By Giulia Barjona / 27.10.2020

Learning a language allows you to discover and confront a new culture, to face the challenges that come with learning a new language, and to develop a part of your brain which is rarely used.

There are many children around the world who begin learning another language from birth. These are referred to as ‘bilinguals’, although this definition has changed over the years following research which has disproven many myths.

Firstly, experiments have shown that half of the world is bilingual. In other words, there are countries where families speak two or more languages either often or all the time. It is also very common for foreign languages to be included in school curriculums.

Secondly, these days the word ‘bilingual’ is used to describe those who use two languages regularly on a day-to-day basis. However, the idea that a bilingual is a person who can comfortably switch between two languages has changed; bilinguals may also speak with a foreign accent or maybe have mastered a foreign language only in certain situations or for different social environments.

Thirdly, researchers have dispelled the myth that bilingualism causes communication problems such as language delays; they discovered that the benefits for children learning a new language are numerous. For example, during studies, researchers found that bilingual children could distinguish between different sounds, had better cognitive flexibility, and more complex thoughts. Furthermore, a greater neuropsychological development helps to improve the level of concentration, intuition, and also prevents Alzheimer’s disease.

In conclusion, why not start learning a new language or using a foreign language you already know?

Author

Giulia Barjona (Italy)

 

Studies: Pedagogical Sciences

 

Languages: Italian, English, French

 

Europe is... an immense source of inspiration and discovery.

Translator

Fern D (UK)

 

Languages: English, French, Russian

 

Study: MA in Applied Translation

 

"As conservative politics tries to push the UK further and further away from the continent, it's now as important as ever to make individual efforts to bring it closer."

Der Beitrag European day of languages and bilingualism erschien zuerst auf MH English.

By Nataliya Sira  / 23.11.2017

Find more texts of the “My language, my home” series here.

Do we often think about how beautiful our language is, how nice it sounds and how clearly it can transmit our thoughts and feelings?

Most people do not attach much importance to their native language and very often the perception of certain characteristics of the native language comes only with the study of foreign languages. It is when we start to learn other languages that we look for compliance with our native language, and sometimes we understand that in our native language there are so many different grammatical or lexical rules that actually do not exist in the foreign language we learn.

I began to think about the wealth of the Ukrainian language only when I learned Italian, English and German thoroughly. When being abroad and speaking different languages, I noticed that in Ukrainian I could express myself in one way or another, whereas in German, Italian or English I had to adopt a completely different construction of words. In Italy for example I realised that, if in an everyday situation I just translate from the Ukrainian ‘You need to get on the bus number 3’ (‘Вам потрібно сісти на автобус номер 3’), then people will simply not understand me because in Italian people say ‘Deve prendere l’autobus numero 3’ (literally ‘You have to take the bus number 3’), whereas in Ukrainian a person is supposed ‘to sit on the bus.’ When foreigners hear Ukrainian for the first time, they are struck by its musicality and by the presence of so many sounds that result in being unfamiliar to a large number of European languages.

Here you can listen to one of the most famous and historical Ukrainian bands, Okean Elzy and their hit ‘Обійми’, (‘Hug’).

The Ukrainian language belongs to the Slavic group of the Indo-European linguistic family and is the official language of Ukraine. It is spoken by about 45 million people. Most of them live on the territory of Ukraine. The rest of the speakers is concentrated in Belarus, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Romania, Slovakia, Kazakhstan, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and other countries where Ukrainians live.

Map of Ukraine and its neighbouring countries

The Ukrainian language has a very rich history in its battle for survival. At the beginning of the XVIII century, for example, Peter I’s decree of 1720 banned the printing press in Ukrainian. Later, in 1763, Catherine II banned the teaching in Ukrainian in the Kyjiv-Mohyla Academy in favour of the Russian language. In the XIX century the Polish language was introduced in all public schools of what is now Western Ukraine and in the 1892 there was even a prohibition of translating books from Russian into Ukrainian. Finally, with the Russification campaign of the beginning of the XX century, Ukrainian education, churches and words were forbidden. Despite the fact that the Ukrainian language was restricted for centuries and its speakers were persecuted and sentenced to years of imprisonment only because they wrote in Ukrainian or defended its rights and interests, Ukrainian managed to overcome all these difficulties and become the official language of Ukraine. Years of existence under the invaders did not pass without making its mark and most of the language reforms of the occupants were reflected in the vocabulary of the Ukrainian language, contributing to the formation of regional dialects and mixed codes, the most widespread of which nowadays is Surzhyk.

During its existence Ukrainian has always struggled with another language from the Slavic group of the Indo-European language family: Russian. If we analyse the differences of vocabulary between the Slavic languages in order to determine the language to which the Ukrainian language is most similar, it will first be Belarusian, and only then Russian. Despite this the Russian language itself had a great influence on the status of the Ukrainian language, which began to be considered as unprestigious in official contexts during the policy of Russification. It was during the periods of strong Russification that a mixed Ukrainian-Russian language Surzhyk arose. A large number of people who spoke Ukrainian before tried, or were forced to express themselves in Russian after the implemented linguistic reforms of Russification. However, since most people did not speak Russian, the population began to use a mixed code of the two languages. The second wave of Surzhyk came during the 1990s with Ukrainian independence, as the Ukrainian language began to be considered a prestigious one. It was during this period that the Russian-speaking inhabitants of Ukraine were trying to express themselves in Ukrainian and as a result they created a Russian-Ukrainian Surzhyk. One of the most widespread examples of common Surzhyk is an interrogative pronoun ‘шо’ [sho], corresponding to the English ‘what’ that was created by the fusion of the Ukrainian ‘що’ [shcho] and Russian ‘что’ [chto]. This Surzhyk pronoun has been used not only by a lot of people in everyday life but also in literature. Eventually it gave its name to the bilingual portal of contemporary culture ‘ШО.’

