Guten Abend, gute Nacht,
mit Rosen bedacht,
mit Näglein besteckt,
schlupf' unter die Deck':
Morgen früh, wenn Gott will,
wirst du wieder geweckt.
guarded with roses,
adorned with carnations,
Slip under the blanket.
Tomorrow morning, if God wills,
you will wake once again.
Music Box Souvenirs
When I was a little girl, my grandfather gave me a replica
of the cutest little toy Swiss Chalet. It
was actually a wind-up music box in disguise.
When you would lift up its roof (which was actually the lid of the music box), you
could see the box movement inside.
You would wind it up via a key in the back. Then, when you lifted up the lid, it would
play Brahms Lullaby. When I was about 5
years old, I caught chickenpox and was confined to bed for several weeks. My little Swiss Chalet music box kept me
company. For hours, I would occupy
myself by winding it up and listening to the tune.
It was so soothing. I was
mesmerized by the little rotating drum with its protruding pegs. How was it possible that it could play such a
beautiful melody by lifting and releasing the spokes on the metal comb? The hours passed effortlessly, as I was
hypnotized and carried away by its magic.
Some years later, the box movement locked up and the music
stopped playing. My mother brought it to
a repair shop in the big city to have it repaired. The shopkeeper took the music box and gave
her a claim ticket. On the way home on
the subway, someone bumped into my mother.
She did not realize until she came home, that the bump was really a
pickpocket who had lifted her wallet.
That’s how my music box was lost. No matter how much my mother begged the shopkeeper, and described the music box, without the claim ticket, the music box was not returned to us.
Baby's Nightly Routine
As a baby shower gift, my son received a little cute teddy
bear. Inside its belly was a surprise: a
little wind-up music box that played Brahms Lullaby! Ah, such sweet memories of my childhood emerged.
As part of our nightly routine, when I put him down for the
night, I would wind up the little bear and sing Brahms Lullaby (in German) to
my son. As a toddler, when he learned to
speak, he would tell me: “let’s sing the Good Night song” and then he would sing
along with me in German as the teddy bear played the melody. The song relaxed him and helped him settle
down, as he fell asleep hugging his Teddy bear.
Learning a New Language
If you have been following my blog, you may know that German
is my mother tongue. At the beginning of
grade 5, my father was offered the opportunity to go to the US for nine months to
learn the “American way of doing business”.
So, the whole family temporarily moved from Germany to the United
States. It proved to be a great
adventure! Mind you, at that point, I
had only had 2 months of the “Queen’s English” (that’s British English) in
school in Germany. That was hardly
enough English to survive in a new country.
We arrived in the US during the long summer vacation. To facilitate learning English fast, my mother handed me a Langenscheidt German/English dictionary. At the back of the English section, was a huge list of English irregular verbs. I had to study them ad nauseum each day, and mother would quiz me: go, went, gone; eat, ate, eaten; sleep, slept, slept; etc. When we were not studying irregular English verbs, we were allowed to watch Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and other educational children’s programs on television. They were a great way to learn English.
I can’t explain how it happened, but by the
time the school year had started, I had become semi-fluent in English. We
were starting to assimilate. The
immersion and repetition of hearing English facilitated learning the language. Although, here is the thing: my older brother and I were able to quickly
learn and speak American English, with no German accent. However, my younger brother kept his German
accent. How can that happen?
Consequently, I have always been fascinated by why some people
have thick accents, and others do not.
There are several theories on this subject.
I read an article in Psychology Today many moons ago, that
explained the phenomenon this way. The article claimed, that it all depends on your personal “happiness factor”. If you are happy in your new surroundings,
you are much more likely to lose your accent.
If you keep wishing, you were back in your place of origin, you were
more likely to keep your original accent.
Ask a Bostonian, a Liverpoolian, or Australian who moved to California a decade ago
if they like their California life and do they feel at home there, or do they
wish they were still in Boston, Liverpool or Australia.
