Today Eliano, who just turned 11 months, made fun
of my English. How? Well, he sneezed and I innately replied, "bless
you." The little guy stared, then burst into laughter. I repeated the
words "bless you" as I wrangled him into his cobalt hipster sweater,
complete with wooden buttons. He despises getting dressed and this time he
spent the minutes laughing as I repeated the words.
After a while I wondered if he was making fun of
me.
Or did he really just like the sound of "bless
you"?
Because, in comparison to the traditional German
equivalent, "Gesundheit", I don't find it that funny.
But as he is 11 months, and his mother was away for
the day, I was just about ready to do anything to make him happy. And so we
spent the morning drooling on my iPhone, playing "monster" (where I
chase him and he hides behind furniture, only to squeal when he sees me again),
and napping while I pushed his pram up and down the cobblestone streets.
And while he was napping, I was reflecting on my
use of the German language. Which compared to the last time I discussed it, has
increased from saying only greetings to also saying goodbyes.
People tell me not to be too hard on myself, I
understand a lot. I went to a neighbors house last night. She is around my age
and studied in the States. Her friends all know varying levels of English, and
speak slang German. I was surprised I could understand about 80% of what they
were saying, down from 90% of people who speak formal German. Although I barely
uttered a German word, it was a nice evening. My neighbor and her friends
understood my nervousness with the language, saying it is very hard to learn,
however I should not be nervous in speaking and simply just start.
I have seen a difference in my understanding
of the language. I now do not translate everything into English in my head.
I believe the first step to learning a foreign language is realizing that
it is its own entity. There are more words, and letters, in German than
there are in English. Therefor not everything in German translates to English,
and words in English have more than one translation in German. And then there
is the basic sentence structure, reversed from the two languages. German lays
the verb at the end, while English (usually) has it near the beginning. When
reading my Harry Potter und Der Stein Der Weisen, I often
don't know what the hell Harry is up to until I get to the end of the sentence.
Yes, he is with Ron, and at Hogwarts, and has glasses ….. and ah, there it is,
they are simply walking to class.
Never knew before what eternity
was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German.
- Mark Twain -1878
Mr. Clemens was right. And I give him props for
trying to learn German before the language was forced to under go a renovation
when the Americans set up camp after WWII, and realized that even though
English is derived from Germanic roots, the two written alphabets look nothing
alike. Now the German written language closely resembles English.
And Mr. Clemens is even more right. I may not have
eternity (nine months) but I do have an 11 month old who plays well by himself,
who naps, and who makes fun of my English.
So maybe I should just jump in, jump in with the
only German citizen who won't care (or notice really) if I use the wrong form
of "gehen" (but really, as my grammar is fantastic I would never use
the wrong form; gehen, ging, bin gegangen).
Ron Weasley und Harry Potter sind zu die Klasse gegangen.
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