Ternopil city © N. Sira

Today Ukrainian has the status of a prestigious language not only in everyday and secular life, but also on Internet sites, private blogs and the profiles of some trendy influencers of Instagram. Many works of Ukrainian writers such as Yuri Andrukhovych, Oksana Zabuzhko, Serhiy Zhadan and other famous authors have been translated into foreign languages and consequently became best sellers in and outside the country. The Ukrainian language is also studied abroad, usually by students of foreign language faculties who choose the specialisation of Slavic studies. When speaking with Austrian students who chose Russian and Ukrainian languages, in particular from the University of Vienna, it could often be heard that these two languages actually greatly differ from one another, not only in vocabulary but also in phonetics and grammar. The Ukrainian language is gradually gaining prestige among foreign students who come to Ukraine with the purpose of studying Ukrainian by taking the language courses. Moreover, there are also a huge number of Internet platforms being developed for foreigners who are interested in studying Ukrainian or for Ukrainians who want to improve their knowledge of their mother tongue.

The Ukrainian language is also developing outside of Ukraine thanks to the international organisations of Ukrainians; scholars and writers who, despite being abroad, are engaged in literary activities in Ukrainian. In addition, the number of students who choose to study the Ukrainian language is increasing every year, and if one thing is known, it is this: as long as there are speakers of a particular language and people who are interested in learning it, it will continue to exist.

Find more texts of the “My language, my home” series here.

Author

Nataliya Sira (Ukraine)

Studies: Foreign Languaguages for International Cooperation and Communication

Languages: Ukrainian, Italian, English, Russian, German

Europe is… more opportunities for everyone!

Proofreader

Sarah Robinson (United Kingdom)

Studies: French and German Language and Literature

Languages: French, German, English

Europe is… complex and invaluable.

Der Beitrag My language, my home: Ukrainian erschien zuerst auf MH English.

By Iris Pase / 23.7.2017

In June, the municipal theatre in Treviso (northern Italy), crowded as it could be, hosted a lectio magistralis organised by the communication research centre ‘Fabrica.’ Entitled ‘Truth, never again. Chronicle and data analysis in the post-truth and false news era,’ the conference was held by Roberto Saviano, a famous Italian writer and journalist, author of bestsellers like ‘Gomorrah’ and ‘ZeroZeroZero’.

Overused and abused, the word ‘post-truth’ was named as Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in 2016, and refers to ‘circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’ In simple terms, post-truth is inevitably linked to a lack of information but abundance of emotion: a statement’s or an event’s veracity is no longer important for either the authorities or the public because what matters is that ideas and claims appeal to one’s audience, and that potentially they can make it grow. Take, for instance, the case of Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House aide: when confronted with the evident mystification of the numbers of attendees at Trump’s inauguration, she maintained that Sean Spicer the press secretary was merely offering alternative facts. The problem is that alternative facts are not facts, but rather their manipulation.

Contemporary political rhetoric plays with people’s beliefs and instincts in order to engender reactions dictated by passion rather than rationality; unfortunately, post-truth often arouses negative emotions that lead to furious and violent events. It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that this is no one-way process, since beliefs are not just exploited or piloted, but they can seemingly serve as a verification and legitimisation. Just remember how Trump used public opinion to justify his claim of not having won the popular vote due to millions of fraudulent votes simply by stating: ‘Everyone believes it.’

Illustration: Luzie Gerb

In further explanation and demonstration of the phenomenon, Roberto Saviano brought up several examples, for instance: during the US election, Ending the Fed claimed that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump, thus shocking the world. The story, being shared by both those who believed it and those who didn’t, maybe to mock or criticise it, travelled around the globe and unfortunately was taken to be real for a few hours. Although extremely influential from a political point of view this piece of fake news at least didn’t contribute to the occurrence of criminal events as did the ‘Pizzagate’ affair. As was common during the 2016 elections, a conspiracy theory went viral, spreading all over the US. It claimed that a number of restaurants were involved in human trafficking and paedophilia. Determined to investigate the matter on his own, 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch fired on the pizzeria ‘Comet Ping Pong’ in Carolina, a fictitious child-sex ring, in December 2016. Fortunately, no one was harmed, but the man damaged walls, the door, the desk and could have easily destroyed lives.

Are we out of our minds? Do we want to be fed lies? Are we being deceived by some sort of underlying massive conspiracy? The journalist denied the existence of a conspiracy or corporation behind it, he rather concentrated on social media, on the way news is perceived and gathered and how people’s mindsets have been profoundly impacted by the expansion of our now fast-paced world. Quoting Eduardo Galeano, Mr. Saviano said: ‘When we got all the answers, they changed the questions.’ That’s exactly what happened with social media: rules changed, a new way of communication and human interaction developed, thus altering our perspective on the world and the way we perceive and know things. Saviano underlined how contemporary individuals focus on short-term purposes: everything must be done and achieved now, results must be seen immediately, we don’t have time for long-term processes. We don’t read a full, deep analysis, we prefer a tweet. According to a recent estimate, 70% of young Americans read news on Facebook, thus trusting a far less accurate source than a newspaper article which could offer an in-depth view. We need time to articulate thoughts and shape opinions, but it’s far easier to read a four-line story than to stop, avoid checking notifications for ten minutes and try to understand the issue.

