picked up over my three years in Düsseldorf, and I figured it would be quite an easy transition from one country to the other. I was wrong.
Posts in category learning German
They don’t teach you those words in German class
I enrolled in an intensive course (a must-have when you plan to live in a foreign country and need to assimilate, FAST) within three weeks of moving to Germany. It met five days a week, five hours a day. The learning curve was steep. It was great. Within two months I was able to speak to the Turkish girls in my class who didn’t know any English. That was a rewarding day, when we realized we could speak almost freely with each other. It was easy to make friends after that point.
When you take an intensive course, you learn what you will need to function in your new country of residence. You learn a lot of daily vocabulary. You learn how to grocery shop. You learn telling the time and reading bus schedules. You don’t learn Graphic Design language. And you most certainly don’t learn Yoga language.
As someone who currently teaches English for a language school and understands how the classes and teacher assignments work, I know that I can’t just sign up (or even ask) for a “Yoga German” class. These are highly specialized in terms of subject matter, and there’s just too great a chance that I’ll get a teacher who has never practiced yoga and is teaching out of a yoga deck of cards. It’s way easier, and cheaper, to do the self-study in this case. READ MORE »
Transatlantic with the Toddler
There are so many horror stories I could share involving transatlantic travel. I entertained my babysitter the other day by regaling my worst memories of flights between Europe and North America, some of which involve being sandwiched between an overweight, unhappy married couple, or missing my connection due to the deranged older woman who caused the plane to turn around mid-ocean. I was used to the long-haul flight, the hours of boredom and unrest, the painful itching in your legs to get up and move when there are still three hours to go, but that was all paradise compared to international travel with children.
Losing my German
We have been in Ireland for about three months now, and every time I speak to my closest German friend, I notice words slipping away. I was “home” this weekend, so I am feeling better about that again, but it is amazing how quickly it happens.
When we arrived in Ireland in August, our youngest, who was almost two, spoke mostly German. He had started in German Krippe in February of that year and was speaking it all day. His dad speaks German with him as well, so his only English tended to come from me, and sometimes from his older sisters, who mixed languages with the best of them, but were more likely to come out with English than German after seven years in Heidelberg. He did have some English, and understood everything I said, but his first tendency was almost always German.
U vs Ü
Driving in the car with my family the other day, I overheard my four-year old son say to his younger brother: “I am so frustrating! No! I am so frustrating! Stop doing that!”
I had difficulty suppressing my laughter, tickled at the irony of his statement. Yes, I thought, I sometimes find you frustrating too. Of course, he wanted to tell his brother that he was frustrated. I’m sure the tone of his voice communicated exactly what he meant, and his brother doesn’t really talk yet so the message most likely came across as intended.
Living in Germany and learning to speak the language as an adult has often left me feeling a bit like a four-year old at times, or even younger. My ability to articulate is painfully stunted, and my vocabulary limited, even after 10 years in the country. My frustrating (frustrated) son reminded me of one of my own blunders in learning German. READ MORE »
More German than the Germans
Slowly, we’ve found ourselves integrating into our non-German lives here in America. Instead of hearing the phantom ring of our default Siemens ring tone melody, I’ve gotten attuned to hearing our Uniden telephone gently playing the Star Spangled Banner. Something I cheekily programmed, lest the palm trees outside of our doors didn’t remind us enough of where we were.
Although we are getting more settled, there’s room for reflection at every turn still. What always struck me when I was living in Germany was how picking your career path, often at such an early age, was a real commitment. It wasn’t something that you waited till you were 21 or so to kind of start thinking about. On one hand, I found it a shame that a concept that could be so enriching as a liberal arts education wasn’t mainstream, and I also found it stifling and foolish that it would take years of retraining to switch careers. On the other hand, with every visit to America while I was still an expat, I appreciated the in depth knowledge of his goods which a German shopkeeper might have and understood why the bread tasted so good in Germany instead. On the other hand, it was exciting and motivating to think that there were all of these possibilities in America. If you wanted to become a preschool teacher, why not! You could! If you wanted to work in a bakery, come on in! READ MORE »
Levels of Language Proficiency: My Life in Germany
Recently I enjoyed reading Julia Child’s My Life in France (with Alex Prud’homme). It’s a great book (and the first one I ever read as a Kindle edition on my iPhone). Anyone who has lived abroad or spent only a brief time in the French capital will appreciate it even more. Julia’s husband Paul worked for the United States Information Service (USIS) in Paris from 1948 to 1954. A remark he made about language learning somehow struck me as profound:
“It’s easy to get the feeling that you know the language just because when you order a beer they don’t bring you oysters.”
- Paul Child, quoted in My Life in France*
Julia goes on to say: “At least he could communicate. The longer I was in Paris, the worse my French seemed to get. I had gotten over my initial astonishment that anyone could understand what I said at all. But I loathed my gauche accent, my impoverished phraseology, my inability to communicate in any but the most rudimentary way. READ MORE »
Getting Intimate with The Swedish Chef
I was warned about certain things, a lot of things actually, prior to my move to Germany. None of them prepared me for what I call Swedish Chef Syndrome.
I am a native English speaker from the New England region of the US. My own way of speaking is also heavily influenced, you know, by 20 years in California (we all say “you know” all the time). I can communicate with just about any other English speaker from anywhere. Some regions have more distinctive dialects than others, Caribbean and African nations, in particular. I’ve always managed to make do, though. I also had five years of Spanish while in school… so I’m mostly set in terms of getting around the Western Hemisphere, the former British Colonies and even Southern Europe where Spanish is close enough to Italian and Romanian that I can still function.
The Instant Expat
Because I have to go back to work earlier than anticipated thanks to the recession, we had to think about childcare for the little ones earlier than anticipated. With two kids under three, daycare (Kinderkrippe) was not an option due to the cost involved. Although an earlier attempt with an au pair didn’t work out very well, (too much partying and too little working) we decided to take the plunge and try again. Our au pair arrived from Canada last week, and it was interesting to see what kinds of questions he asked and what he finds intriguing (yes, he is a guy) about Germany. He’s 18 and has been to Europe before, but not to Germany. I had sent him Hyde’s book before he arrived, so expected some things, but others were a surprise.
The second night he was here, I took him with me to my expat meetup group here in Heidelberg. I had to explain to him beforehand what an expat was. If you have never been one, you most likely haven’t encountered the word! The first person he talked to wasn’t technically an expat either. He asked her where she was from and she said “Bavaria”. He said, “Where’s that?” To him, it sounded like a country, but of course he had never heard of it. She made him feel silly for not knowing that it was a state in Germany. Of course, we’ve all heard the stereotypes about Bavarians being like Texans, wanting to secede from the Union and all. I still felt bad for him. Not very welcoming. READ MORE »
The Expat Trap
I’ve been living in Germany for about two years. From time to time I meet up with other English speakers in cafes or restaurants just to get that “fix” of speaking my native tongue at full speed complete with cultural references and a chance to drop my guard. Being in a foreign culture you tend to be guarded with respect to things you say and expect simply because people behave so differently in your host country.
In the time that I’ve been here, I’ve noticed something. Generally speaking, there are two types of expats. Integrated or potentially integrated are the first type. The second type are the non-integrated. The first group are difficult to pick out of crowd, by their very nature of blending into their host society.
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