I’ve been meeting many more expats now that I am living in the heavily populated Rhineland/Ruhr region of Germany. These expats range from old timers/lifers to newbie/temporary assignees. As any expat can relate to, the newbies are grappling with learning the German language: some try private tutelage, others secure places at the local VHS, while others make the deep plunge for the Goethe Institut in Düsseldorf. Most of them ask me about my level of German and how I learned. I admit that it was a quick ascent to fluency for me, and I know that I was fortunate to not have problems with the German language as an expat woe. (I was instead confounded by the local Swabian dialect while living in Swabia.)
A glimpse of my German language textbooks. PHOTO: Jane Park
I have been thinking a lot about how I was able to learn German quickly and why some of my fellow American expats might be struggling more. There are a few differences. One is that I grew up in a bilingual household. That does not mean though that I grew up speaking bilingually. My parents spoke Korean with each other, and while my mother spoke Korean to us, my siblings and I always responded in English. On top of that, my grandmother who was an important caregiver in my young life was a modern woman of her time and spoke English fluently. My Korean for a long time was limited to very basic comprehension. It wasn’t until I went to college and immersed myself in Korean studies that I became proficient. This perhaps proved a propensity to learning languages on my part, but I was otherwise educated as any typical American in the sense that my foreign language skills were limited to the classroom. read more…
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