(Great- Grand-) Mother Tongue

Backstory

I'm embarrassingly uni-lingual. My excuses for this are many and range from, "I live in one of the least French-speaking parts of the country. Why should I learn it?" to, "If I learned Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Russian and a few Indian dialects, I'll be able to communicate with maybe three-quarters of the people I encounter. Where do I even start?" And the clock is ticking now two. We're going back to Hong Kong early next year, and I intend to be able to speak a little more Chinese than just "xie xie" and "ai ya". Of course, it would help if I knew whether it was Cantonese or Mandarin we're supposed to be learning. Cantonese it more useful for getting around the city, but Mandarin may mean more to the grandparents...

But I digress. The point is that there are a few languages I should learn (French, Cantonese and/or Mandarin) and several which would be helpful to know (Spanish, Russian, Punjabi, Hindi, Sign Language) and I've decided that, rather than bemoan my inability to communicate in any language other than English for the rest of my life, I'm going to learn German. Yes, you read that right. No, it's not in any of my should-learn lists. So why German?

The first answer is easiest. My dad's dad's family is German. Well actually, they're from Hungary and while I know my great-grandfather was German, my great-grandmother could very well have been Hungarian, which would make us just as Hungarian as we are German and more Irish than we are either of those. (Which would be weird since none of us identify as Hungarian at all, and it's only myself and my brothers who have any Irish in us, although my dad's mom was English and Scottish.) But I really have no desire to learn Hungarian, and anyway it's German that my great-grandfather's family spoke, a few of my great-aunts and uncles still speak it, and despite what my actual lineage may be, it's the language that feels most closely-tied to my roots.

The other reason is that German is a fairly easy language to learn in that there are plenty of resources around. Nearly any bookstore you walk into has a selection of German language resources, a few local colleges offer courses, and my German-speaking great-aunt lives practically just up the road from my house. (Failing that, I could always head out to a local German conversation group... or crash the Alpen Club.) Okay, so it's not as easy as, say, French, but it beats the hell out of trying to learn Irish Gaelic!

There may be other factors in there that I'm not really aware of, but it basically comes down to desire and accessibility. I know myself too well to think I'm going to be able to learn a language when I don't want to, and I don't have the money to run off to a place where resources are more abundant (ie. Ireland). And my hope is that by choosing my first second language for entirely selfish reasons, I'll be more inspired to tackle one of those should-do's.

Which brings us to...

Last Week

I've been slowly amassing a bag of German language tools over the past couple of months; grammar book, phrasebook, German/English dictionary, and even a German Reader's Digest! All I might need to learn to read the language, but I'm more interested in learning to speak it. That's why, when I saw a set of Pimsleur tapes on sale the other day, I eagerly snatched them up. I've heard better things about this course than any others and, well, the price was right. Yesterday, I put on tape one. The first lesson is about twenty-five minutes long, and after going through it yesterday afternoon, and reviewing the notes I made through the evening, I can now, without cheating (although I'm sure I'd forget all of it if there was a test), have the following conversation with myself:

"Excuse me. Do you understand English?"
"No. I understand no English?"
"I understand only a little German."
"Are you an American?"
"Yes. American."

....... This is going to be a very long process. But at least now I can figure out how to say "I understand no German" in German, which could prove useful. Although a wide-eyed blank look and the word "English" would probably be just as effective, and easier to remember in a pinch.