For Whom the Bell Tolls

I heard the poet and writer Michael Rosen on Saturday Live Radio 4 this morning say that the place name Nice, i.e the town in France, was at odds with the English understanding in his head of “nice”, because events he was researching that took place there during the Second World War that blighted his family were by no means nice. In the interview he had been talking about investigating, decoding and interpreting events using language. The interviewee seemed to brush over this one comment about Nice, the one that Michael Rosen seemed the most excited about. Perhaps it sounded too obvious? One is an town another an adjective, why mix them up? But I also share his fascination at those "strange" as he put it things that happen when two languages overlap, become mismatched or echo in a way that leads you to ask questions you may have never have thought of. Is Nice really nice? 

This made me think in general about how the understanding of your own language changes when you live in another country and how you may apply the meaning of another language, unwittingly, to your own when you relocate.

I am living in an area of Edinburgh now called Tollcross, having just moved from Germany where I lived for 14 years. Now I have a German language association with that place name, because the adjective “toll” means “excellent or great” in German, but also there is another meaning of the word as I discovered in a coffee shop in Berlin many year ago.

I went to get a takeaway coffee and saw some amazing looking biscuits on the counter in a jar; lumpy, misshapen and stuffed with nuts and white chocolate pieces with a sign that said “Tollhaus Keks.” Mmmm, yeah, “fantastic and great” cakes, I thought. But then the man in the shop told me that “toll” is also an outdated word for “mad”, (or perhaps“nutty” might suit these biscuits better), so the name translates as “madhouse biscuits”.

So now in Tollcross, destinations on buses, road signs and street names in and around the area all lead me to believe I am heading either towards a great place, a fantastic place, or on a bus ride straight to bedlam.

Sometimes, in language as in life, you tread a fine line.

The Arachno Files

On Plastic Spiders: An illuminating discourse on the anatomy, feeding and behavioural habits of spiders in three parts by Henry (3) and Catherine (43)-

H: Has he got fingers?

C: No, he’s got legs, eight legs. See? One, two, three, four, five six, seven, eight…….

H: Are those his eyes?

C: Yes, er…., let me see. I think so…those pointy stalk things could be his eyes, I think..

H: The spider says,  “Goodbye!”

C: Goodbye, spider!

H: Don’t say goodbye!

C: What shall I say then?

H: Say nothing.

H: I cuddle the spider.

C: That’s nice. You cuddle the spider

H: Does the spider walk?

C: I think a spider crawls more than walks

H: The spider jumps!

C: Yes, the spider jumps, but he crawls, mostly

H: He’s stuck on the hair

C: I don’t want it in my hair!!

H: The spider flies!

C: Henry. Do you know what he eats?

H: Grapes!

C: The spider eats grapes, does he?

H: He eats me up. He eats you up.

C: Oh, he eats us up, does he?

H: He eats the eyes. He eats you the hair and the nose and the mouth.

C: Henry. Did you know that spiders eat flies? They work very hard and spin a web. They are very clever, spiders. Then they catch the flies in the web and eat the flies.

H: Hello!  He flies. 

(throws spider)

My Little Polyglots

Piia Rossi, in her guest post, addresses many of the fears that parents of multi or bilingual children have, in her own fascinating personal account of multilingualism in her family. 

My two daughters, 6.5 and 3 years old, speak four languages each. Three of them fluently and the fourth scantily but they understand it well. The kids consider multilingualism as normal; in fact they don’t seem to pay too much attention to the fact at all.

We don’t have huge theories or philosophies behind the language acquisition of our kids. Instead we are guided by the circumstances and what we consider to be common sense. I’m from Finland and my parents don’t speak any language other than Finnish. For me it was a no-brainer that my kids would learn Finnish, as otherwise they wouldn’t be able communicate with their grandparents and relatives. The situation is exactly the same with Slovak, which is my husband’s language. To be able to communicate in Slovakia our kids need to speak the language. The necessity of language in our case is not about the language itself but how it is a vehicle to the girls’ culture and roots. It would be a shame to deny them a full access to their identities purely due to the fact that they couldn’t speak the languages.

