My week: January 18 ed.

This week picked up a lot of steam after the holidays. I found myself running from one event from another and getting a lot of little obnoxious chores done, while still feeling as if I had tons of things left to do.

-In German class, we worked on the passive voice. I've learned the present passive voice before but we floated into what was previously for me uncharted depths and my mind was geblown (as I like to say in Germish).

Take this example: The letter will have been written by me. Der Brief wird von mir geschrieben worden sein.

There are four verbs/helping verbs in that sentence! Okay, fair enough, there are four in English too. I think things would get even more crazy if there were some subordinate clauses thrown in the German version; they usually change the word order. I can't even wrap my mind around where to put what. I don't have to worry too much; my friends say that the passive voice is not used* that often, except for the news, so I can chill out a bit.

-I met with my German tandem partner and she had me reading children's books out loud to her. It was a great idea but I certainly felt a bit silly narrating a story about a talking basil plant that somehow had a monkey, which may or might have been made out of another plant, in it. Folks, that's what happens to me when I can't read something silently to myself several times to figure out what is happening. I really do need to learn what the heck the monkey thing was. I know that he scared the plants.

-I met a group of friends for a quick drink then had a dinner with some other friends. It was such a nice night with two German friends and one American friend. We laughed like crazy and watched videos of cute baby owls (we're all animal lovers). Yes, we're a bunch of nerds.

-I went to Munich for the weekend. More to follow!

*Did you catch that?

Acting differently, depending on the language

In an earlier posting, I examined the idea of one having a different way of presenting oneself in a language other than one's first language. This made me think of another situation in which there was a very visible change in a multilingual person's demeanor.

A friend and I took an English tour of a museum. The tour guide was Russian. Her German colleague joined her for part of the tour. As she gave the tour, the woman seemed tentative and a bit nervous. After her colleague left, the guide said that she had been losing her lovely English because she's been working extensively in German. However, she used words such as "exquisite," which is hardly a beginner's word. She was visibly shaken during the tour even though she spoke very good English.

After the tour ended I stayed to look more at some of the art. As I did that, the guide's next tour group came in and she addressed them in Russian. Everything about her changed; she stood up straight, spoke confidently, and walked briskly. The transformation was fascinating; it almost as if she was a new person!

Some of the change might be related to the guide switching to her own language after working in a second (or third...or more!) language. Also, with her colleague coming along, she might have been even more nervous. It was certainly interesting how much she changed though. It really does seem that language can shape one's expression.

Who are we in another language?

Learning a foreign language changes one's brain so much that it's not surprising to see many articles espousing its benefits for keeping one's brain sharp as one ages. However, one doesn't necessarily think about what learning another language does to one's personality, nor is that written about often. Despite that, this has been on my mind in the last year and a recent meeting with a friend really highlighted it. I do believe that the way we express ourselves, and maybe even our personality itself, changes when we speak a different language.

My friend, whom we'll call N, has been practicing English with me for almost half a year now. Thanks to a lot of dedicated study on her own, she has really come along far to improve her already-quite-decent English. Now she's to the point that we are discussing picky grammar constructions that many native speakers get wrong.

I hadn't been speaking that much German with her during earlier meetings, but she has been good about pushing me lately to communicate more in German. N shared her realization that when I speak German, I am like a different person. She knows me in the context of my English speaking so she has an impression of who I am, but in German, the impression would be different if we weren't already acquainted. (I would be amused if it were something to the effect of "woo, is she dumb! She speaks like a baby," but N is too nice to say something like that.)

From there, N realized that she doesn't present herself the same way in English as she does in German. She thought that I wasn't initially meeting the "real" her but as her language is progressing, she's expressing herself better in English and is closer to her true self.

That raises a good question: do people feel different about themselves when they speak different languages? Is it a result of not having a firm footing in the new language? Do they act differently? Does language define us?

M learns Italian

I hang out with an unusual, fun, and varied mix of expats, students, expat students, locals, etc. One interesting person is M, who is a PhD student. She was on her way to Italy to do some work related to her studies. Some friends who knew Italian gave her some phrases to help her out in Italian and I took pictures of her notes.

The choice of important phrases was amusing, such as "happy hour" and "I did not do anything."

My week: January 11 ed.

-German classes through the uni club resumed this week. While I needed a break from being so busy, I was glad to get back to class as I didn't speak German much in the two weeks off and I felt it slipping. I also brought a box of cookies for the class. I had to leave early and deliberately left the box behind. Our instructor emailed me to say that she had eaten two and took the box home to return to me. I wrote her back and said that she could keep them because I didn't need any more cookies.

Of course she ended up correcting the grammar in my email. She is always correcting us, which is fine; the only way to learn a language properly is if fluent speakers make corrections. However, sometimes I roll my eyes when reading emails because I just wanted to tell her about the dang cookies and I was in a hurry.

-I met with my German partner. It was nice to catch up after two weeks off. We ended up speaking German for two hours.

-Some colleagues from work got together for drinks at Phuket and 21 in downtown Kaiserslautern. Oh. My. Goodness. However, it was a very fun night out. Also, it was my first time at 21, which is a restaurant and bar at the top of the Rathaus with amazing views.

-I started planning a trip to Munich since I'm getting a bit restless and need some travel in my life. I hope to write a post about the resources I used to try to find cheap transportation and accommodation.

Get your Ball in Box

At Cora*, a French supermarket, C and I saw these "Ball in Box" in the frozen food section. They are little ham and potato balls, and, as the box notes, there are +/- 28 balls. It's strangely descriptive, isn't it?

*To read more about the shopping trip to Cora, click here.

Rage parking in Barcelona

When I visited Barcelona earlier this fall with my friend R, we saw this parking garage. From our vantage point, it totally looked as if its sign read as "rage parking." Of course, if one had been stuck in traffic before entering the garage, that could certainly be an apt description!