Speaking of languages...

Our student assistant Ryan told us about a huge French department store called Galleries a Lafayette that is here in Berlin! The top three floors are high fashion clothes, makeup, and bags.  The bottom floor has a french restaurant, french cheese shop, french coffee and tea shop, french grocery store with all imported products (ranging from meat to yogurt to microwave meals to frozen deserts...and *drum roll* I FINALLY FOUND HUMMUS IN THERE!).  When we were in France I spent $6 on a container of hummus and flew it home, and have been savoring it since.  But now I know where I can get more hehe!
They also have macaroons, fine wines, etc.  Basically, it's a pretty awesome place.

Most importantly, they have a whole bookstore of French books, and the people that work there even speak French.  I was in heaven.  It was like being back in Paris... which, I still haven't told you guys about, sorry! It's been a busy week of internship applications and homework.  I've been editing my photos today, though, so I'll have some updates on that end soon.

In the French bookstore I got myself one of my favorite books in French, and then stopped at Dussmann for what I think is my first actual purchase of classic literature.  I'm going to try reading some fiction... we'll see how it goes!

On Language

I've been meaning to write this post for about a month, but an experience I had last night illustrates the whole subject quite well, so I'm glad I waited.


When I moved here two months ago, I obviously wasn't the German language expert.  But nonetheless I felt I needed to have all of my social interactions in German because, after all, this is Germany, and I shouldn't be that arrogant American who thinks that everyone should know her language.


Over the course of the first month, I tried my best to order food, check out at the grocery store, etc., in German.  But when I would lose a word for a moment, or accidentally spit out a "thanks", the person on the other end would automatically switch to English, which I found extremely frustrating.  I interpreted the interaction as me failing and them being annoyed with me, and it really wore on me.


However about a month ago I realized that not all of these interactions are like that.  Often times these people I interact with want to practice their English, and see interacting with people like myself as a great chance to do so.


When I got to Prague a few weeks ago, I realized that it was my first time being to a country where I did not speak ANY of the language.  And no, it's not like Spanish or French where you can sort of figure things out: here's one example of a phrase... it means "I'm fine, thanks" - "Mám se dobře, děkuji".  So anyway, I was reliant on Lucy's 2 weeks of learning Czech, and my broken english I've perfected since being here, to communicate with people.  The most fascinating thing with me, as a linguaphile, was the interactions I had there with people whose first language was neither Czech nor English.  For example, we ran into a group of Argentinians on the way home one night and they asked us in English how to get somewhere, so we (trying to use our Spanish) explained it to them in mostly English, throwing in the Spanish we remembered from high school.  Another example was on the bus on the way back from Prague.  As we boarded the bus, all the people who didn't speak Czech, the bus people speak to them in English.  I was probably the only native English speaker of the group, but it's really interesting how the Chinese, Russian, French, German, and Spanish people all have to communicate in English while in the Czech Republic.  

As much as I did not want to believe it, but now do after living here for 2 months, English truly has become an international language.  I'm not sure how I feel about it - I have mixed feelings - but it should really make you feel blessed to have it as your first language.

The next week I spent in Paris, and had all of these experiences again.  Thankfully I can communicate in French, so things were easier for me than for my classmates, who had some interesting language stories.  I found French people to be, like many Germans, eager to practice their English.  However there, instead of switching languages and maintaining their annoyed look as Berliners do, they thanked my friends with a smile and nod for their "je voudrais..." and kindly offered the food names in English. 

On a side note, flying back from Paris to Berlin was one of the most linguistically confusing experiences I've ever had.  By that point it'd been 1.5 weeks since I'd been in Germany, 2.5 weeks since my last German class, and for the past few days I'd begun thinking in French.  Which to speak, French, German, or English?  After a week of being back here in Berlin I've finally gotten back into the routine.  But in one week we leave for Russia, and the day after I get back I'll be leaving for Barcelona..... so, we'll see how that goes.

So back to my experience last night.  My friend from HWS was in town and I was taking her to meet up with some IES friends.  We got to one of the train stations and there was an announcement in German that I didn't understand, but I knew it was something along the lines of the train not working because the route had been changed [and because whenever there is a train problem, it's the only announcement that is not translated into English].  Hearing us speaking English, a woman desperately approached us and asked us what the announcement said.  I apologized and told her my German isn't good enough to translate it.  She was disappointed and said "I only speak English and French", and later we found out Greek, as she's from Greece and was in Berlin for a tourism convention (which, is conducted in.. you guessed it.. English).  I took her to where she needed to go, because few metro workers speak English.  She kept expressing her deep frustration in the fact that these German transportation workers don't speak much English; she said that in Greece "all the transportation workers and waiters have to speak English".  Amazed, I asked "really?".  She explained that when she was growing up she chose French in secondary school and then later learned English, but that in public schools in Greece today, English instruction is mandatory beginning in middle school, and that students can then chose from a romance language in high school.  Talk about having some life advantages!

Anyway, this was a long post, but I don't apologize because it's all really pertinent and I find all of these interactions to be fascinating, and hopefully you found them mildly interesting as well.  


If you're interested in this topic, you can read this recent NYT article that Deanna sent me about polyglots; it's quite interesting!

Language Barriers

Today in German class we had a spontaneous discussion of what has been happening to our language skills since arriving in Germany.  It turns out I'm not the only one whose English is getting worse!  As we all agreed, our English is getting worse, our German is getting no better, and for those of us who have learned another language, that's the one that keeps surfacing/the one we're thinking in. 

Surprisingly (and comfortingly), our professor says that is normal.  She said that will happen for about 1-2 months, and then German will kick in/we'll start getting better at it, and then we will leave.

Relatedly,  we spoke about how here pre-school is ages 0-3, kindergarten begins at 3, and then elementary school.  Students who are already bilingual by the age of three (because after age 3 it is *statistically* significantly more difficult to learn a language, and then every subsequent year it gets more and more difficult) then receive special linguistic counseling to make sure they keep the grammar separate, etc (in the US we call this ESL, but unfortunately there are not many bilingual children because there is no childhood language education, nor are there very many ESL teachers). 

Moral of the story: life is much easier for everyone if we speak more than one language, so learn young.  I can attest to this, because drunkards street Berlin, high school students, or waiters at Mexican restaurants (so they speak German, Spanish, and English) speak better English than I cans speak German, French OR Spanish. When you experience that all the time, it's really frustrating/embarrassing.