Anecdotes About Languages
Aside from English and my homeland language Chinese, I can also speak German. I have experienced an enormous cultural shock during my several-month stay in Berlin. In the United States, when people say how are you, it actually means hello. However, when I said how are you, which is Wie geht’s in German, Germans stood here and really explained for three minutes how crap yesterday really was. When they were finished, I was already prepared to disappear. Another interesting thing about German is that this language is too direct. German people are renowned for efficiency. Speaking in a direct way is the best way to achieve efficiency. As I was standing in the supermarket purchasing daily supply like water, shampoo and foods, someone shouted to me ‘ you are standing in the way.’ I have never expected such a tone to speak to strangers. Furthermore, They are crazy about efficiency. When I was in Germany, what I actually did was to participate in a summer program experiencing German culture and learning their languages. It is difficult to completely master a foreign language like German. Differentiating the gender of words is one of most interesting thing I have heard about languages. Different words with different genders have to use accurate articles. There are three general articles in German: der, die,das, which are respectively for muscular, female and neutral words. In order to improve my German proficiency, I desired for chatting with my teachers. During the conversation, I found out that they always use the most single word to express ideas. Sometimes, when I throw in some unnecessary information, they respond to me in a very formal way as if they are reasoning with me.
Due to the close relationship with my teachers, I was lucky to become a litter teaching assistant at that time. I was responsible for helping my teachers send notifications to my classmates through emails. Before sending emails I outlined and drafted, my teacher read all of them to make sure that the information, praise and criticism were accurately delivered. At that time, I thought speaking in such a direct way really hurts our feelings. There are still some advantages of being strict and direct. These strict and direct rules really help us improve my knowledge about this language. At the middle of this program, we were required to hand in one essay written in German. After several hours of hard work, I finally finished writing my essay, printed out and gave it to them. However, after the first look at my essay, they gave it back to me and asked me to hand in a brand new essay to them, that is to say I have to come up with new ideas, in that I used wrong format. For normal people, you can just correct the format and resubmit your essay. For Germans, they sometimes make you feel that they are ruthless and there is not any room for negotiation. You definitely cannot resubmit your essay. What’s more, there are no strict lunch break in Germany. German people merely eat some bread and drink some coffee during lunch, which takes me lots of time to get accustomed to the lifestyle. It is way too sleepy if I cannot get a lunch break especially at such a young age. Both hunger and fatigue tortures you and makes me lose my concentration. But German seems to find pleasure in it. They think that’s what promotes them to be efficient.
All in all, I am surprised by the way German speak their language and how strict they are sticking to their rules.
