My mother is German. Didn't come to the states until she was 19. Other than a few phrases, and the things I needed to know when she took me to Germany when I graduated high school, she never much worried about teaching me to speak German.
I can't hear her accent-- which is now a wonderful mix of the places she's lived in the States-- but others can. To me, she sounds like the run of the mill American, albeit with a better grasp of grammar.
So I can pull kuchen up with no prob. Can't do plum in German (but can in Hungarian).
I took German in high school - we were supposed to take French, but at the time I planned on going to vet school, and my local vet told me that if I could take German I should...lots of research articles and very few who could translate them.
I - and one other girl - studied German with an older nun who had spoken German in her family until first grade. She was relearning it along with us, since she hadn't spoken much for years. I'd guess she was in her 70s - although it was hard to tell. We would get her off topic, and she'd switch into German - it was very good for us to have the conversational exposure as well as the usual memorization work.
Then as a military wife, I spent some 7 years in Germany, most of which were "on the economy" - or in other words, living in German civilian housing. The second tour, my kids were old enough to go out and play with the local German kids. I got stuck with trying to explain soccer to _my_ kids - translating from explanations of what they were trying to do from the German kids - and then trying to explain "Kick the can" to the German kids. Eventually, my kids learned very passable German as well. Very Bavarian (which sort equates to a Southern dialect) German, but German.
I don't use it much in Southern California. I've thought about trying to learn Spanish, but just don't have the drive. Besides...I feel like _they_ should learn English, and I don't want to be able to help them too much. Learning languages is hard - especially the idioms we all use. Some of our idioms are close to indecipherable!
Pflaumme Kuchen. Which translates to "Plum cake".
ReplyDeleteMy mother is German. Didn't come to the states until she was 19. Other than a few phrases, and the things I needed to know when she took me to Germany when I graduated high school, she never much worried about teaching me to speak German.
ReplyDeleteI can't hear her accent-- which is now a wonderful mix of the places she's lived in the States-- but others can. To me, she sounds like the run of the mill American, albeit with a better grasp of grammar.
So I can pull kuchen up with no prob. Can't do plum in German (but can in Hungarian).
I took German in high school - we were supposed to take French, but at the time I planned on going to vet school, and my local vet told me that if I could take German I should...lots of research articles and very few who could translate them.
ReplyDeleteI - and one other girl - studied German with an older nun who had spoken German in her family until first grade. She was relearning it along with us, since she hadn't spoken much for years. I'd guess she was in her 70s - although it was hard to tell. We would get her off topic, and she'd switch into German - it was very good for us to have the conversational exposure as well as the usual memorization work.
Then as a military wife, I spent some 7 years in Germany, most of which were "on the economy" - or in other words, living in German civilian housing. The second tour, my kids were old enough to go out and play with the local German kids. I got stuck with trying to explain soccer to _my_ kids - translating from explanations of what they were trying to do from the German kids - and then trying to explain "Kick the can" to the German kids. Eventually, my kids learned very passable German as well. Very Bavarian (which sort equates to a Southern dialect) German, but German.
I don't use it much in Southern California. I've thought about trying to learn Spanish, but just don't have the drive. Besides...I feel like _they_ should learn English, and I don't want to be able to help them too much. Learning languages is hard - especially the idioms we all use. Some of our idioms are close to indecipherable!