Hanging with Monolingual German Kids

We recently got to spend time, a day only really, with a friend visiting from Germany with her partner and three kids. Her eldest, who mainly kept to himself, knows a bit of English as he’s started taking it in school, but the other two do not. This, of course, made for a much different experience for our own kids who are used to speaking German with people who generally understand English. And who, in the case of German-speaking kids we know, often find it easier to communicate in English than in German.

I, of course, was excited to see my friend again (it’s been 5 years after all!), and very curious to see whether our Punks could hold their own with her kids auf Deutsch. It’s not a fair comparison, I know that, but I was curious to see how they’d do with (mainly) monolingual German kids where code-mixing and –switching, something they both do regularly unless I stop them, was not going to get them anywhere.

In the end, I didn’t get to witness too much verbal interaction amongst the kids. Had I not been so excited to see my friend, then maybe it’d have dawned on me before that our kids were going to be their normally reserved, shy selves until they had warmed up, and maybe even more so than normal as they were (a) excited about going on vacation (we had the car packed up and where on our way already), and (b) completely overwhelmed by my friends’ three rambunctious and outgoing kids who were quite openly demanding to hear some German from them.

But it still went well!

Punk 1 was more shy than usual, likely because she had been so excited to meet my friend’s daughter who is only 5 months older than her, and clung to me for quite some time, in spite of little M trying patiently and repeatedly to play with her and talk to her. She spoke to me in German without any hesitation at all, and answered questions posed to her by everyone. However, when she spoke with anyone but me, initially she didn’t do more than provide one word answers. She got more comfortable as the day went on, but never became as talkative as she is with people she knows better. It was only later in the afternoon when we’d made it to the local playground that the girls took off for a couple of hours! They played and hung out on the shady branches of a tree together, with Punk 1 telling me afterwards that they talked for the whole time. None of us overheard any of it, of course, but ever since that afternoon, Punk 1 has been more interested in moving to Germany for a year (one of our pipe dreams), is asking to skype with M, and occasionally talks about her friend M “in Deutschland!!”.

Punk 2 wasn’t quite as shy for once, but for the first time pretty much refused to speak German, if only to the other kids. My friend’s younger son, still more than twice his age, was quite smitten with him and tried to engage him from the get-go. And Punk 2 was quite willing to play with him, just not talk German. In fact, it was Punk 1 who complained later that the other kids were constantly bugging her to translate everything Punk 2 had said to them in English. But he played with all the kids, especially the boys, and he no doubt heard all the comments they made about him being so little and truly speaking German when they overheard him speak with me. However, all this attention on his German really did not help matters; I suspect he might have gotten into German soon enough had everyone only stopped asking for it. But he had a good day and still talks fondly about his new friend F. He’s also talking about going to Germany next summer to visit F, and has high hopes that the two of them can go swimming together.

Both Punks had a good visit and importantly, made another positive – and hopefully lasting - association with German and Germany. Something that should help them stick with German. For me, of course, it was great seeing my friend again, and we’re really hoping that our kids can develop some sort of friendship as well.

As for my little field experiment, that didn’t quite work out in that I didn’t really overhear much German amongst the kids. But since Punk 1 had spoken a fair bit of German throughout the day with me and the other adults, I did ask my friend what she thought of it. She has always been interested in how the kids' bilingualism has been progressing and has often sent us German books and CDs to help them along. And I of course wanted to know how someone actually living in Germany and who is not at all immersed in their way of speaking (article and pronoun confusion, creative grammatical constructions, etc.) would react.

And to my surprise, the thing that – to her at least – stands out most is not any mistakes, but Punk 1’s intonation when speaking German. Apparently, though I have never noticed this myself and neither have any of my local German friends, when she speaks German she does so using the Anglo speech melody (just like Jen’s kid!). She made it clear however, that her own daughter M does not have any of the above-mentioned issues with German. Yes, M makes some mistakes as well – but from the sound of it they are comparable to how Punk 1 speaks English, and not German. This is not entirely unexpected, but it goes to show how important it is to keep exposing the Punks to as much German as possible.

But there you have it, this was the kids’ first real time hanging out with monolingual German speakers, and they had a good time, leaving them even more eager to go to Germany. And me, I am tickled pink by it all!!