My "new" life

[Dave Grubb]

Retirement is a bit under siege at the moment as little jobs continue to come in and I am hard pressed to say no to old clients. I finished up two small jobs today.

But---I have ample time to pursue other interests and one of them is a course entitled "Serious Nonsense" which is given in the Pa. Dutch dialect and taught by a professor at one of the local universities. The dialect was my "native tongue" to a degree----my Mother (a school teacher) refused to allow it to be spoken in the house where only English was to be spoken. In the barns and the fields English was verboten.

As a kid, the predominate language was Pa. Dutch. If you heard English being spoken you looked around to find the
ausländer! When I began school (and my Mother was my teacher), the kids who could not speak PA Dutch were outcasts on the playground. School was taught in English. My brother who is 4 years older than me started school (circa 1945) in the dialect.

The transition from primarily PA Dutch to English was swift---it seemed in one generation that transition was complete. As that happened fewer and fewer opportunities to speak the dialect occurred. Today, I have to find an old order Mennonite or an Amish to talk to in PA Dutch---and I am pretty rusty plus I find modern German sneaking into my speaking. My comprehension of the spoken word is better than my speaking.

So---I'm going back to school

[Independent Voter]

Perhaps you will be the one to put the old adage , You can't teach [or relearn] an old dog new tricks to the waste bin of history. Good for you .

[Phillbo]

Living in a border state I speak pretty good Spanglish.

[Dave Grubb]

Good for you Bo. I'm "functionally" illiterate in 5 languages, not counting English or the dialect. It takes a day or two of immersion to get back up to par.

[TriGuy]

back in the mid 70s to around 82 I was conversantly fluent in German. two years in high school I took conversational German. No English was spoken during class time. Alas not having used it in 40 years has almost completely eroded my skill

[Dave Grubb]

You might be surprised by how quickly it comes back with immersion.
I became fluent in Korean but after a few years of not being there I felt very lost, until I had another chance to speak it and it came rushing back.

One of my biggest challenges in Europe was moving from country to country and I would speak a strange mix of where I had been and where I was for a day or two.

I had a secretary in Italy who was multi lingual and she, on my arrival, would often ask me, with a smile on her face, what languages are we talking now?

[TriGuy]

My German was with a Munich accent. Frau Ida Meyers my teacher was from there. When I was in Germany in 1980 people were always asking me how many years I had lived in Germany and they were shocked at the response zwei wocke

[Truckman]

I didn't waste my 2 1/2 years in West Germany...I learned how to order up to ten beers, ask where the men's room is and flirt with the waitress......Ben

[Dave Grubb]

One of the challenges I had, especially in western Europe, was that I worked with people who were mostly bilingual (or more) and they wanted to take the opportunity to speak English---it was an issue of conflicting goals

While you had an accent learned from you teacher Eric, many German's speak English with a British accent for the same reason.

The most difficult language for me was Korean---for two primary reasons:

1. Since I could not read Korean I lost the visual association, it became purely rote memory. As a comparison while I lived in Montreal for two years I would buy both a French version and an English version of the same newspaper and then sit down with them side to side. Watching subscripted movies helped as well in both Korea and Quebec. In Quebec I could do that on the TV at night. In Korea I could only do that by going to the movies. You haven't lived until you hear John Wayne speaking Korean

2. There were very few Koreans that could speak English. In Western Europe English is taught almost universally as a second language, that was not the case in Korea. To further complicate the learning process, there are three levels of the spoken language. There is a level for speaking to someone younger than you, then equal to you and the most formal someone older. It is a very serious affront to speak to an elder as an equal (I could now!) or even worse a child. Speaking "up" in formality was not as serious an issue. As an example, speaking to a child as an equal.

Another difficult area is eastern Europe. They have a different alphabet, which to a degree hinders reading and few of them speak English since they were taught Russian as their second language. Now, some 30 years after the fall of the USSR that is changing.


Which all brings me to a conundrum. I will use Miami as an example. There are large areas of Miami where English is not spoken---and yet virtually all of the "younger" people were born and educated here---and learned English in school but often refuse to speak it---something that leaves me confused.

Does anyone have an answer to that?

[Phillbo]

I didn't waste my 2 1/2 years in West Germany...I learned how to order up to ten beers, ask where the men's room is and flirt with the waitress......Ben

I can do that in Spanglish

[FredK]

I didn't waste my 2 1/2 years in West Germany...I learned how to order up to ten beers, ask where the men's room is and flirt with the waitress......Ben

Seems I learned fast than Ben, as I was only in Germany 1 1/2 years and learned that.

[Truckman]

Seems I learned fast than Ben, as I was only in Germany 1 1/2 years and learned that.

I'm a slow learner, Fred...Having been married and divorced twice should prove that......Ben

[UTAH]

I'm slower, Ben.

I married 3 times and divorced twice.

Hunter