If they have a California accent, they like and are happy in California. If they still have their original accent,
guess what, they miss their old place!
Another study suggests, it depends on how old you were
when you learned your second language.
This study suggested that if you expose your baby to another language
before the age of three, their ear will be able to differentiate between the
sounds (or the melody or "song") of both languages. Those
sounds are imprinted in the brain.
During the first three years, the brain freely accepts a variety of
sounds. However thereafter, as not to have
sensory overload, the brain starts tuning out sounds that are not necessary to
reproduce the sounds of a language. As
the baby learns to speak, they will be able to mimic and speak the sounds they
hear back to you. This is why, for the
most part, a Chinese adult who has never been exposed to the German language,
is not able to reproduce certain typical sounds in the German language that
have no equivalent in the Chinese language.
Or why a German adult is not able to speak back different Chinese
words. Their ear (hearing) is just not
attuned to a range of sounds in the other language.
Yet another study suggested, that exposing a baby to a
variety of music and musical sounds may also play a factor in training the
brain to accept a wider variety of sounds. This in turn helps improve the odds of learning
and speaking a new language accent-free.
So, why did my younger brother keep his German accent, when
he spoke English? Truth be told that he
really missed our neighborhood in Germany and all his little friends there. He yearned to be back in Germany
playing with his friends! To this very day, he still speaks with a German accent when speaking English.
Testing the Theory
When my son was born, I was determined to put the “age theory" to the test. From the very beginning, I
would read to him using a really adorable French-English Picture
Dictionary. Under each picture, it would
have the funniest little captions using the word in the picture. I made a game of it. For instance: I would point to the picture of
an apple and say: “Auf Deutsch: der Apfel”, and I would say the silly little
caption under it in German. Then I would
point to the same picture and say: “In English: an apple”, followed by the
silly little caption in English.
Finally, I would point to the picture and say: “En Français:
le pomme”, and follow that by saying the silly caption in French.
This became our bedtime routine and later "our" game. I would read
and point to the words and separate them by which language it was. When he started to speak, I just had to point
to a picture and say: “Auf Deutsch” and he would recite back “der Apfel”. His brain had compartmentalized each
language. He knew, that if he spoke to
Daddy in German, there would be no reaction.
But if he spoke in English, Daddy was all ears. Little kids are smart that way. He knew
exactly which language to pick by the language the adult was using.
When my son was about two and a half years old, I was in for a bit of shock. My son told me in no uncertain terms that he did not want to speak German anymore! Why, did I ask? He simply said: “Mommy, no more Deutsch! Deutsch is UGLY. I don’t want to speak Deutsch anymore.” – “What do you mean, Deutsch is ugly?” – “When you speak Deutsch, you have to spit and gargle. It is ugly! I don’t want to speak Deutsch anymore.” Knowing how stubborn he was, I left it alone. I figured, the German language was pretty much imprinted in his brain. When he was ready once more to embrace German, or if he ever needed it, the foundation would be there, somewhere.
“The Good Night Song”
So, we no longer spoke German with one another, just English and French. Fast forward to when my son was about six. My Grandmother from the old country came for a visit to see her grand and great-grandchildren in California. She only knew German. On the first day of her visit, my son became quite sad, that he had forgotten his German. Grandma could not understand him when he spoke to her in English or French, nor could he understand what she was telling him.
However at bedtime, when Grandma decided to turn in, I witnessed the most adorable interaction between the two. I peeked into the guest room to say good night and saw grandma in bed, with my son sitting at the edge of her bed. He wound up the music box in his teddy bear and put it in Grandma's arms. Then he started to sing the Brahms Lullaby to Grandma in German. He was so proud, “Mom, I remembered the 'Good Night' song. It made great-grandma so happy that I sang it to her and remembered it.” And Grandma was beaming with joy tears in her eyes.
Love and music transcend everything.
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