At home, English is the main language for us, as me and my husband don’t speak each other’s languages (we are not quite as talented as our kids are)! Both kids were born in Ireland, are Irish citizens and learned English in their early years. English has established it self as the base language for us. I think we consider English as their first language. Not a mother tongue, but something similar to that. As we now live in Germany, naturally both kids speak German  and they go to school and kindergarten here. I speak Finnish to the kids varyingly, I can’t say whether it is half-half or more, I rather go with the flow than keep check on the language. This is also the case with my husband’s use of Slovak.

Now, how does this play out in everyday life in our household? We have always been extremely relaxed with the language issue; no set rules, no huge philosophies and no particular methods. I have never read a guidebook on the issue, and usually avoid any research in the field. I believe that guides and rules on this matter would restrict our natural family life too much.

However, as I meet a lot of multilingual families I am aware of the typical fears and beliefs about multilingualism. I have listed here some of the most common concerns.

• You can only teach babies 2 languages before the age of six, otherwise they get confused.
• You need to be systematic with the use of language. What's most important is that you don't switch between different languages as this might cause the child to be unable to differentiate between them.
• It's not good for parents to speak broken or accented language to their kids. It's much better that the parent speaks only their native tongue.
• It’s important to correct your kids’ mistakes.
• Multilingual kids’ speech will be delayed. 

Our personal experience is different to the list above, and I feel that often these worries are based on us parents having grown up in monolingual cultures and therefore not having the experience of multiple languages in a family. I think its helpful to remember that being multilingual is not a modern phenomenon. In fact there are more multilingual people in the world than there are monolingual people. Millions of people have done this successfully and think nothing of it.

In this light, I will go through the list above and offer some thoughts from our experience as being a quarto lingual family. 

The first point, that babies can learn only two languages or they will get confused, is just simply not correct.  I have two kids at home that prove that children can learn multiple languages and I meet families with multilingual kids on a daily basis, no problems there. People in bilingual communities take bilingualism for granted and often mix various languages in the same sentence; this certainly happens in my family and confuses nobody else but some outsiders. However, sometimes our ‘home made’ language makes me think of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, where he invented a unique polyglot-language composed of composite words from some sixty to seventy world languages.

Being systematic and not switching between languages is not a rule in our family either, and it has not proven to be a problem for us. I can’t remember a single time when my kids were confused about what language to use with which parent. This is possibly due to the fact that we don’t force any particular language; whatever comes out first is fine by us. There was a brief period of couple of months when our youngest daughter and my husband didn’t have a common language (we took this as preparation for the teenage years) but she soon acquired enough vocabulary to be able to communicate with him. Also. I have noticed that the kids very rarely talk the ‘wrong’ language to an outsider as long as they have been told that this person might not understand certain languages.

The one-parent-one-language method just didn’t work in practice for us. Firstly, it affects the naturalness of communication in the family when you constantly need to keep yourself in check what language to use. It also means that other people, the other parent included, will not understand what is being discussed between you and the child, unless you all understand all the languages spoken in the family or you translate all communication.

In regards to using a broken language, my thought is that it is better for the kids to learn some language than none at all.  

For the third point, we all have accents and the grammar might not be perfect, but its good to remember that kids don’t learn language just from their parents. They copy their friends and other contemporaries. As long as the kids have access to other speakers of the language, read a lot, and can watch programmes that they find interesting, my experience is that this widened exposure to the language lessens the impact of the non-native speaker parent. With our kids the exposure to the Slovak language is pretty much left to my husband only as we have not found a Slovak community here in Germany and this has partly resulted in Slovak being the weakest of the four languages they speak.

In our family we don’t correct the kids' language. We have chosen positive encouragement and acceptance as a method of learning. We believe that the feeling of achievement is a right for every person, and that home should be the last place where one is constantly scrutinized for such a basic thing as communication. When the language has developed to a very good standard, but there might be some persistent ‘mistakes’, we have shown the correct turn of phrase.

