Re:Can You Lose Your Native Tongue? (2024)
by lqet on Saturday February 22, 2025 @02:54AM
(#43137080)
Lately I noticed that I cannot even speak my native German dialect as easily as when I was a teenager (I moved away from home to university when I was 20). I often hesitate because I am not sure whether some word I said was correct in my native dialect, or the local dialect where I live now, or the dialect of my wife (Swiss German). At home, we speak a wild mixture of 3 different dialects and standard German. Our 5-year-old mainly speaks standard German because that's what they speak at kindergarten (most of the teachers don't speak the dialect, and there is a significant number of French, Italian, Ukrainian, and Syrian kids for which learning the dialect would be even harder). At work, I speak a mixture of English and standard German.
After living in Germany for nearly 10 years, but working in Switzerland, my wife recently had an identity crisis because a Swiss colleague thought she was German, and had just learned Swiss German very well.
After living in Germany for nearly 10 years, but working in Switzerland, my wife recently had an identity crisis because a Swiss colleague thought she was German, and had just learned Swiss German very well.