Virality is becoming synonymous with superficiality, a lack of valid content, and we can see it in the astonishing success of Kim Kardashian, a beautiful young woman who’s famous for not having skills or talent, except showing her backside. She’s viral because she doesn’t stand for anything, she doesn’t have anything to convey. This is why her rhetoric is so inclusive. Opinions exclude, they leave out those who don’t agree with you, since they might ‘leave’ and unfollow you.

But how can we handle the complexity of life if we hang on to this shallow and ignorant attitude? How can we overcome the post-truth era? We need to take our time to read, reflect, isolate ourselves from the fast flux of this spinning world and think. Great ideas can’t rise from a continuous state of opacity of the mind, endlessly focused on social media, notifications, sharing and tweeting. We need the time to metabolise what surrounds us and exercise our critical thinking. It’s the only way to avoid fake news becoming seen as admissible and to prevent politicians from taking advantage of our ignorance and abusing their power.

We can change things by being considerate citizens and humans: we need to read, not fall for stereotypes, carefully check and select our news sources, not let emotions rule our opinions, think, and maybe post-truth will one day be just a memory.

Author

Iris Pase (Italy)

Studies: History and Philosophy

Speaks: Italian, English

Europe is… meeting another European and feeling a common history, culture and mindset.

Blog: The Venetian Rover

Illustration

Luzie Gerb (Germany)

Studies: Art History, Fine Arts and Comparative Cultural Studies

Speaks: German, English, Swedish, French

Europe is… full of magical places, interesting people and their stories.

Website: luzie-gerb.de

Proofreader

Sarah Robinson (United Kingdom)

Studies: French and German Language and Literature

Languages: French, German, English

Europe is… complex and invaluable.

Der Beitrag Real news or fake news: this is the question erschien zuerst auf MH English.

By Sarah Robinson / 8.6.2017

Find more texts of the “My language, my home” series here.

The areas where English is the first, and more often than not sole language of the population can be broken down into three broad locations: the British Isles, Australasia and North America. (Although there are other important countries and states in Africa and the Caribbean.)

Countries where English is an official language © A. Meunier

The most notable differences between the dialects are found in spelling and vocabulary. Australian and British speakers would say autumn, lift, and wardrobe, whereas Americans would use fall, elevator, and closet. British spelling will use -ise rather than the American -ize for verbs (e.g. to specialise, organise, or memorise) and will spell nouns with -our rather than -or (e.g. favourite or colour). While the dialects of English may vary in style, vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar, it is extremely rare that someone from, say, Canada would not be able to understand someone from New Zealand, and vice-versa. If there is any mutual incomprehensibility, it will frequently boil down to the strength of accent one or both people have, but in my experience the broad meaning will usually be conveyed.

Happily, English can come across as quite a straight-forward language, which I tend to agree with. One of the best illustrations of this is our tendency towards noun strings. A string of nouns is simply a list of nouns, one after the other, which serves to modify the final noun without making use of tricky things like adjectives or prepositions. They are most often used in business or political administrative contexts, but they can be found elsewhere too. If, for example your local council is constructing a park to mark an anniversary, it would be perfectly valid to call it the ‘anniversary park construction project’. Problems arise though if the jargon is left to run away with itself, leaving the meaning hard to decipher, especially for non-native English speakers. My personal favourite comes from a government website, a report entitled ‘independence payment assessment criteria equality analysis.’

As a native English speaker, one thing I don’t envy of those learning English is dealing with the spelling and pronunciation of words. While it’s true that English doesn’t have such linguistic complexities like grammatical gender, it does present a certain ‘rulelessness’ at points. Take for example the letters ‘ough’ and compare the differing pronunciation of the following words: rough [ruhf], plough [plou], though [th oh], through [throo], hiccough [hik-uhp], and thorough [thur-oh].

If you want to become even more confused, have a look at an excerpt of a poem written just on this subject, entitled ’The Chaos’ by Gerard Nolst Trenité. The poem contains around 800 of English’s most confounding spelling and pronunciation irregularities. It is worth noting that even native speakers do not get all of this poem right!

“Have you ever yet endeavoured
To pronounce revered and severed,
Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,
Peter, petrol and patrol?
Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which exactly rhymes with khaki.
Discount, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward,
Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?
Right! Your pronunciation’s OK.
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.”

To read the full version of the poem click here, or listen to the poem being read aloud as it (mostly!) should be here.

Westminster Bridge, London © A. Meunier

I’m not of the opinion that English needs to be safeguarded and or that it needs to remain ‘pure’. Granted, English is fortunate in that it is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world and is in no danger of dying out as other languages are. The recent wave of nationalism in Britain has brought some of these strident opinions to the fore, but English is constantly evolving and is historically a ‘borrowing’ language. We adopt words from other languages in common parlance and wouldn’t think twice about it not being an ‘English’ word. We use words like Kindergarten, déjà vu, de facto, al dente, per capita, zeitgeist, and en masse, to name a few. We incorporate neologisms easily into our lexicon, mostly stemming from the online world, like spam, crowdfunding, and googling, all of which are now official entries in the English dictionary. The receptiveness and heterogeneousness of English are its charms and its strengths, and the more people who speak it, the better!