We were never concerned about the possible delay in speech. Based on my experience there will be lots of talking in years to come so we just enjoy the quiet times. Not that we 

 ever measured in any way when they started speaking. I understand that development is similar with speaking as it is with walking; some kids learn earlier, some later. I have noticed that there can be a bit of concern from outsiders in relation to the speech development, and my advice here would be to trust your own judgment as you have the full facts of the situation. This ‘advice’ often comes from persons who are not multilingual themselves or not used to dealing with multilingual kids. In my opinion they most often refer to the above list without any real knowledge on the matter. I have met kids who really don’t speak a word for the first few years of their life and then one day open their mouths and produce perfect sentences in multiple languages. Ours, on the other hand started babbling early, not perfectly but in large quantities.

Now, I must admit that there was a time when I did have questions regarding multiple languages, and I did ask around how to go about it. This was when my daughter started school couple of months ago. My worries were with reading and writing as I was wondering whether she should learn to read in one or two languages at the same time or would it be better to learn German first and later on transfer that to the other languages?  Well, typically my kid didn’t go on theorizing about it but went and learned Finnish and German simultaneously without our explicit encouragement or restrictions. With English it is a bit more difficult as the phonetics don’t work the same. Nevertheless based on the evidence (literally written all over the flat) I believe she is going to get English also in no time at all.

One thing I know for sure is that whatever my husband and I have thought about the multilingual issues has paid little importance here at all. My kids just went and did their own thing. My conclusion on multilingualism based on my family’s experience is that through positivity, unlimited admiration and support children find they own way suited to their person and our role is to be at awe of the little creatures.

Little Polyglots/  photo by Tervetuloa kuvauksin

He, She and It

Who's that?

Henry is too young to differentiate between saying "who's that ?" and what's that?" so we have been having conversations lately like this:

"Who's that?"- Henry
"oh that's your teddy bear, Rex"- Me
"and who's that"- Henry
"oh that's a ladybird"- Me
"and who's that?" - Henry
"oh, that's a stone, Henry" - Me

I love these conversations. Suddenly the stone acquires a little personality of its own. It just shows that the way we label things using language can instantly change our perception of them.

The German language is still a source of wonderment and confusion to me. Unlike English, nouns are attributed a Masculine, Feminine and Neuter gender. In German 'the' can be Der (M), Die(F) or Das(N).

So the desk that I am sitting at is masculine, der Tisch. And the computer that I am looking at is also masculine, der Computer, but the keyboard is feminine, die Tastatur. And if I had a laptop it would be swaying somewhere in gender limbo between masculine, der Laptop, and neutral, das Laptop, as it would seem that people are still in disagreement on this one.

The fruit in my kitchen in mostly feminine, though the apple happens to be masculine. Funny that.

I can sort of get used to this way of attributing gender to things, in an abstract way but it jars with me with certain words. For example, das Mädchen, which means girl. It just feels wrong that the word for girl in German has a neuter gender, like Henry turning to one of his cousins and saying, "What's that".

On the other hand, cousin is not a neutral gender word in German. You know immediately if the cousin is male (Cousin) or female (Cousine).

Likewise the German word for friend indicates whether the friend is male (Freund) or female (Freundin).  That's why when Germans speak in English about their female friend or friends, more often or not it doesn't come across the way they intended:

"My girlfriends and I love to go to the beach together"German
"How nice for you"(wow, these Germans are pretty forthright aren't they.)  Brit
"And I am going to see my best girlfriend in Rome,next week"
"Oh, that sounds nice" (How many girlfriends does this woman have!) Briti
"It would be nice to have you as a girlfriend from England"German
"Er ,well.." (Wow, I heard the Germans were direct but...) Brit

On the other hand if you talk about your friend which is a male in German, this is also the word for boyfriend, which could leave your relationship on the ambiguous side.

Is this her boyfriend or just her friend friend?

Usually this is countered by a more emphatic: "MY friend" just so you know for sure.
Or when introducing a male friend I usually say, "this is my friend" - followed by - cough-  "this is a friend of mine" which always sounds wooden and as if you are really overstating that actually you really are not sleeping with this person, but keeping them at arms length so don't get the wrong idea, because he is of mine and not mine!

Whew, then it gets even more complicated and the words get correspondingly longer.

Whereas in the English language we have mostly done away with gender specific job titles, where, for example, the word actor nowadays can mean both male and female, and political correctness has replaced chairman with chairperson, in Germany the division is still there.

