My father once told me he had to translate between two Germans just after WWII in Italy. Today high German is the national language. Yet not in 1945. 🙃
@DeWayfarer I remember a colleague who had been an exchange student here, once mentioned that her parents had spoken plattdeutsch, which she said one rarely heard now.
@bijouxbroussard It's similar to Dutch. It's why I understand a little bit of Dutch. Because my parents could speak high German and low German (platt being "flat"). Bavarian German is high country, Hamburg is flat country.
@bijouxbroussard Well, I can't say that I learned it very well growing up. All my siblings spoke it fluently. Yet they were so much older than me, that they were not around me very much.
The next youngest was my half brother at sixteen years older than me.
That didn't give mom much opportunity to speak any languages around me. And she was as well fluent in Romanian, which only my eldest sister could speak.
Mom sometimes used that language barrier against me. Speaking to me in English, yet speaking German or Romanian when my other siblings were around.
This of course frustrated me enough that in junior high I took German classes as a elective in the seventh grade. And kept it up throughout highschool.
If there was a book on how to not raise a kid, that would be my life story.
Remember that I was sent to Germany at 14 by myself. With only those two years of learning German. It was a real head pounding learning experience quite literally. I actually had headaches because of the lack of understanding German.