To learn more about English and its historical borrowing tendencies, have a look at this video, ‘The History of English’ by the Open University.

Find more texts of the “My language, my home” series here.

Author

Sarah Robinson (United Kingdom)

Studies: French and German Language and Literature

Languages: French, German, English

Europe is… complex and invaluable.

Der Beitrag My language, my home: English erschien zuerst auf MH English.

By Ioana Cristina Cristocea / 7.5.2017

As human beings, our brain thinks in a default language. As people become bilingual or multilingual, they often embrace slight shifts in their personalities based on the language they choose to express themselves in. This very fact indicates that some structures are shaped by the language used, and as such, it is of crucial importance to be aware of these patterns and to accept or dismiss them in various contexts.

To illustrate the need for language awareness, the word “stranger” serves as a starting point. While half of those who read the word will think initially of what would be described as a person unknown to the self, the other half would see it as meaning weirder. For precision, an employment of the Oxford dictionary is necessary to allow it to illustrate the two possibilities of understanding this word – stranger is either “a person whom one does not know or with whom one is not familiar” or more (than what is defined to be) “unusual or surprising; difficult to understand or explain”.

Furthermore, looking at “prejudice” for example. “Prejudice” means a “preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.” However, it also means “harm or injury that results or may result from some action or judgement.”

These similarities do make us wonder whether those words are connected and if so, in what way. Did our ancestors, the ones that created the confusing language system, try to suggest that a stranger is someone one should be afraid of? Or rather, did they try to raise a red flag by illustrating the harm that a prejudiced opinion can cause? These coincidences, labelled as such due to the confusing nature of their occurrences, should serve us in understanding why the language we use is so important.

Language is a door opener in many aspects. The replacement of a word can change the whole meaning of the point we are making and can unravel so many different nuances that would, without this change, be lost. Words induce a certain mind-frame, as they come with a pack of feelings often perceived when using them. These get easily transmitted to others and are able in turn to spark different reactions. “Stranger things will happen” might make you shiver for a tiny second there.

There are many more problems that derive from language structure. The simple existence of gender-based labels is one of the most widely spread problems. In many languages across the globe, professions have different masculine and feminine nouns to accompany them. German, Spanish, Italian, Romanian are just few of the languages maintaining this old structure. “Profesor/ profesoara” in Romanian, “Lehrer/ Lehrerin” in German, “Maestro, Maestra” in Spanish. There is absolutely no reason why the gender of a person would matter in their job orientation, but having different words for naming them suggests such an importance.

Illustration: Begüm Saral

Additionally, a crucial example is found in the Romanian language. In Romanian, the word “om”, which translates to human, is considered to be a new word that has entered into the language and has been imported from French. (Such words are called “neologisms”.) The reason behind this is the fact that before, there was no word that people could use to refer to a human being, and as such they had to refer to people based on their gender. “Barbat” = male, and “Muiere” = female were used. What is even more puzzling is the fact that “muiere” is today used with a certain derogative tone, much resembling the old pattern of women belonging to men.

These are not only theoretical considerations. Language has a direct effect on our actions. Studies suggest, that when referring to a profession with only the masculine noun, girls consider these occupations to be harder to achieve than when referring to it with a neutral word or both feminine and masculine expressions.

While these are only isolated examples, they aren’t exactly chosen at random. They’re chosen because they do construct the semantic family of this article’s idea, that of fighting discrimination on one more ground. This isn’t, of course, limited to double-meaning words or gender-based ones.

The problem has so much more of a scope than just this. It includes calling a woman “slut”/” whore” while in an argument. In most cases, the word choice does not express that the subject is sleeping around, it just serves as a universal insult to hurt. While it is obviously not justified to judge anybody by who they chose to sleep with, or in this example how many, it is extraordinarily important to understand that the frequent use of this word as an insult does more than just hurt people. It reinforces the stereotypes that women need to limit the number of their partners. It bears on its shoulders the idea of women being denied access to their own sexuality. It doesn’t only hurt, it erases the progress that recent history fought for, especially considering how the equivalent in male terms, “man-whore” is sometimes carried with pride as a label, reinforcing the idea that the more a man “conquers women”, the more masculine he is.

The similar pattern is applied when using a derogative word to refer to somebody’s race or ethnicity. The end goal may vary from a joke to an intentionally hurtful remark, however the result reaches far beyond the person you’re referring to.

Every choice of words matters, because they can help break old beliefs, or they can just add one more barrier to the fight we should all be part of. The first step is to become aware of the implications of the words we choose. Words matter.

Author

Ioana Cristina Cristocea (Romania)

Studies: International Relations and European Studies

Speaks: Romanian, English, French and a bit of Italian

Europe is… a culture in the making.

Illustration

Begüm Saral (Turkey)

Studies: Architecture

Speaks: Turkish, English, German

Europe is… one big landscape.

IG: begum_saral

Proofreader

Sarah Robinson (United Kingdom)

Studies: French and German Language and Literature

Languages: French, German, English

Europe is… complex and invaluable.

Der Beitrag The language of inclusion erschien zuerst auf MH English.

14.4.2017

Author

Anja Meunier (Germany)

Studies: Mathematics and Economics

Languages: German, English, Spanish

Europe has… beautiful countries, interesting people, a great lifestyle. And needs to stay together.