So you know whether the chancellor is a male or female, or the head of the company just by looking at the word ending.
If you are addressing a group of male and female students, for example, the gramatically correct way to address them would be by using the male plural for student, Studenten. However it is deemed politically correct to use the female form and make it plural, Studentinnen, and for good measure add und Studenten, so the boys don't feel left out by the feminist linguistic revolution.  Also, you might see StudentInnen, which has a capital letter I as a sort of code to let you know that the boys are included in this one, too, but means you can save on ink.

It's strange that the problem of equality in language has been dealt with in totally different ways in German and English.
Stewardess sounds quite old fashioned now and most people are quite happy to use the term flight attendant and be rid of the feminine ending, without feeling that feminism has received a deadly blow. I personally do not regret the passing of this term or feel that I should make a point of keeping it.

In a series of guidelines on how to formulate language promoting equality, I noticed that it often recommends skirting around the issue altogether (or should that be trousering) by using verbs instead of nouns. So instead of saying, "user friendly" you could say, "easy to use". No person mentioned, ha ha.

Even when the word is neuter and shouldn't really offend anyone, such as the German word for "members", die Mitglieder,  there is  a widespread insistence of putting both feminine and masculine endings on it, which is grammatically absurd.

But I don't think you can have your neuter cake and eat it, even if it is in a good cause. Just have pity on the poor foreign students trying to get their heads around all of this gender bending. The words get really really long and you often have to write two words instead of one.

What if everything was a that? Not a who's that, as Henry would say, but a what's that?

Everything could become neuter including people, which could not only solve hours of soul searching over political correctness, but also alleviate the headaches of millions of students studying German as a foreign language everywhere.

German teachers could go on a sabbatical and learn all the Latin names of flowers if they felt bored.

And now that German just got easy peasy, all those students could use their time in other productive ways. Like figuring out when it is appropriate to address someone as "Sie"(formal) or "Du"(informal) in German.

Hang on a minute. Cancel that sabbatical. Hyacinthus Orientalis is going to have to wait.

Emoticonned

© Owl by Zeel 

I am quite fascinated by emoticons. I don’t feel all that comfortable using them, though. When I was at school in the 80s, teaching grammar wasn’t at all fashionable, so today, being confronted with punctuation marks makes me very nervous. 

On an emotional level, even more so.  ;-)

To overcome my fear of the emoticon, and punctuation marks in general, I decided to read up on them. I found out they were invented by Scott E Fahlman in 1982, a Research Professor in Computer Science in America. 

Surprising information for some >:o,

Not for others, however, who might fight this historical excurs a bit dull. |-o

Emoticons were apparently introduced as a solution for the misunderstandings that could take place on campus bulletin boards, to ensure that a jokey comment was not misinterpreted. 

Some people, though, are still of the opinion that the emoticon impoverishes the written language. :( 

They blow a raspberry at the emoticon.   :P

Others, like me, may feel like a dunce <:-| 

and not understand what the emoticon means, and have to explain it in words anyway (see above) which kind of defeats the object. 

I found out, too, that there are Western and Eastern emoticons.

There is some confusion (° .°  ) perhaps as to the difference between an Eastern and a Western Emoticon.

If you haven’t fallen asleep already ( - _ - ) zzz, I hope these examples have cleared it up enough to make you happy that you do not have to turn your head sideways to experience an emotion.

(•ˆoˆ•)!

I can’t imagine anyone will seriously challenge the rise of the emoticon. Ø

In fact, some enlightened folk like Zeel are already capitalising on it :

an emoticon for whom I have made a German mate

 (ö˛ö)

/(€  )⁄

   ßß

When I am skyping with my nieces, I face another dilemma. The dreaded punctuation marks are gone, and have been replaced by little animated emoticons.

 (smily)

Trouble is I am not so quick and don’t know what they all mean, 

   (Doh)

It takes me ages

 

 (time)

to find the right emoticon. 

(wait)

Which means my chats are emoticon led and not mediating my chat.

This leads to chats like this:

 What a lot of rain we’ve been having lately

 Hang on a mo’ , the sun’s just come out

What do you think about being a Ninja as a career option in your 40s?

          
   Do you think Ninja’s have birthday cakes? 

 Well thanks for the great chat, and good bye.

