"Break your neck and leg!"

Exchange of languages

Walking around Barcelona, we can hear ourselves speaking to each other.

“Hey, how do you say ‘traffic light' in Spanish?” asks Jessica.

“It’s semáforo, pronounced se-ma-fo-ro,” replies Suzy. “Oh, got it. El semáforo está rojo!” says Jessica.

To start with, let us introduce ourselves. We are two university students, Jessica from Germany and Suzy from the Netherlands, studying at the University of Twente. Both of us are fluent in English, but also have a second language in our skill set. And finally, both of us are multicultural in some way through our family background and enjoy learning new things about culture and language. Hence, during our mobility week in Barcelona, we take advantage of our daily walks and commutes to teach each other Spanish and German.

To portray this, imagine Spanish and German languages. For starters, Spanish is spoken in many countries, each with its own unique expressions and regional vocabulary. For instance, there is a big difference between Spanish in Latin America and Spain. Since Suzy learned Latin American Spanish through speaking and listening, she often points out that the way she learned to say something might be different from how a native Spanish speaker would say it, or how the standards in Spain would strongly differ to the language she speaks. Even our week in Barcelona portrays the locational differences of language, with Language, of course, is very location based, and strongly based on the way you learned it.

Barcelona laying in the area of Spain that speaks more Catalan than Spanish, a language build with strong Spanish influences, but considerable a language of its own standing, neither Jessica nor Suzy able to understand it. This language use, in turn, has influenced the Spanish language usage in Barcelona, making for interesting changes to the Spanish spoken in central Spain.

Jessica, however, learned the language with her parents, her family coming from Russia to Germany a few years before she was born. Above all, she learned it as a first language and studied the Grammar like any local in school. Her German is based on North-Western Germany, often telling Suzy "I know it is different in the South, but I don't remember how Either way, they should understand you!" With both languages being widespread around the world, how you speak depends greatly on the region you learned it from.

To demonstrate, the North-Western German being very close to Hochdeutsch, the legal standard of learning and speaking German A bit further north, you would often be hearing Plattdeutsch, a German dialect In the SouthEast, Baverian is more common, and if you leave Germany to the south to go to Switzerland, you would discover Schweizerdeutsch, another beautiful variant of the language With Jessica only speaking Hochdeutsch, hearing someone speak a dialect of German is significant in her understanding and emotion towards the language, often making her feel similar to Suzy hearing Catalan, Italian or Portuguese. The similarity between such languages or dialects might make understanding not exactly impossible, but certainly makes you feel like a foreigner listening to a language we just started to learn. Though learning a language can feel quite different, too.

Each of us had studied the language at school for some time, but not really successfully. However, within a short period of time, we managed to achieve great jumps in capability Jessica had Spanish in High School for two years, Suzy learned German academically for a semester Very little of either has stuck. Nothing beyond "Hola, me llamo Jessica!" and "Wie geht es dir?". By the sixth day in Spain, though, we create sentences and talk about our day or "Ich möchte diesen Sommer mit meine Bruder nach Korea und dafür lerne ich koreanisch!" "Meinem Bruder" corrects Jessica "That was really good! Perfect pronunciation!" And both of us just beam.

This portrays the difference between active and passive language learning quite nicely. As you all know, if you study a language academically, you will get a lot of passive knowledge and experience. You will be delivered vocabulary lists and grammar rules, read unrealistic conversations that would never happen in real life, usually not build upon your actual skill level but rather upon a non-existent standard they expect from you. Additionally, they certainly won't integrate your interests into your study, but follow a strict program. And most importantly, almost the entirety of the first few months of language learning will be listening and reading instead of forming sentences and reacting. Even after many years of academic language learning, this will still be the most significant part of your learning, hardly needing your own thought process during any class. Every single one of these issues can be avoided, though, by learning a language with an active, nonacademic approach instead. The best form, of course, would be active immersion, but this is usually hard to achieve, considering you'd have to live in a community that speaks the language fluently and you have to actively seek out opportunities to talk and react. Nonetheless, what we did is quite similar. Corresponding to this idea, we have conversations in Spanish and German, talking about anything that comes to mind and using gestures to help each other understand, and react to each other in the language we used in that moment. We correct and repeat, ask follow-up questions, and work on furthering our capacities constantly, just staying on a level that would be challenging for us, without going to far beyond. This is one of the factors that aid in learning: do not go too fast or too slow, go at your speed! It has to be a challenge, but just barely so. This way, we actually learn with each conversation, keep up and train the previous aptitude, and stay motivated to continue. Additionally, our extensive gestures make sure our brains connect the language better in its pure form, aiding in remembering, understanding and constructing the language separately from another language, add in the visual part of our brain to strengthen memory and understand, and accordingly making it flow more naturally.

When we were teaching each other our respective languages, we naturally discussed cultural differences and stereotypes associated with our respective cultures. It became quite clear that the languages themselves reflect many of these common stereotypes. For example, Germans are often thought of as punctual, serious, and somewhat reserved, while Latin Americans are viewed as being habitually late, unorganized, perhaps a little lazy, and emotionally expressive.

As we explored the details of our languages, we noticed that certain linguistic elements served to reinforce these cultural stereotypes. Take Spanish, for instance, which is known for being more relaxed in its sentence structure and often leaving out words that are assumed from the context of the conversation. In contrast, German is characterized by its strict sentence structure, wording and grammar, which requires that subjects are clearly stated, syllables clearly pronounced and every word in the right place. Another example of this phenomenon is portrayed in the way Spanish is perceived as being a fast-paced and expressive language, characterized by emotional, sometimes loud, speech. This is in high contrast to the more calm, slow and quiet German language, which is often seen as reflecting the reserved nature of its speakers.

In our conversations, we often referred to these cultural and linguistic differences as a way of improving our understanding of each other’s cultures and languages. Through our discussions, we learned that stereotypes are only a small part of the wide variety of cultural differences, and that there is much more to be explored.

As we learn new words and sentences, we also discuss the cultural differences and history embedded in the language. Moreover, the use of words and idioms varies greatly from culture to culture. For instance, both of us enjoyed discussing proverbs in both languages, often causing quite fun situations.

One idiom we both remember fondly is talking about how to wish good luck in German. "Break your neck and leg" Jessica exclaims. "That's what it means literally translated?" Suzy asks with an astounded look on her face. "That is so extreme!" "Yeah. It is a running gag on German tv. Every time someone who doesn't know the language tries to say good luck, they end up saying something like 'I hope you die really painfully!'"

This particular idiom "Hals- und Beinbruch” has been around for centuries, originating from Hebrew. To be exact, its original meaning has been almost exactly "Good luck and success”, but over the duration of German language building, the words have changed through mishearing and mispronunciation until this rather fierce arrangement came by. Now, the Germans literally wish the worst on each other anytime a significant task lays before them!

To conclude, the ICCS's mobility week certainly facilitated this use of active language learning. For one, we would have not met each other or found out about our language ability without the course bringing us together like this. Particularly the mobility week established a way to converse without any specific rules and regulations or time frames separating us, and therefore enabled us to get to know each other and talk freely. We both appreciated exploring the cultural differences through learning each others languages and it has made us more curious about exploring them even further in the future.