Gut morgen!! I have just come back home from a parent-teacher conference with Ale's teacher. No worries; I simply requested the meeting to see how he's doing with the new language, new class, etc. Everything is fine; his most violent offense was pushing down another kid and exclaiming the Schwaebische (regional dialect) equivalent of uh-oh (Oh-pala (sp?)), which she admitted was actually hilarious and had to suppress laughter at the time. Otherwise, he is doing well, so good news!
One of our main reasons for starting Ale in a German kindergarten was so that he would learn German. We've already got our hands full with English and Italian in our home, so this kindergarten has proven to be effective for language purposes. I get a lot of questions on how we're handling languages with him, so this post is going to focus on language, which happens to be basically the center of my life right now. I am certainly no expert on the topic, but I am studying my 3rd foreign language, so I'm seeing what works and what doesn't.
First of all, the best way to learn a language is to start as a child. They say that until the age of 6, a child can learn up to 6 languages as a mother tongue. Which brings us to Alessandro's situation. We obviously want him to learn English and Italian, just because that's what he needs to be functional in his whole family. So Paolo speaks to him in Italian, and I speak to him in English. His English is currently by far the best of his languages, but I would attribute this to the fact that he has been living with me since birth, and has only consistently been around Paolo since September. But it is amazing what a sponge he is! He has learned so much Italian since then, and the two weeks we were in Italy over Christmas were great for him. There are certainly some words that he favors in one language more than the other, for example "scimmia" (Italian for monkey), but in general, he will speak in English to me, and Italian to Paolo. So now we bring in German. He is now spending 7-8 hours/day in his German school, where they only speak German. But he rarely speaks in German at home; certain phrases, yes, but not the way he speaks the other 2. According to his teacher, he speaks mostly German at school, sometimes English, but as he learns more German, he speaks less English. Isn't that cool? His brain has compartmentalized German as being what he speaks at school, the same that he has learned English is for mommy, and Italian is for Papa. Moral of the story; teach your kids new languages when they're young! Trust me, it gets much more difficult as you get older.
Which brings me to my language learning experience. I spent 5 years off and on learning French, and now understand very little French, and speak even less. I think the problem was that my foundation in French was shaky and inconsistent because of the years in between. Then I started learning Italian, which is similar in many ways to French. That helped my Italian, but made my French even worse. Italian I learned much differently than French; I have almost no formal education in it (minus the couple months I spent in a free course while living there), but instead learned by listening and being there. As a result, I understand almost everything, can speak enough to get around and hold an ok conversation, but my reading and writing is weak. So now I need to learn German, and it needs to be working-level capability. The good news is, I've got the language learning basics down. When I first learned conjugation with French, I was horrified. Now it's not so daunting, and just something that has to be done.
Let it be noted: English has it's complexities, but it is overall a relatively easy language to learn. I don't know why they always tell you (in America) that English is the most difficult language to learn. I mean, maybe if you're coming from just knowing Chinese, but then everything is hard coming from Chinese. The beautiful thing about English is that there are no gender assignments to words. Yes, in most other languages, nouns are masculine or feminine. Which you must know because they require a different pronoun depending on their sex. And as my German teacher said, there is no rhyme or reason as to why they are a certain gender, just learn them, and embrace them.
So how is my class? Well, it's 16 hours a week of German. No, seriously, it's not that bad. I'm almost done with the first level, and I've learned more than I could have imagined learning in 3 1/2 weeks. I did the math and each 5 week level we have in this school covers approximately what you cover in one year of high school language class. This is because it's longer, more frequent, and more intense. Oh, and it is taught entirely in German. I know it sounds impossible, but German is actually the only common language in the class. At least 1/3 of the class doesn't speak any English. I thought it would be super hard, since I didn't know any German (other than basics that you get just from being here), but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I understand most things, and that it forces you to learn much faster, as well as expanding your vocabulary without you even realizing. Another advantage I have is that German is surprisingly similar to English in both structure and words. Pronunciation is another story.
In total, I will take 6 courses, which is about 30 weeks. At that point I will be at the B1 level, which is to my understanding, when you are considered good enough to be able to function in society. I look forward to that; it is difficult to get around here with neither Paolo nor I speaking good German. He took one class last year, and is better than me, but not even close to functional. One of his job benefits now is a German class during work hours, so hopefully he'll start improving too. As they say, if you're going to live in a country, you have to learn the language!
And so, meine freunden, alles gut hier!
Ciao for now,
Kathleen
