Mother Tongue

In the text "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan, she talks about the exposure of different types of English. Whether it is the English spoken in school, or her own "language of intimacy" with her mum and her husband.

That is something I would like to focus on in this post. "Language of intimacy". What does this mean? Personally, I feel like it means it's a form of communication only you and someone else communicate in. It does not matter whether it is a code language or, as Amy Tan has mentioned, "simple" or "broken" English. As long as it is a form of language you and someone else share between each other, it is "intimate".

How do I relate to this though? English is a language I grew up with since I can remember. You may remember that I mentioned this in my introductory blog post. However, my parents learnt English in school, thus making it their second, and in my mum’s case, third language. A few weeks back I saw a video which describes phonetics. In this video, they explain how babies are able to adapt phonetics for any language. Once they reach a certain age though, it becomes increasingly difficult. This is exactly what I notice when I hear my parents speak English. They are so used to German pronunciations, that they make the “th” occasionally sound like a slight “z” sound (The —> Zé). It is not as “bad” as it may sound, but it is noticeable. If you hear them speak you will know they are German.

Back to what the post is supposed to be about. “Language of intimacy”. Whenever I am with my parents and it is necessary to speak English to someone, I will genuinely shift into a slight German accent. I notice this and it is very obvious to me. But I do not change it, because I know it is something I share with my parents. Not only this, but my brother and I share something as well. Since we lived in Uganda for most of our “developing” years, we have adopted an “Ugandan-esque” accent whenever we speak with each other. We are not trying to imitate anyone, it is just something we do and something we are used to.

To me, these are choices I like to keep special. I love being able to communicate with my brother the way I do. I also think it is really interesting to see how our brains adapt to different “Englishes” when we are with other people.

But that is all I got to say about this. How do you feel about “language of intimacy”? Do you communicate a “special” way with only one or two people? Let me know, I am always curious about this!

My name and it's history

As I have mentioned in my first blog, my name is Cedric. My parents told me that there is actually a really simple story behind why they chose it. Even though it does have some history and "legends" to it, I was given the name because someone they knew had it and my parents liked it. That is pretty much the story of how I got my name.

My mum's best friend from childhood (they are still in contact) has a son with the same pronunciation, but different spelling. Sedrik. I feel like writing this out does not feel right, mainly because I am used to spelling my name the way I do. Moving on, my parents asked her whether they could use the name, but slightly alter the spelling.

Researching my name, I came up with some interesting results. According to behindthename.com, Cedric (the way it is spelt now) was first used by Sir Walter Scott in his novel "Ivanhoe", where it has been altered from the "semi-legendary founder of kingdom of Wessex", Cerdic. The name Cerdic has no known meaning. It does not even appear in old English. However, some (my parents) say the name originated in France before moving to the english language.

Here is what I think is craziest. At least the craziest thing I have heard about my name. This was at a sports summer festival and the mother of a teammate asks me for my name. I tell her and she looked in surprise and said: "Ohh, was that not the name of the black knight?" That was the first and last time I've heard someone say that. Now that I read up on the history of my name, the novel "Ivanhoe" uses my name as the black knight, a fierce and powerful knight. This description of the name could not be more opposite than my personality. If I can avoid physical contact, I will.

But that's all there is to my name. Reading up on this, I feel like there could be more about my name if I researched more, but I am happy with what I have found and will pass on the knowledge to anyone who asks about my name (most likely no one).


sources:
http://www.behindthename.com/name/cedric
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanhoe

Cultural Markers

This post genuinely took me quite some time to think about and properly get started. Nonetheless, here we go.

Since I have lived in a few places across the world, I do not count myself to one specific culture or culture group. Considering my background, I will stick with the German culture and all its associations. I have never found a culture to be important to me. All that ever really mattered to me was the ability to communicate with the people in my surrounding.

Germany is accompanied by a few “stereotypes”, which both have positive and negative associations. To start off, I shall lift the mood by talking about the positive ones.

According to many rumours around the internet, we are supposed to be extremely punctual. From personal experience, this - sadly - is not always the case. During the time that I have lived in Germany, I have met some very punctual people, however, I have also met a bunch who prefer arriving thirty to sixty minutes late. Along with this, efficiency is a trait the rest of the world uses to describe us. I am not too familiar with this to be honest. To an extent, I know that german firms and our government has always been efficient in getting a job done. That is about where my knowledge ends on this topic. 

Now to the part of this post I am honestly not looking forward to too much. Starting of with a milder assumption: we do not have a sense of humour. True. We are not allowed to laugh. Incredibly funny joke aside, from experience, no day exists without fun. This is probably the least correct of all.

Last on the list, and I almost feel bad for having to include this, is our link to national socialism or nazis. I am not going to lie and say that I have been called a nazi and been told to go to my hitler shrine. This keeps me speechless. I cannot physically express how this makes me feel. It kills me to say this, but links to national socialism do exist in Germany, more than necessary. Especially now with the influx of refugees, the number of “Neonazis” keeps growing. Even though german lessons exist for the refugees, the refusal to communicate with them makes everything a lot more difficult than it needs to be. If all the right-wing citizens open up to communicating with the refugees, we would know more about their background and why they fled in the first place.

Hence I believe in order to communicate in peace, it is important to understand ones cultural background. How do you feel about this? Any suggestions or additions? Leave them in the comments below!

Blogger Introduction

My name is Cedric M. Schmitz and this is my first Blog.

I was born in Munich, but moved to Singapore after 2 months of my new life. I lived there for the first five years of my life. We then moved back to Germany for 3 and a half years, before leaving to Uganda. These were honestly the best five years of my life growing up. Uganda has offered us the most variety of things to do, while still offering a "normal" human life. After the end in this spiffing country, my family and I headed back to Germany once again, where we stayed another 4 years before moving to our current country, Abu Dhabi.

Within the recent years, I have discovered a passion for a few things. These involve football (the English one), golf, physics and maths, computers and last but not least, Star Wars. I've always like Star Wars, it was my childhood, but I recently discovered a deep passion for the Star Wars Universe.

Growing up bilingual, language was always an important factor in my life. Even though I am German, I wouldn't consider the language my mother tongue. I've always been better - not amazing though - at English. Due to my luck of having the privilege to grow up bilingual, I've never fully experienced exclusion due to language barriers.

To finish off, I shall discuss my planned future: I'm 90% set on what I want to study and be when I have the opportunity to. Since languages have not been my strongpoint, I've always strived to work in the field of physics. Right now, I plan to study some form of engineering, whether it's industrial/economic engineer, electric engineer or software engineer.


"Do or do not. There is no try." - Yoda, Empire strikes back