The moment we landed in Germany our thoughtful European colleagues had arranged a living situation for us which was as good as you’d get for language-learning, which was now our daily focus. They found a Lutheran pastor, and his wife and family, who had a parish house (with an extension) big enough to accommodate all of us.
Having our whole family live inside their whole family was almost unheard of but it was a godsend for us. The couple, Traugott and Almut Fränkle, knew what we needed to do and went out of their way to help. They could both speak passable English, but they never did – just so we would be immersed in German. Now our language-learning had to be front and centre.
Our first task was to for Pam and me find a local person who would help us to say our introductory greetings. My helper taught me how to say a handful of short sentences which I then practised for a couple of hours before foisting myself on the general public around Betberg, our village. The LAMP method (Language Acquisition Made Practical) suggests you say your sentences to 30 people. Since this would have been 20% of the population, I had to include an additional adjoining village.
The only person I could find there was a gravedigger working in the churchyard. You can imagine his thoughts when he looked up out of the grave only to see some fellow say, “Hello. My name is David. This is my third day here. I am learning German. Please correct me if I make a mistake”. And you can imagine my thoughts leaning down to speak to him.
I needed the informal to speak to the cat that wandered into the house. Similarly, you speak to your tummy with informal German (like when it rumbles and you say, “You should take it easy there, tummy!”). Of course, neither the cat nor the tummy is worried about this, but your friends would find it highly entertaining to overhear you address your tummy formally, since there are two ways (formal and informal) of saying “you”. German urban legend has it that chancellor Helmut Kohl told Ronald Reagan, “You can say ‘you’ to me” (the legend is told with various potential characters in the roles). Legend it may be, but my heart went out to Kohl – or whoever it was.
Oddest of all, from my point of view, you addressed God only in the informal. It says something poignant about God’s intimate love for humankind. On the other hand, it was considered rude to address a migrant worker informally. I was significantly helped in all this by a weekend visitor to the parish house. He had a learning disability, spoke excellent German, and was Mr. Sociable. I invited him to be my language-helper for the weekend, a task which he took on with great delight. My fledging attempts at speaking gave him a stream of entertainment and he gave me an education in pronunciation. Again and again was no problem.
That cross cultural training we heard in the East End was paying dividends, like “Live with a family…Don’t own a car…Don’t introduce yourself with some high falutin’ title…Always say ‘I am learning German’ (or whatever language)…Meet your social needs in your new language.”
We were just getting into the swing of things when I had the sombre task of carefully constructing a new paragraph to say on the phone to Silvia, one of Pam’s friends in our neighbourhood. I still have the little book in which I wrote it. In German, it says, “Last week Pam’s younger brother died suddenly. Unfortunately, he took his own life. So, Pam flew to California on Thursday for ten days. This Sunday she’s coming back. When she comes it would be good for her to talk about it with friends. Do you think you could give her a call next week?”
Time stood still that week. Joel and Seán and I were stunned. Pam, who is unusually gifted in dealing with a crisis, served her family in California as only she could. Silvia did meet her after her return and did an exquisite job of comforting her with almost no words at all.
From our boys’ perspective, two bad things had happened. Their uncle had died and their mother had gone away for a week and a half. On the Saturday night, the night before Pam’s return, Joel said, “Can you go to the supermarket and get some champagne?”. It took me a while to work out what this was about – to say the least of it, we’re not a big drinking family.
He had worked out that since shops in rural Germany were not open on Sunday it would have to be Saturday. Then I asked him, “Why champagne?”. He had never tasted champagne – I don’t know if he’d ever even seen it. His glorious, profound answer: “Mum’s coming home.”
David's Diaries 