Almost Lost in Translation
Monika Vrabel
ENGL 1100.47

Pope John Paul II could speak about 12 languages, and yet, when one meets a person who can speak two languages fluently, people are amazed. It is truly a gift to be fluent in more than one language. When one travels to a country, they are then not held back because of the language barrier, and they can experience more by getting around faster and speaking with the locals. I have been very lucky to hear German, always, in my home. My mother is Austrian and my father is able to speak a bit of German, so when I was little, German was pretty much all I heard. Friends of mine are almost fluent in Spanish and French, and they have been taking classes since the sixth grade. I kind of cheated.

When I was a baby, the first words I spoke were in German, Deke and Flaschi which mean "blanket" and "bottle." My mother only spoke German around, and to, me. As a toddler, I only spoke German. It’s all I had heard, so how was I supposed to know what English was? I don’t really remember how this transitioned from one to the other, but I definitely remember it happening. Once I went to pre-school, it was difficult for me to understand completely what was going on. I’d go and talk to some girls, but it was difficult to completely communicate with them. The next thing I remember is me speaking broken English and then "learning English." No one taught me how to speak English, and I didn’t go to any classes. As I heard it around me, I spoke it. So, by the time I was three years old, I had learned English, and I realized how little German I was actually speaking. After about two years of school, I forgot how to speak German fluently. Talk about messed up. I think it happened because I didn’t speak it as much as I did at home when I was younger.

I transferred to an International Magnet Elementary School in the first grade, Wiley, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Wiley was the only elementary school that gave foreign languages as an elective class. So, naturally, my mother put me into German. The teacher was Frau C. She was from Germany, so immediately, my mother and she became the best of friends. She was an older lady, and was a generally good teacher. I learned many things over again, simple things like colors, animals, numbers, children’s stories, and nursery rhymes. Many of the nursery rhymes I did remember. We sang some about bees, dwarves, cats, wind, and my favorite, one that told of little ducks on a lake that put their heads in the water, and their tails in the air:

Alle meine Entchen (All my little ducklings)
schwimmen auf dem See, (are swimming on the lake,)
schwimmen auf dem See. (are swimming on the lake.)
Köpchens unter Wasser (With their heads underwater)
und Schwenschen in die Höh. (and tails in the air.)

Frau C also taught us the German words to the famous Beatles song, "Give Me Your Hand", or "Gibt Mir Deine Hand." We sang it about three times a year, and almost every year, we performed it for the school international festival. We had cardboard electric guitars, the rock costumes, and everything. That was fun for the first year, but I took German every year in elementary school, with the same teacher. I progressed in level, but I still seemed to learn the same thing every year. The class would sing the same songs about the same bees, dwarves, cats, wind, and ducks, and every year we would do the same Beatle’s song with the same guitars and the same costumes. And with that, I can no longer stand to hear "Gibt Mir Deine Hand" in German or English.

By the time I was in the third grade, speaking German came pretty easily for me again. I spoke it more around the house and my mother also began to speak more. I graduated from elementary school, and continued with German in middle school. Now that was a completely different experience. I went to Martin Middle School in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I had a new teacher with a completely different teaching style. I was put into the second level of German, since I had had it previously, and with that came a new level of understanding the language. I was introduced to the importance of grammar. German grammar…two words I have come to hate. I had always spoken just by ear and what sounded right. I never thought of endings on words or whether to put der, die, or das in front of a noun, and when I had to change them to dem, der, or den, I never knew what dative, present perfect, or natural cases were, and not to mention, I had no idea what the differences were.

The summer before the eighth grade, my grandmother, or Oma, took her family on a trip to Austria to visit family and the "Mother Land." My mother, grandmother, step-father, and sister took a two week trip to Austria. My sister and I were worried about the two weeks that we were going to be in a place where most people did not speak English. I was alright with my conversational abilities, but I was also very nervous to go to a place where everyone would know, and notice, when I’d made a mistake in my speaking. And now that I was a little more familiar with the German grammar, I knew that there was more that I could screw up on. We spent most of our time in Salzburg, but went to Vienna and Zell Am See. My mother and Oma were constantly talking and talking and talking and talking to family members and people they knew. At times, it almost seemed like they were showing off their speaking abilities. They were not, but that’s what it seemed like. All I heard was German. Luckily, because I was used to hearing it and I was brought up with it, I never lost the ability to understand it. So I had no problem understanding or reading what was around me. It was the speaking part that I was not as comfortable with.

