Experience I

On a skiing holiday in the Gasteinertal I got separated from my family. My father had given me a wink to jump into the next gondola, they would follow with one of the next. In the cabin were parents with a boy a bit younger than me. I was 13, he might have been 11. As soon as we started to go uphill the boy asked his father about cable cars and got to hear a lot of interesting details. Besides that I was interested in the matter as much as the boy I found the "dialect" of father and son very interesting. By their friendly interaction I felt encouraged to add one or two own questions and though the boy stared at me I got my answer extended and interupted by "verstehst du?" after some sentences. The "verstehst du?" was added in Standard German while the rest was spoken in their "dialect". I thought they might be surprised about a girl with interest in technics. When we had reached the upper end of the cable I thanked the father and wished both of them a nice day. While leaving the cabin I heared the boy whispering: "What did she say?" And the father told him: "Well, she is speaking German and she wished us a nice day." The boy asked: "But did she understand what we were speaking?" I turned round and said: "Sure. It's great you know so much about cable cars." I had to jump out and there the conversation ended.


When my family finally came I told them about it imitating the words of the father. It gave them much fun when I said I had discovered a dialect I had never heard before. By my vague performance they had learnt it was no dialect at all. "That's Dutch, girl." laughed my father. "Nonsense," I responded, "if it was a different language I would not have understood what they said."


Well, it was Dutch and of course it is a different language. With honest respect for all Dutch people nobody would say they were talking some kind of German. Still for people who have their language roots in some other Germanic idiom Dutch might be rather simple to learn. And if this blog was not only about Germanic languages in Central Europe - because these are the ones I know a bit about - I could add Danish, Swedish, Norwegian ... are great to discover, too.  


English of course is no exception. In Europe as in many other places of the world it is omnipresent as a second language - which does not mean that anyone would speak it correctly besides the native speakers. My last English teacher used to tell us that foreigners get along very well with their kind of English if they talk to other foreigners. The confusion starts when one single English native speaker enters their group and they have to find out that what they talk is no English at all. :) 


Years later I had a similar experience working as a receptionist at a hotel. A guest required some information and while answering in English I realized he would talk in a different language. After a while he laughed and said: "Hey, it is really fun to talk like this. I understand English quite well, but I prefer to speak my own language." I agreed it was nice, but I could not make out what it was. "You do not speak Dutch, do you?" "Very close," he said. "It's Afrikaans. But I can talk in some languages you will have no access to." And so it was when he let me hear some sentences in Xhosa.