Monday, February 8, 2010

Germenglish

I have been working on innumerable posts for about 3 weeks and counting. However, I can't seem to translate my thoughts in to a coherent blog post...It's really beginning to frustrate me.

While learning a second language is great thing, it is causing problems for me when I try to communicate in my native language. My mind has become a large void from which I can no longer find coherent thoughts. Instead, I find some mixture of English/German/Latin/Spanish/Italian/French...I can't keep it all straight. Yesterday, my husband started speaking in French to our dogs...I thought my mind was going to explode while I tried to figure out what he had said.

It's not that I lack the intelligence or the mental capacity to absorb a new language, I've just decided to do it in a untimely manner. Something for when ability to communicate has paid for dearly.

As young children, it takes us years to be come fluent in our native tongue.

I've decided to try to become nearly fluent in German in least than a year (35 weeks of classes)....my mind is not thanking me for this.

Instead of speaking just English or German, I now speak a strange hybrid of the two languages that doesn't even really make sense to me. I am constantly frustrated when I speak, write email, ... I find myself constantly searching for the word I want ( English and German). My mind is a sieve and my vocabulary is slowly straining away.

Sigh...

My mind will come back and the clouds will leave my thoughts clear as rain....

5 comments:

  1. Argh. I feel your pain -- I have always wondered what it would be like to be fluent in two languages -- :) When I taught school, I just wanted my students to know one language -- LOL.

    It's just a good thing that your mind is still young --- I am searching for words in English these days, sweetie.

    Yesterday, I looked for the word "attic" for a minute -- I kept calling it "the thing about the ceiling."

    Bwahahaha.

    Only not.

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  2. Whoops, I mean "above" the ceiling -- "about the ceiling" sounds kind of British.

    *twirls*

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  3. and your word verification thingy are almost words -- tis weird...

    Okay, I'm done.

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  4. I know what you mean. I'm taking a Spanish class this semester and I find that it has me trying to Spanglcize some words (yes, I did just make that word up). And I was just trying to explain the difference between Spanglish and Spanish to my brothers last week. The conversation went something like: "Well, in Spanglish 'book' would be 'el booko,' but in Spanish it's 'el libro.'" They were very impressed. And I was very impressed that I seem to be absorbing some of this Spanish.

    Well, I think that's enough for now, haha. I feel like Kristy, writing a long response.

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  5. Seriously, Amy, this sort of thing fascinates me. Do you find that you *see* things differently when you think in different languages? Perhaps it's because certain things are more easily described in one language than another that you skip back and forth between them? How awesome is that though? I mean, you have vocabulary from multiple language to draw from when you want to express something. I think your current confusion and frustration points to the progress you're making in German. You're confused because your mind is trying to think in more than one language. I mean, you've already started to *think* in a foreign language - and that's a major hurdle on the way to becoming fluent.

    Robyn - I'm impressed by the length of your post (and your Spainglish). I wanted to keep mine shorter than yours. Really, I did. But...writing is sometimes sort of a compulsive thing with me. Thank you, English degree. ;-)

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