This new school was very tough, but I enjoyed it more than my previous German school.
What I found encouraging was that no one really cared whether I said “buhtt” or “baht.” Instead, they tried to encourage me to do Math, History and Science in English. After about half a year, I suddenly found myself communicating more and more with my peers, in English! My grades changed. I started bringing home As in English!
At one point I must have fallen in love with English. As a teenager, English became so important to me that I started to speak English not only with my German-speaking friends, but also with my brothers. It became my adopted mother tongue!
Because of my English schooling, I actually have an easier time writing and speaking in English than in German, which is technically my “native” or “first” language.
I had to admit that I avoid writing in German, claiming that this is because German is an unwieldy, complicated language. In German, it takes a whole paragraph to express a simple idea, which in English you can express in a short, simple sentence. With the new German Rechtschreibreform, the spelling reform, how the heck is one supposed to know how to spell correctly these days, anyway?
It is not that my German is that bad. It just feels a little awkward. I cannot seem to shake out the sentences with the same kind of ease as with English.
Speaking is a different issue altogether. When I speak German, English words insist on coming out. When I speak English, German words are on the tip of my tongue.
They say that this is a very typical phenomenon of bilinguals but sometimes this really frustrates me, especially when looks from others indicate that they think I am trying to show off with my code-mixing.
Why can’t it be acceptable to speak both languages at the same time? For wenn es nach mir ginge, then everyone in this world would speak in whatever way they liked, even if it’s a totaler misch-masch, ohne dass man translaten oder seine Sprache dauernd rechtfertigen muss.*
“But Holmes, this is so dreadfully confounding!”
“It’s elementary, dear Watson. Elementary!”
*English translation for the above sentence: “For if I had any say in the matter, then everyone in this world would speak in whatever way they liked, even if it’s completely mixed-up, without having to constantly translate or justify one’s language.”
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Similar story here… I fell in love with The Beatles about the same time I started English in school. It did wonders to my vocabulary and pronunciation!! I watched their movies in English with Spanish subtitles, almost memorized the conversations, and soon I was the first of the class! I knew some very unusual words before I could name the vegetables and things like that
Rap songs are supposedly like the best for this stuff as the rhymes and the fast pace can help people very fluent. Is this true?