Cultural Meetings

This morning as I was leaving the Jugendherberge, I spoke with the woman who runs the hostel to determine how and when we should pay our bills.  The question quickly answered, she shared that she had recently had a vacation in the US with her children.  She told me about her (long) trip to Los Angeles, her disappointment with that city, the trip out to Nevada and drive up Rt. 1 to San Francisco.  They had clearly had a delightful month investigating nooks and crannies in the west.  While she mentioned sights, she was more interested in a cultural phenomenon--namely that some of the smaller restaurants they ate in seemed to be cooking the way her grandmother used to cook (e.g., hash browns/potato pancakes  and pancakes in the frying pan).  She hypothesized that the German/European emigrants left for the US with the cooking habits, and that those habits did not change dramatically, while in Germany/Europe, cooking habits changed.  She knew the various dishes, which were prepared as her grandmother used to prepare them.  Her children, on the other hand, saw these as different, unique to America.  I related the history of "goetta" which is not known in Germany, but is touted as a German food item (at least in Cincinnati).  We had a nice talk about cultural differences, and how these are exported/imported (and perhaps reimported) to other cultures.

I've often noticed these sort of changes with regard to language.  For example, Cincinnati had a huge influx of German immigrants in the mid 19th century.  Some of the linguistic oddities in Cincinnati can be directly traced to the influence of the German language ("Please?" when you don't understand something, and the habit of ending a sentence in "with" when "along" is meant--Are you coming with?) where immigrants simply translated the words they used on a daily basis in German into English. But their German language habits never changed.  The great great grandparents spoke 19th century German, their children (the great grandparents or even grandparentsof some of our students) understood and spoke that same form (now one to two generations older, and no longer the same as the German spoke in Germany).  In addition to "stopping" the development that is natural in a spoken language, the language skills they brought were colloquial and deteriorating with the inclusion of English words.   Denglish indeed.  So back to goetta.  Germans in Germany do not know what it is, but in describing how it is made, our inn keeper knew exactly where to place it--with her grandparents and even great grandparents--who in times of limited food, knew how to stretch foods and to use them for multiple purposes.

She then admitted that it was only in leaving the country, and coming back, that she looked at her culture anew.  She employs several young men who are performing civil service rather than serve in the military (one or the other is compulsory).  Her view is that these young people are not prepared to move into the world and be independent and effective members of society.  Rather, they are overly concerned with detail and do not see the "big picture."  Her quote of the day:  "I think Germans like to make simple things overly-complicated."
She was very concerned where that could lead.  That's an insight I can agree with.

We language folks aren't the only ones thinking about cultural transfer and cultural competence--we give it a name and study it for insights into language acquisition.  This struck me as a perfect "culturally humble" conversation for both of us.