500px: Anja Meunier

Illustration

Luzie Gerb (Germany)

Studies: Art History, Fine Arts and Comparative Cultural Studies

Speaks: German, English, Swedish, French

Europe is… full of magical places, interesting people and their stories.

Website: luzie-gerb.jimdo.com

Der Beitrag Quiz: How to swear and insult in Europe erschien zuerst auf MH English.

By Anja Meunier / 26.3.2017

Part I: My language, my home: Catalan

Part II: My language, my home: Maltese

Were we not always told ‘German is too difficult’ and ‘it always sounds as though you are fighting’? Well, yes. And maybe little has changed about that. Yet thanks to the strong economic position of the German region in Europe, my mother tongue has suddenly taken on a whole new meaning and more and more people are discovering the interesting, beautiful and logical sides that I also want to open up to you today.

First of all: German can also sound very beautiful and musical! It wasn’t without reason that 19th Century Germany was known as the land of poets and thinkers. Goethe, Schiller, Rilke…all of whom are still very highly regarded all over the world today. Just listen to the following poem.

“Der Panther” by Rainer Maria Rilke

What’s especially interesting about the German language, and what it’s so famous and notorious for, is the compound nouns. The most commonly cited example, which was created solely for this purpose, being Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenbommel (the bobble on the cap of a captain for the Danube steamship company). The construction of such word-snakes is thus possible in German, because unlike in many other languages, a noun that is to be closely descriptive can be supplemented with the prefixing of another noun without a space in between. With such precise descriptions we achieve such long words.

Illustration: Luzie Gerb

In reality, these gigantic words are almost never used, after two or three connections, it’s done. However, compound words in a shorter form are ever-present. Lots of animal names, objects and other nouns are formed in this way. I love these words, their logic is so simple and child-like. A bear that washes his hands? A ‘wash-bear’ (Waschbär; raccoon)! A pig with spikes? A ‘spike-pig’ (Stachelschwein; porcupine)! You’re happy in Spring? ‘spring feelings’ (Frühlingsgefühle)! A song is firmly stuck in your ear like a worm? You have an ‘ear-worm’ (Ohrwurm)!

Some of these words have been adopted into other languages as they so fittingly describe very specific situations or concepts, for example Schadenfreude (being happy about someone else’s misery), Wanderlust (the pleasure of hiking or travelling), Wunderkind (very talented ‘miracle’ child) or Kindergarten (daycare – a ‘garden’ for kids).

Illustration: Luzie Gerb

One of my Spanish friends, whose German is already fantastic, recently said that one of the things he will never understand is the use of expletives in German. There’s actually quite a lot of them: eben, halt, doch, eigentlich, mal, echt, ja, nur… just to name a few. They all have different meanings depending upon the context, and when they are used back to back they can, again, mean something completely different… for example in the sentence “Bring doch deine Freundin mit!“ (‘Bring your girlfriend with you, if you like’), the ‘doch’ means that it’s a suggestion, whilst in “Du bist ja doch gekommen!” (‘You came after all!’) it expresses surprise.

Another peculiarity of the German language is its word order; the most important words are usually placed at the end. In his text very often quoted by irritated German students ‘The Awful German Language’, Mark Twain complains, amongst many other things, about the fact that you have to wait so long to find out what actually happens. „Heute Abend bringe ich dich…“ Um? Zum Flughafen? (‘Tonight I will…’ Kill you? Take you to the airport?) One of the most famous incomplete sentences in history is that of then-foreign secretary, Hans-Dietrich Genscher in 1989 which he addressed to runaway GDR-citizens on the balcony of the German Embassy in Prague: „Wir sind zu Ihnen gekommen, Ihnen mitzuteilen, dass heute Ihre Ausreise…” (‘We have come to you, to share with you, that today your departure…’) The rest was incomprehensible amongst deafening cheers, but could also have been ended with the grammatically correct statement “…nicht möglich ist” (‘…is not possible’).

I also find it interesting how in German, we use the words of other languages – above all English words. Sometimes we use them to differentiate things more precisely. For example, we use the word ‘Swimmingpool’ for a private swimming bath, whilst public baths are called ‘Schwimmbad’. When someone goes ‘shoppen’ they’re buying clothes, for groceries we use the word ‘einkaufen’. There are also other Anglicisms that would appear very odd to a native English speaker. We call a mobile phone a ‘Handy’ and ‘Public Viewing’ is used when we go to watch football in a public place, even though correctly translated it is actually a public laying out of a corpse.

German speaking regions of Europe © A. Meunier

Over 100 million people speak German as their mother tongue. In Europe, German is spoken in the whole of Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein. In addition to this it is also spoken in South Tyrol, the north-most part of Italy, the German speaking region of Switzerland, Luxembourg, the German municipality of Belgium, the border areas of Alsace and Lorraine in France, North Schleswig in Denmark as well as parts of the population in some eastern European regions such as Opole in Poland and in Transylvania in Romania.

I find it great that my native language is suddenly so popular. In exchanges with people that have learnt it as a foreign language I gain a new perspective and begin to think through and question it in a whole new way.

Author

Anja Meunier (Germany)

Studies: Mathematics and Economics

Languages: German, English, Spanish

Europe has… beautiful countries, interesting people, a great lifestyle. And needs to stay together.

