What do you call a person who only speaks one language? American! Bah-dom-domp.
Apparently, America is everywhere. Today I met a fellow named Otto who told me that he likes to come to German camp because it’s the only place he can be fully immersed in the German culture. He went on to explain that even in Germany there is KFC and McDonalds on every corner, and though they think it’s cute when visitors try to speak German, they quickly put you out of your misery and speak English. They all speak English.
Otto is a native of Germany and comes to camp every year with his American children and grandchildren. He wears a shirt that designates him “World’s Coolest Grandpa.” Who am I to argue? He’s pretty cool.
I don’t know how Otto’s English is, but his family spoke beautiful German, even the children. This family values their heritage and celebrates it (for at least one week every summer).
Otto made me think about our perspectives of language. In the United States, perceived intelligence seems to be tied to a person’s knowledge of English. Yet all people have a language. It may not be your language, but we’re still on equal footing. You speak. I speak. What makes the knowledge of any one language superior to knowledge of another? I wonder if in Germany you are thought to be unintelligent or uneducable if you speak limited German. If you, as a single-language speaker, go to another country, would the people of that nation think you are dumb? Would they dismiss your prior trainings and experiences until you fluently spoke their language?
Sadly my German is not good enough to be able to ask Otto any of these pressing philosophical questions.
Apparently, America is everywhere. Today I met a fellow named Otto who told me that he likes to come to German camp because it’s the only place he can be fully immersed in the German culture. He went on to explain that even in Germany there is KFC and McDonalds on every corner, and though they think it’s cute when visitors try to speak German, they quickly put you out of your misery and speak English. They all speak English.
Otto is a native of Germany and comes to camp every year with his American children and grandchildren. He wears a shirt that designates him “World’s Coolest Grandpa.” Who am I to argue? He’s pretty cool.
I don’t know how Otto’s English is, but his family spoke beautiful German, even the children. This family values their heritage and celebrates it (for at least one week every summer).
Otto made me think about our perspectives of language. In the United States, perceived intelligence seems to be tied to a person’s knowledge of English. Yet all people have a language. It may not be your language, but we’re still on equal footing. You speak. I speak. What makes the knowledge of any one language superior to knowledge of another? I wonder if in Germany you are thought to be unintelligent or uneducable if you speak limited German. If you, as a single-language speaker, go to another country, would the people of that nation think you are dumb? Would they dismiss your prior trainings and experiences until you fluently spoke their language?
Sadly my German is not good enough to be able to ask Otto any of these pressing philosophical questions.