The Language of Identity
by Corey Heller

My mother once asked me how I could feel comfortable raising my children in a language other than my native language.  Being unprepared for this question, my response was defensive.  I questioned her ability to understand the importance of creating a home where our children would consistently hear my husband’s native language spoken and the importance of providing our children the richness that a second language would hold.  At the time, I had only a vague image of what my husband and I were trying to provide for our children and a deep sense inside that what I was doing was necessary, both for my children and for myself.

My mother’s question has stuck with me over the years. I have tried repeatedly to answer it for myself. 

One thing I know is that I am different when I speak German.  I am not a different person per se.  Rather, it is as if I put on different set of clothing: instead of my jeans, I put on my slacks, and my tennis shoes are replaced with flats.  Neither is better or worse, just different.  This transformation which takes place in me doesn’t come as much from the language itself.  It comes from my associations embedded within and surrounding the language.  For me, to speak German is to tap into another, very important, part of who I have become.
 
The Early Days
I can still remember my first days in Kiel, Germany.  It was the Fall of 1993 when I arrived and there was a thick, sweet smell in the air from damp leaves covering the ground.  I couldn’t speak more than a few words of my future husband’s language and I knew nothing of his culture.  We had met in Ireland the year before – a sort of “common ground” where he and I were both visitors in a different land, swirling in the expanse of a foreign culture.  I figured that after having learned to live in Ireland for a year, living in Germany couldn’t possibly be so different – right?

Nothing prepared me for what was to come.  Nothing prepared me for the four hours a day, five days a week of German-language immersion class, where I’d hear sounds and words and sentences that were absolutely meaningless to me.  I was a child learning her first utterances, learning how to speak all over again as others around me in the world chattered away.  For the first time in my life, I was forced to use one word commands, “milk”, “drink”, “want”, on a daily basis.  I prepared and repeated basic sentences that I’d need as I planned my daily activities outside our little apartment.  I was always hoping no one would ask me any questions and if they did, maybe, just maybe they’d instinctively know I was American and just ask me in English, just this once.  At night, out of sheer exhaustion from what most would consider less than a normal day’s activities, I’d often sleep for more than 12 hours… and then I’d start over again the next day.

But as the year progressed, things slowly evolved and I started to fit in and understand more and more of what was being said.  Before I knew it, my conversations with family were switching from English to German and I was able to converse as a more mature member of society.  I was delighted with my accomplishments: having started from scratch, I had learned a new language and was coming to truly understand another culture.  Soon I was comfortably meshing with my every day meanderings.  I was feeling confident and secure and was even looking forward now and then to opportunities where I could share my own personal insights in this new language.  And I realized how much I appreciated the German culture, with its clear-cut delineations for how and where everything fit into place.  I was feeling the warmth that comes when a new culture begins to feel like home.

Yet, after having lived and breathed something so different for so long, I also longed to return to the country where my native language was spoken, at least for a while.  I was missing something, even though I wasn’t quite sure exactly what it was.  I knew that Germany had won me over and that we were very good friends but I had a longing to set foot on California soil.

A little less than a year after I had arrived in Germany, I returned to the US to finish the last year of my Bachelor’s degree in Ancient History at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  It was a great relief to once again be able to speak sentences that came completely naturally and comfortably.  However, at the same time, I was hit with the reality of how much I had changed.  A year in Ireland followed by a year in Germany had left their imprints on me.  I had tasted the richness of belonging to other cultures, of speaking a different language and I couldn’t go back to being who I had been before.  There were words and sentence structures, ways of being and socializing and foods that I longed for.  I knew then that I would never, ever be fully content with any one language and limited by only one culture.  It was a little unnerving at first, to say the least, and still hasn’t complete dissipated.

Why?
To answer my mother’s question as to why I speak German with my children is still difficult for me since there are so many layers to the answer.  Ultimately, to speak German in America with my children is a necessity for me.  It is my way of keeping alive my full self, of balancing the richness and robustness of who I have become.  To not speak German with my children, to not celebrate German culture while in the US would be to deny a part of myself, to relegate myself to a single dimension.  Ultimately, I don’t believe any of us want to be defined by one attribute as a statement of fact: she is “rich”, “poor”, “depressed”, “joyful”.  We search for a fuller existence riddled with ridges and valleys.  This is what makes us fully human.

Will my children ever hear the words, “I love you”?  Will they ever associate this sentence with the depth and meaning with which I associate it?  Yes, they will hear these words from me and they will hear these words from their grandmother and uncle and friends.  But they will also hear the sentence, “Ich liebe Dich” and have an equal association with it.  They will be offered broad, intertwining resources for expression and meaning.  I will speak German with my children and we will raise them as Germans as much as possible.  But at the same time I will also be raising my children as Americans and somewhere along the way they will hear me speak more English with them.  The truth is, I just haven’t figured out all of that yet

Our Special Gifts
Children who grow up in a monolingual society with more than one language are offered something extremely valuable.  Experts agree that a child who has at his or her disposal words and concepts in two different languages will be more accustomed to understanding and accepting the innate complexities that exist in this world.  They will more easily grasp the concept that there is more than one way to solve a problem, more than one way to view an issue and more than one way to define themselves.  Who can deny that a three year old child who can make a statement to one person in one language and then turn to another person and repeat it in another language while retaining the full cultural meaning in both - without losing nuances, without simply translating words - will have been given a priceless gift?  We owe it to our children to offer them this gift, bit by bit as they grow.

But beyond the abilities these children will gain, they will have been given something so much more valuable.  They will have been given the opportunity to live in two cultures and to make them both their own.  For them, bridging the gap between these two different worlds will come naturally and comfortably.  They will come to love Oma in Germany and Grammy in the US, Onkel in one language and Uncle in the other.  Their perception of the world, their concept of diversity, their understanding of identities will, by default, far exceed my own.  And when Grammy says, “I love you” to each of my children, they will be filled with that special warmth only matched by their Oma saying, “Ich liebe Dich” to each in turn.

© Corey Heller – Bilingual/Bicultural Family Network – www.biculturalfamily.org