Learning a New Language

My father is teaching me German.

He still speaks fluently, even though he

escaped from Nazi Germany almost

seventy years ago when he was seventeen.

We study nouns and verbs.

We study when to use the formal pronoun, Sie, you

and when to use the more familiar, Du.

One must be offered permission to use the familiar.

We study dialects.

The word Ich, I.

The Berliners pronounce it Ick.

Those from Frankfurt am Main, Isch.

Those from Schwaben, Ich or I.

He tells me when he was a kid he and

his friends used to say in a Berliner dialect,

“Berlin jeweesen Oranje jejessen und sie war so süss jeweesen.”

I was in Berlin and ate an orange, and it was very sweet.

“And then we added, dass mir die brüh die gosh runterglaufe is,”

with the juices running down my mouth.

He explains: “It is in our Schwäbisch dialect.

I should say, it was our dialect.”