sprechen sie deutsch?...

In 1982, Mr. and Mrs. Wieland (with me in the oven) relocated from Germany to good ol' PA. My dad was fluent in English, but my mom, unfortunately, only had the English she learned in school and we all know that that's not nearly enough to function in the real world. "Donde esta la biblioteca" anyone? Being immersed in the language, she adjusted quickly and spoke a heavily accented but fluent English.

I grew up bilingual with German being my first language. Some of my first words actually incorporated the rolling of the tongue that occurs in the back of the mouth - the sound that Germans often make that sound like we're hacking up something caught in our throat. Before I got to Kindergarten, Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street gave me enough to get by. In time, my English vocab grew. My first English phrases? "Merry Mickey Mouse", "82 degrees", and "Here they come". We were in Florida (it's always 82 there) and were at a Xmas Disney parade. 'Nuf said.

My parents have decided to speak only German to Alexis, and I'm psyched to see where that goes. I've decided that I need to brush up on my German since, though I'm still fluent, I'm starting to lose words here and there and have fallen into some Germlish (doesn't sound quite as good as Spanglish). If I'm going to join in the language-jumble fun, I need to have my game face on.

I started to wonder how exactly that works though? When I was a wee little schnitzel, how did I know which language I was jibbering? It's not like I knew the difference. If my parents say "Hund" for our pups but we say "Doggy", will she get confused or will she know that both are associated with the fur-kids in our home? Will she decide that she likes "Mohren" but doesn't like "carrots", even though they're the same thing? How will she know?! How does this work?? I'm hoping we can get her to speak both languages, even if German is broken. First words are a monumental occasion. If we really make the effort to get both languages in there, I'm curious to see what pops out first. Would be fun if it was German.

I have to say that there's nothing better then being bilingual and being able to talk s**t about someone right in front of them. I can tell my mom that someone has a huge butt from right behind the bulbous lady. She can comment that someone stinks and doesn't even need to whisper. That being said, never underestimate other people's language skills. I'm not the only one that knows my ABC's simply because Mr. Rogers taught me how.