500px: Anja Meunier

Illustration

Luzie Gerb (Germany)

Studies: Art History, Fine Arts and Comparative Cultural Studies

Speaks: German, English, Swedish, French

Europe is… full of magical places, interesting people and their stories.

Website: luzie-gerb.jimdo.com

Proofreader

Ashika Bhatt (England)

Work: Au Pair in Germany

Speaks: English, French, German

Europe is…culture

Der Beitrag My language, my home: German erschien zuerst auf MH English.

By Sephora Francalanza – 16.1.2017

Part I: My language, my home, Catalan

As time goes by, the Maltese language seems to be considered as inferior to other languages, especially when compared to English. In a country that is obsessed with the binary, the duality of everything: the nationalist party against the labour party, the rivality between local band clubs, the Maltese language finds itself pitted against the English language. In fact, if you were to ask any Maltese person why they do not give more importance to their language, they would probably say that Maltese isn’t useful anymore, not when it is only used on a tiny island and spoken by only around 400,000 people. However, many do not realise just how unique our language is, how it has changed, and all that it’s gone through in order to survive in its current state, and how incredible it is to still be surviving in 2016.

Although it might sound like a cliché, the Maltese language is indeed a treasure that should be safeguarded. The fact alone that we have our own language pertaining to such a small country; a language that is used in newspapers, literature, on the internet, on TV and in theatre, tends to be forgotten by a lot of our population, when it should be recognised and celebrated. It’s not the first time that I have been asked about my mother tongue by a foreigner, and I almost always receive the same reaction of surprise and fascination when I explain that Maltese is a mixture of influences from other languages and that it is still very much in use to this day. So why do we not find it as fascinating as the foreigners do? Is it because we have grown used to it, or maybe because we despise it for its Arabic roots, or maybe because it sounds barbaric when compared to English? Or maybe it’s simply because we do not know enough about it. When I tell people that I am studying Maltese, I always get the same answer – “But if you are Maltese, surely you already know Maltese, why do you need to study it?”. Oh, but there are so many more things that I have yet to discover! With every lecture that I attend, I discover just how much more I have yet to learn.

Malta in the Mediterranean Sea

Maltese is the only Semitic language that uses the latin alphabet. The basic grammatical elements like the article, the pronouns, the numbers, the verbal conjugations and the basic vocabulary expressing a simple life, are all derived from Arabic, Arabic dialects, most notably Tunisian. However, the decorative and descriptive aspect of the language comes from the Romance languages, languages that developed from Latin. How does this work? Basically, it is as if the door is Arabic, whilst the overdoor that decorates it is Romance, or Italian to be more precise. This simile works on multiple levels as the Maltese word for door ‘bieb’ (pronounced: /bæb/) comes from the Arabic word باب /bab/, whilst the Maltese word for overdoor is the same as the Italian: sopraporta. This shows how the basic word is usually Arabic, whilst the more decorative are usually Italian, Sicilian, French or Spanish in origin. Thus we add Italianate prefixes and suffixes to a word of Arabic origin and this gives the truly unique element that makes up the Maltese language.

Arabic words in Maltese are now slightly different to contemporary Arabic words as these words were adopted by the Maltese hundreds of years ago and were subsequently isolated on a sea-locked island away from other Arabic speaking countries, and so they developed in different ways. Maltese has therefore retained archaic Arabic words, similar to those that appear in the Qu’ran, like the Maltese word for bed, ‘sodda’ which comes from classical Arabic, whilst in spoken Arabic, the word used is ‘alfarash’, from where the Maltese word for bedsheets, ‘friex’, is derived.

As the years went on, after Malta passed into the hands of various European rulers, Malta and its language started becoming more and more Europeanised. Nowadays, the Maltese words for ‘good morning’ and ‘good afternoon’ are ‘bonġu’ and ‘bonswà’, which come from the French salutations ‘bonjour’ and ‘bonsoir’. However the French came to Malta in 1798 and the Knights of St. John were here in 1530, so what did we use before this time? Instead of ‘bonġu’ we used ‘sbieħ il-ġid’, translated as ‘the dawn of prosperity’, an expression that sounds too stiff and strange to our ears nowadays.

Add English to the recipe and you will get the Maltese language as it is used today. Whilst English is infiltrating every language through new technological jargon, in Malta this influence is enhanced as English is one of our official languages. As a bilingual population, Maltese people are constantly trying to find the balance between the two languages. Most of the media that we consume uses English and as a result, some of us find it easier to express ourselves in English, especially considering that some of us have attended a private school where English was spoken at all times, except during Maltese language lessons. This is such a pity, because what can be more apt to express just what you feel than your own language? Unfortunately, today one also encounters an increasing number of people who are constantly code-switching between English and Maltese and as a consequence, do not have any mastery of either language.

