Most school mornings, Annie, Leigh and I hop into the car at 6:40 am with a cup of coffee and our morning prayer app. We say morning prayer as I zip down the Appia, dodging rogue Roman drivers and motorcyclists whose standards of normalcy on the road defy the American imagination.
After we comment a bit on the prayers and readings of the day, we turn to small talk. What do Leigh and Annie have to say? It boggles the mind. For example, Leigh says:
"I like our new math teacher, Mrs. Giamaria. But her German is really hard on the ears. She lived in Switzerland for 10 years and just learned it incorrectly."
Annie interrupts from the backseat with an example of that teacher's bad German:
"Ab-LEIT-ung!" she says mockingly.
Leigh laughs so hard. They both repeat "Ab-LEIT-ung" several times. I ask what's the problem. They say, "It's supposed to be AB-leitung. But she stresses the second syllable. And boy, does she stress it!" They pretend to be her, saying "Ab-LEIT-ung" with exaggerated expression.
I ask them, "What does it mean?" They tell me it means "derivative." So, they are learning their math derivatives with this twist of the teacher's interesting pronunciation.
Annie then declares that Mrs. Giamaria says "funf" instead of "fünf," forgetting the umlaut. She continues, "Even the boys in the class imitate her saying 'funf!"
Leigh chimes in, "She also says, 'Naricht' instead of 'Nachricht,'" and Annie performs that one too with special intonation.
Once they settle down, I say to them: "You do hear yourselves, don't you? Can you believe that you know German well enough to be upset by her pronunciation? When you got to this school on the first day, just a few years ago, you could hardly formulate a complete, correct German sentence."
I also reminded them, "Be careful in imitating her. . . how do you think people talk about your German!?"
