Which languages do you speak and how did that impact your life?
I’m a native English speaker who also speaks German.
Speaking English and living in the United States has had an immense impact on my life because I’ve never had to face language barriers when dealing with the government, getting medical care, going to school, or working.
Speaking English also makes traveling abroad easier because so many people speak it in almost every corner of the world.
That’s not true of German, which I started learning at age nine. But learning German and being able to speak and understand another language has had an immense impact on my life.
My first trip to German speaking countries was in 1989 when I was 13 and took a class trip to Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland. It was humbling to learn that learning a language in a classroom is very different to trying to speak it and function in daily life. It was pretty discouraging, and I mostly opted to speak English in Germany because Germans were very willing to improve their English.
That reality hit even harder when I returned to live in Germany for the summer in 1997. After studying the language for over twelve years and doing well in my college classes, I thought I was ready.
Figuring out banking, bureaucracy, doctor visits, daily travel, and groceries was a challenge having a limited grasp of the language. It taught me humility and compassion for people trying to do the same.
That confidence was flattened even more dramatically as I began life in a rural village in Bavaria and tried to navigate the Bavarian dialect. (Seriously, movies or shows in Germany will use German subtitles for dialogue in Bavarian.)
Early in that stint, my mood was buoyed, however, when I met some Germans who were my age and had grown up outside Bavaria because I could understand significantly more of what they were saying.
But life has a sense of humor. I spent three months in Bavaria that summer and returned the next year to live in Munich for full year.
In the Spring, a friend from the States came to visit. We met up in Frankfurt and planned to take the train to Berlin. As I helped my friend sign up for a discount with Deutsche Bahn, the agent asked for address and assumed that my post code began with “acht null….” Eight Zero — the numerical prefix for all of Bavaria. When I asked him how he knew, he casually replied, “Ihre Akzent” — your accent.
So, somewhere along the way, I acquired another language: Bayerisch.