Despite all this, in Malta we still have very distinct variances in the language, that is, the dialects. Even though Malta is a tiny country in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, a dot on the map, we nonetheless have our own language. Moreover, it also varies from village to village. Many studies have been, and still are, carried out on the dialects used in some parts of the country, that are kept alive not only by our older generations but also through our youth who grew up speaking in these dialects, like the dialects of Żebbuġ, Qormi, Żejtun, the Cottonera area as well as Gozitan, where the variances of Maltese are all the more pronounced, especially in Xewkija and Nadur. For example, both in Xewkija and in the Cottonera area, there still are people who “speak with the k”, that is, they pronounce the ‘q’ as a ‘k’ sound, rather than use a closed glottal sound like the prevailing majority. And so, words like ‘qattus’ (cat) /ʔɐttʊs/ and ‘qamar’ (moon) /ʔɐmɐr/ become ‘kattus’ /kɐttʊs/ and ‘kamar’ /kɐmɐr/. In Għarb, a small village in Gozo, some people voice the usual silent ‘h’ and pronounce ‘deħeb’ /dɛhɛp/ instead of ‘deheb’ /dɛːp/ (gold), and thus take the language closer to our Arabic roots. This pronunciation is slowly dying out, and has been cast aside as it is seen as an old-fashioned habit, but one has to appreciate the fact that it is still being used in 2016.

There are many linguists and researchers in fact, who appreciate and marvel at our language, who study and examine it; because languages are living things, which continue to develop and grow while teaching us about their history, and that of the country and the society to which they pertain. You can imagine my surprise at hearing a German woman discussing the etymological roots and the grammatical ins and outs of the Maltese language with other foreigners. I approached her and asked how how she came to know so much about Maltese. She is a German linguist who chose to focus her studies on the Maltese language and she visits the country from time to time to hear and observe how Maltese people communicate with each other and to try to understand our language more. She also added that Maltese is one of the languages taught in a university in Bremen, in Germany. I thought to myself, “Wow, here is a foreigner who has taken so much interest in our language while the majority of the people in this island tend to shun it and are almost embarrassed to use it,” as we tend to see it as too informal. In fact, in writing a formal letter or email, or even when making a phone call regarding an appointment, we have started using English because we deem Maltese as too inferior. This attitude needs to be shaken up, in my opinion. If we, the children of our mother tongue are not making the effort to keep it alive, then who will?

To bring this article to a close, I have chosen some verses from a poem by Anastasju Cuschieri, that appeared in the magazine ‘Leħen il-Malti’ (The Voice of the Maltese) in 1937, which are still valid to this day.

Author

Sephora Francalanza (Malta)

Studies: Maltese at university level

Languages: Maltese, English, French, Spanish

Europe is… a whirlpool of cultures, values and stories

Translator

Laura Cioffi (Malta)

Studies: Music

Languages: Maltese, English, Italian, French

Europe is… an ever-changing human symphony

Proofreader

Paula Schembri (Malta)

Works as a: Linguistic Assistant at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation

Languages: Maltese, English, French, German and a little Italian

Europe is… full of opportunities.

Der Beitrag My Language, My Home: Maltese erschien zuerst auf MH English.

They stand in a circle and throw one another a ball. Whoever catches it introduces himself and welcomes the class with a ‘good morning’ in her or his own language. 14 people catch the ball. In eight cases the greeting sounds different. The teenagers of 10b who attend classes at the Kolping educational center in Schwandorf come from Syria, Eritrea, Iraq, the Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia, and the Dominican Republic. Their teacher, Anna Hanf, is from Hungary. The pupils fled to Germany alone or with their families in hope of a better future. The youngest are 16, the oldest in their mid-20s. They are mainly taught German, but gym classes, social education, cooking, and crafts are on the agenda as well. Everything seems so familiar, and yet everything is actually quite different.

The classroom walls are covered with hand-drawn posters, bearing titles such as ‘our Arab song’, ‘our Spanish song’, ‘We can count to ten – in six languages: Spanish, Kurdish, Persian, Bosnian, Czech, and Tigrinya’ as well as rules of conduct, explanations of prepositions, and a Christian cross. Two girls from Syria in head shawls sit on opposite sides of the room. The Greek Anastasia from another class tells us that conflicts about the different religious have already led to scuffles. At the same time one can see that everyone is equally welcomed here regardless of the religion he or she belongs to. The teenagers could be role models for peaceful and tolerant coexistence.

Recapitulating last week’s circus project and learning new words from the same lexical field is this lesson’s main task: walking, dancing, unicycle, clown, flying, throwing. The last two especially cause trouble. Why is it wrong to say: ‘I can fly the ball’? Not all questions can be answered immediately, because it is loud and lively in the room. The spiritless lethargy of German students doesn’t exist here. And yet, the lessons do not lack structure. Reasons for learning seem to differ. Their banter could as easily be overheard among young Germans: ‘Ey, dude! What are the heck are you talking about?’ But some stay silent and take longer if they try out some new wordplay. They only began to learn the alphabet a few months ago. It’s hard to find a way to teach such a mixed class and stay fair to everyone. The levels of education and previous knowledge are very different. Mrs. Hanf has decided to use the intermediates in her class as a point of orientation, even if that runs the risk of demanding too little from some and too much from others. Finding a book for this approach is hard though.

And even less of a manual exists for the right way to interact with young people who have experienced things they cannot talk about; and that doesn’t just have to do with a lack of language skills. Mrs Hanf explains that it often takes a long time until some have built enough trust and are emotionally in a position to talk about their past. But there is yet another reason for remaining silent about their experiences. People seeking asylum are sent back into the country where their fingerprints were first stamped. According to the Dublin Convention, this is the country that is in charge of the decision about their applications for asylum. Many applicants keep silent about the routes they took so as not to thwart the chances of those who follow in their footsteps, or of being able to seek asylum in Germany themselves.

