Blogabroad
by Mary Pinckney Waters

November 6, 2005- Turning off my English radar

You never realize what a highly tuned English-language radar you possess until you travel to a country where they speak a different tongue.

It's truly impressive; it spans hundreds of feet, detects the faintest of whispers and can decipher words spit from a mouth that's busy disfiguring bratwurst and brötchen. Bad weather doesn't matter; your radar never fails.

"Holy crap, I hear English -- Where's it coming from?!!"

It can hit you at any moment -- the bus, the grocery store, the bathroom stall -- and suddenly your radar is flashing all sorts of red. You start searching frantically around you for the source of this onset of internal alarms, instinctively thinking it is your duty to hear the life story of its speaker. Because, I mean, you both speak the same language. And because you're in a country where they speak a different one.

And even though if you passed each other on the street in the United States, you would probably only grimace -- much less talk -- to each other, this is not the United States. This is a foreign country and you both are the un-foreigners, essentially meaning that you are distant cousins and should send each other Christmas cards.

Please stop me now. Not just because I sound like a crazy person who is sending strangers holiday greetings, but because I need to snap myself out of this mindset.

You don't relate to people based on mere language alone. And if you do, you're limiting yourself because language and culture are inseparable, and I want to experience more than just the English-speaking culture, especially since I have the ability to do so.

What made me decide to study in Germany?

First, I felt like my language skills were plateauing in the classroom. You always hear the best way to learn a foreign language is to live in the country where it's spoken, so I thought if I were just forced to speak German every day, every conversation, every second, then my fluency would immediately skyrocket.

Secondly, I wanted to fulfill a quest for newness, to make friendships with people unlike any I'd ever met and to experience ways of life I didn't know existed.

Sounds really good, doesn't it? Like in a dreamy, fuzzy-around-the-edges kind of way. The dream isn't unrealizable, of course, but you don't wake up to it on your lap after catnapping, either. It takes effort -- conscious, self-initiated effort. If you expect these goals to accomplish themselves, you might as well buy yourself some chocolate and tissues now because you're going to be disappointed.

It's crazy (if not somewhat sad) how disconnected one can be from a culture while living smack-dab in the middle of it. That's truly registered for me through conversations with the American soldiers living on the army base in Bamberg. I've talked to many who've lived here for more than five years and still don't know any more German than danke, drücken, ziehen and tschüss (thank you, push, pull and goodbye).

I guess that's OK for them; they didn't come here to learn the language and the culture. But I did. Which is why the next time English is spoken around me, I might not even hear it because my radar will be turned off.

Mary Pinckney Waters welcomes your comments and feedback: marypwaters@yahoo.com