After about a week, I pretty much knew my way around Salzburg without a map. I was much more comfortable not hearing any English at all. With all the German that was around me, speaking had come much easier. I found myself speaking and having very intelligent conversations with relatives without even thinking about it. I know this may sound kind of twilight-zone-ish, but it was an awesome feeling. The words and conversations just came out of my mouth. It was AWESOME!!! I felt so proud of myself. Granted, there were some words and vocabulary that I still did not know, but I knew enough to say things close enough to get the point across. Once we all got back home, things were very interesting for about a week. I actually missed the first week of school because we were still in Austria. Going back to school, my German class was much easier, but speaking to my friends was a different story. I actually forgot some English. I had been talking in German so much that it was in my system, in my brain, and was all I had been thinking. I would speak "Germanish" to my friends completely by accident. I would forget words like week, meat, light, chair, and brush. It was a bit embarrassing, but my friends all thought it was absolutely hilarious. After a week in school, I no longer spoke "Germanish," and things were back to normal. I went back to learning more about grammar, and even though I had been speaking German for two weeks, the grammar still made no sense because I didn’t think about it in Austria.

I have been working on German grammar since the sixth grade, and only as a junior in high school did it all finally start to make any sense. I mean, I changed all the endings appropriately and put everything in the correct word order, but only because I was told to do so. I never understood why or how it all worked together. I just spoke. After the experience in Austria, I took more notice of grammar, and tried harder. It was still a "pain in the butt" to make any sense out of it, but still, I tried. And over time, things began to become automatic, which helped a great deal during my sophomore year of high school. That year, a group of students from a school in Schwetzingen, Germany, came over for about a month. My family jumped at the chance to host a student, and Simone Schwartz lived with us. Speaking with her in German was a little difficult at first. She had learned English in Germany, so we spoke mostly in English. But when the group of about fifteen students came together, they all spoke German. I tried to join in and was pretty successful, but only when they were in a group. It was odd. When it was only she and I, it was much more difficult for me to speak German correctly, and well enough for anything to make sense. Once I was among the group and heard it all around me, my German came as automatically as it had when I was in Austria. By the end of the month, after speaking much more, my solo German with Simone had improved by a landslide.

Two years later, there was another group of exchange students from the same school in Germany who came over to the United States and did the same ordeal. This time we hosted Lotte Finkenzeller, who was actually a friend of Simone. Lotte and I became great friends, and basically the same thing happened with my German. While speaking with Lotte, I would struggle a bit, not as much as before, because I had improved, but I still struggled. Once I was in a group of students, my German was practically flawless. By that time, I was a senior and in AP German, so grammar was not as scary or confusing as before. Many of the students complimented me on how well I spoke, and could not believe that I had never lived in Germany. It was the biggest compliment I could ever have received, and I was very proud of it.

The month with Simone gave me a bit more confidence in speaking, and after the month with Lotte, I was much more comfortable with my abilities. It was like I had an "I can do it!" epiphany. I now understand most German grammar (even though I may not always speak it) and can teach the basics to a beginner. It is a gift to know a second language. So many more opportunities seem to present themselves, and at the same time one can learn more about their own language. Before learning German grammar, I had no idea what a direct object is or how to classify it, let alone what passive voice is, too. I’ve learned the similarities between the two languages and can see how many English words originated from German. I’ve also realized that English is a confusing language that makes no sense structurally, compared to German. I pray that this summer I will be able to go to Austria again. I am fully confident that I would be able to make it by very well on my own, without a translator within calling distance. I also hope to make a trip up to Schwetzingen to visit Simone and Lotte. Both have been begging me to visit them. When I get there, I’ll be sure to send a postcard. And so, my ladies and gentlemen, good bye. Und so meine Damen und Herren, Tschüss.