So much for the argument that emoticons impoverish language, then.

;-)

more like a blessing in disguise!

Bumpety Bump rider

Illustration by Piia Rossi

For this week’s meeting of the Trailing Spouses Group, we were asked to look at the theme of frustration. I had written this post a while back with the spouses in mind, but frustratingly enough, could never seem to finish it. 

“Hoppe Hoppe Reiter” is a traditional German children’s nursery rhyme, which is as morbid as it is fascinating. Its verses tell the tale of a rider, and the various grim fates that could befall him. He could fall from his horse and what then? He could land in the swamp, give himself a scare by falling into the hedge or worse, be eaten up by ravens. It is a nursery rhyme that is full of what ifs?

Here is the original version :

Hoppe Hoppe Reiter

Wenn er fällt, dann Schreit er

Fällt er in die Graben

Fressen Ihn die Raben

Fällt er in den Sumpf

Macht der Reiter Plumps

And my rough translation

Bumpety Bump rider

If he falls, then he hollers

If he falls in the ditch

Then ravens will gobble him up

If he falls into a bog

Then he will land with a squelch

Bringing up children in Germany, this song has become more familiar to me than the nursery rhymes from my own childhood, and for my children it is certainly more culturally and linguistically relevant than “This is the way the lady rides”, for example. 

It is a “kniereitvers” which literally translated means, “ knee-ride-verse”, so the child sits on the knee, and at the conclusion of the song, the fall, you let the child “drop” between you knees. Children, of course, can’t get enough of it. They love the tummy turning thrill of being dropped, knowing that they will be caught before they really fall. 

For me, though, with its vivid descriptions of bumpy courses, pitfalls, failures and uncertainties, it strikes a chord.

I am not worried about being eaten by ravens when I step out of my front door, but, I still feel, after living in a foreign country for over ten years that I could easily fall on my face by saying the wrong word in German, cannot apply for a particular job because my qualifications are not recognised, and could offend someone by not addressing them formally enough. It probably won’t happen, it is probably just in my head, but it could. As the songs suggest, the dangers are ever present.

I looked up how other people had translated the song into English on the Internet.

What a difference there is between these three interpretations of the same line:

If he falls, then he shouts

If he falls he will be crying

If he falls, then he cries out

The first interpretation suggests defiance, the second defeat and the third a cry for help All valid responses to the topic of frustration and I have probably reacted in all three ways before!

When you come to a new country, I think the most frustrating thing to deal with is learning a new language. Even though I have been here for 10 years, I still need Klaus to check my emails and invoices for mistakes so that I feel I will be taken “seriously”.  I find this hugely frustrating to be dependent on another person in this way. It was my choice, though, to come to Germany but I can imagine the frustration of those who have come here for economic reasons or as a trailing spouse and are struggling to understand the basics.

In translation, there is an attempt to get close to the essence of the language. For me, this nursery rhyme serves as metaphor for the attempt to achieve closeness, not just to a language but also to a culture and way of life, and the pitfalls and possible frustrations that accompany it. But as the simple driving and repetitive tune implies, after falling on your face there’s no alternative but to get back up ‘on your horse’, even though you’ll likely be downed again at the next hurdle and so on, like a comical sketch.

If you can get over the frustration though, there are rewards.  Novels and music and nursery rhymes await you, and you can express some things in German that you can’t in English, which is why a lot of ex-pats speak Denglisch, a mixture of both. But for me, the litmus test of German proficiency is not at your local Goethe Institute but at your local bakery. These ladies guard their wares like linguistic sentries; any slip or wrongly pronounced nuance will be met by a merciless response.

“a what?” then a long protracted silence accompanied by a withering expression that quashes any confidence you ever had in your ability to speak German, even if you have lived there for half your life. This exchange can go on for ten minutes or more, as you are forced to repeat the same word over and over again in front of an ever growing queue of impatient customers, until begrudgingly the baker lady hands over your roll. Eat your heart out, Goethe (or your croissant), these are the true bastions of the German language.

Hand-me-down Haiku

 I’ve always had a liking for the way T-shirts and clothing in general (especially children’s) are adorned with a random sprinkling of words (usually in English, even in other countries).