Nobobdy knows how Senait, supposedly 16 years old, made it from Eritrea to Germany without being caught before, or which route he took. But here he is: without a passport – probably burnt a long time ago – without a date of birth, and without a family. He might not know the alphabet quite yet, but he has had a grasp of the German sentence structure long before the others did. Much like the others, Senait knows what he is studying for. He is not bored. School is new to him, and exciting. When the text that they have composed together is read at the end of class, some even raise their hand a second time to do it better than before. It’s in no small part down to the teacher that the students understood that they haven’t made it to a land of milk and honey, but that they need to learn in order to find a job. Despite this knowledge, many stop taking classes early and seek work instead. Many have left families in their home countries who are waiting for financial support, not for them to complete two years of school and obtain a qualification.

The fear of deportation is also everywhere. It dominates classroom interaction, more than homework, or the capital cities in social science class where Mrs. Maxim wants to teach her pupils the major institutions of the European Union. They are supposed to learn how to understand the system they ended up in. This causes vociferous resistance in class. Time and again they heckle her: ‘Why do I need to know this? I don’t want to stay here. Nobody wants me here! I’m going to the US!’

24-year-old Hamit, who fled by foot from Afghanistan after he had lost his wife and family in the war, explains that he has already found a lawyer. He plans on suing if he is deported. He says he intends to try everything to escape the Taliban. ‘Hope is a lie,’ he repeats again and again. Why start an education? He’s going to be 27 in three years. What should he start at this point? If he cannot complete his education in time or has to leave before, all the effort will have been wasted. He sees no prospects for himself. ‘It’s a catastrophy for the individual when they have to return to their homeland. We are very touched every single time, but the decision of who can stay is not for us to make. We can only hope to offer our students a good time, human warmth, an education, and maybe some hope,’ Mrs Maxim says.

[crp]

Author

Marion Wießmann (Germany)

Studies: German Language and Literature

Speaks: German, English, and Spanish

Europe is… interesting.

Illustration

Luzie Gerb (Germany)

Studies: Art History, Fine Arts and Comparative Cultural Studies

Speaks: German, English, Swedish, French

Europe is… full of magical places, interesting people and their stories.

Website: luzie-gerb.jimdo.com

Der Beitrag A New Beginning erschien zuerst auf MH English.

This new trend is bidirectional: families who need a full-time babysitter for an affordable price, and people who want to get in touch with a new culture, accommodation included. Au pair agencies and webpages put these two profiles in contact . The working conditions, regulated by different laws depending on the country, are individually negotiated. “But we only have an oral contract, I’ve never signed any piece of paper,” explains Esther, who was au pair in Ireland the summer of 2011. “That’s why people of the agency gave me the advice not to get involved with housework more than was necessary. Otherwise the family gets accustomed to it and you end up working more than agreed.”

Esther in Malahide’s castle, Ireland

The main motivation for many au pairs is doing a gap year, improving your knowledge of the language of the country or putting off the unavoidable moment in which you must decide what to do with your life. But turning that idea into living the daily routine with the kids is very different, and not everybody is qualified for that. “You need a lot of patience and a bit of independence because when you arrive there, you know no one,” explains Janika, who was also au pair in 2011. For others such as Heather, leaving the USA for a year was a benefit to her studies in education and children development: “I walked away with a deep love for German culture and history, and a very limited, but functional, knowledge of the language.”

Heather in Munich

Working conditions are different depending on the family, and it’s the au pair’s decision whether or not to accept them. Rode, who travelled from Brazil to work in Europe, lived disparate experiences: “The last family I was with helped me and backed me up in everything, I was one more member of the family. But I didn’t have a good experience with the first one. They asked me to clean and paid me little money.”

Rode in Ireland

Putting aside everyone’s subjective luck, it’s common that au pair groups come together in taking their children out for a walk or going to the park. As a consequence, good moments and anecdotes are part of their routine: “the parents of the kids I took care of used to tell them to obey me, because I was the boss,” remembers Esther laughing. “One day, in the park, one of them called my name and as I came towards him a woman approached and asked him, “who is Esther?”. Then I was surprised when he replied, “the boss.” I blushed,” she admits.

Janika on the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland

Also, for people like Heather, living with a family meant a personal challenge in other aspects: “I was 23 and it was very hard to surrender some of my freedoms to my host mother. I hadn’t lived with my own mother and had been independent from her for many years.” Despite the fact that sometimes their personalities clashed, the good relationship she had with the children compensated for this little downside. On the other hand, Rode highlights the cultural aspect of her time there: “I learnt more about a new culture and its language.”

But how do our au pairs define their adventure? “It was a great experience,” replies Janika plainly. “And I consider them my Irish family,” adds Rode. All of them agree that the good moments by far outweigh the bad ones, in the professional sense as well as the personal one. “It helped me grow up. I discovered a wonderful country where I must come back, and I improved my English,” explains Esther. Heather, on the other hand, concludes: “It was a once in a lifetime experience and worth every bit of homesickness, frustration, and cultural misconception I may have experienced.”

[crp]

Author

Miriam Vázquez (Spain)

Studies / works: Journalism and Political & Administration Sciences

Speaks: Spanish, Catalan, English, some French and German

Europe is… a unique place where people from different cultures, languages and points of view live together.

Twitter: @mirabroad

Proofreader

Sarah Robinson

Studies: French and German Language and Literature

Languages: French, German, English

Europe is… complex and invaluable.

Der Beitrag The au pair experience erschien zuerst auf MH English.