Curious about the language that Henry wears in his wardrobe of hand-me-downs, I decided to sift through it. I have sorted the phrases into categories:

Sports/Teams:

Team Player

Power Team

Winter Sports

Scuba Diving

Club of One

Crazy Jumps

Ride My Bike

In My Own League

Assertions/Questions

What’s Up? Jumps

 It’s Mine

Esoteric

Air Space in Front of the Other’s Eyes

Some of these phrases have a strange resonance for me: Club of One, for example. What could this mean? How can you be alone, yet belong to a club? This philosophical question haunted me. Are we all destined to be alone, and united only by our oneness? Was this to be seen in a positive light; a blatant celebration of the individual, the breakdown of the traditional family ties and a joyous disregard of the individual’s responsibility to the extended family and society in general?

What’s Up? Jumps sounded like a theatrical script from a fringe production. The actress standing stage left calls into the dark “What’s up?” Cue spotlight. Man in black leotard jumps up and down on the chalky stage. Curtain falls.

Air Space in front of the Other’s Eyes I bet that you have never thought about the air in front of the other’s eyes as being different, say, to air in front of their nose or the air in front of your nose, for that matter. Definitely worth thinking about!

And then there is the brash “Its mine” I mean, isn’t this phrase something we parents squirm at when our kids say it.  “No, darling, please share” we meekly respond, smiling weakly at the other parents as our toddler unceremoniously wrenches treasured toy away from their little sweetheart, adding a push for good measure. Now here we are letting our child walk around with this phrase emblazoned on their chest.  That’s just asking for trouble.

I first became interested in how English is used as a form of decoration way back in 1990 when I was interested in Japanese culture. English type and words were used frequently at that time (early 90s) on Japanese clothing.  I was attracted to the liberal use of nonsensical juxtaposition of words. I liked the banality of the language, the way that the designs imitated a foreign culture with the context removed: A fictional football team that existed in name only on a T – Shirt.  In short, I enjoyed the Japanese art of imitation. And this really is an art. Imitation or reconstructions are not seen as inferior to the original in Japan, as they are in the West. Moreover, what ever it is they imitate, they usually end up doing it better.  In 2002, they hosted the World Cup and thousands of Japanese imitated being a football fan for whatever country they chose to support.  Some “real” fans felt like they took the seriousness out of the game. How could they support Holland or England just as vigorously as they had Japan? They looked the part, but where was the substance? Nine years later Japan swept to victory at the Women’s World Cup in 2011 in Germany, which just goes to show that just because there is imitation doesn’t mean that there is a lack of seriousness. In Japanese culture, the original is not necessarily more highly regarded than the imitation. An example of this is The Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. A three-story temple adorned with gold leaf, burnt down by a crazy monk who was tortured by its beauty, as the story goes, and rebuilt in 1955. It is revered as if it was the original.

Haiku poetry is a high art form in Japan, and Western modern poets have struggled to imitate it. Perhaps the most famous Haiku poet is Basho(1644-1694) who wrote the famous Haiku:

An old pond!

A frog jumps in-

The sound of Water

The Haiku poem often describes nature, the seasons. It should describe and not analyse.

I like this Haiku, which is attributed to Yosa Buson(1716-1784)

Pressing Sushi

After A While

A lonely Feeling

And this one attributed to Issa(1762-1826):

My grumbling Wife

If only she were here!

The moon tonight.

As you can see from the above Haiku, the poem should have two contrasting elements, a cut as it were, a surprise element, if you will.

So, despite not coming from a culture when imitation is valued, and well aware that I don’t have a chance of writing a good Haiku, here is a summary of my week, in Haiku. You may notice that for extra inspiration I have used the phrases discussed above taken from my sons’ clothing.

Ride My Bike

Stolen in the pale moonlight

During the concert

It’s Mine

Yes, but it is on the floor and

I am afraid it has melted

Scuba Diving

In the police force

Is a job I want to do, Mummy.

What’s Up? Jumps

No one complains about the weather

When it is 27 degrees in October.

Winter Sports

But it is 27 degrees

And it is October!

Autumn sun

ladybird sitting on the window frame

Club of One

Airspace in front of the other’s eyes

Too much wine and loud brass

Gives me a headache