A Lesson from the Germans

At the hostel, I met Eric, a 26-year-old engineering student from Berlin.  He had been driving around the countryside with his girlfriend, who lives in Cork.  He showed me pictures from his phone and offered commentary: 

“This place, it’s amazing.  You must go.”

Many Germans, including Eric, study English in school.  His vocabulary is extensive, and his pronunciation, for the most part, is spot on.  But his accent always made me want to chuckle.  He used funny words like “inhabitants” instead of “people,” and he used the word “possibilities” to denote not only choices but places to sit as well. 

His funniest faux pas was his pronunciation of lingerie.  He spoke the first part of the word as it is written as though he were about to say lingonberries.  He uttered the latter portion without a French inflection that turns those last two letters into a long A sound.  Eric would often exude great enthusiasm through his speech, and he swore almost as often as ruffians from Boston.  After traveling alone all day, his company was very entertaining. 

The next day we agreed to walk about the town with his new friend Marcell, a Bavarian expat who recently moved to Dublin.  Eric met Marcell on the telephone when he rented a car at Hertz, and they began chatting in their native tongue.  Before hanging up, the two agreed to meet near the Spire, a giant needle in the heart of Dublin’s O’Connell Street. 

The three of us convened, and Marcell agreed to show us around his new hometown.  When I travel to a foreign place, I aspire to immerse myself into the culture as thoroughly as I can manage during my limited visit.  So when I found myself lollygagging around Ireland with two Germans, I can’t exactly say I was getting the local tour, but the company was refreshing, nonetheless. 

Eric and Marcell are from two very different parts of Germany, so different that Berliners may have difficulty understanding a Bavarian accent.  For the most part, my new companions spoke in English for my benefit, and they both had unique takes on their second language.  Every now and then, they would break off from English and collaborate in German on the translation of a particular word.  The conversation was already fascinating, and these pauses only ameliorated this novel encounter for me.  Sometimes I would have to wait patiently for the translation as though the tip-of-the-tongue word were a buffering Internet connection.

“It is important for you to understand the—the specific... meaning of this word,” Eric would say as we waited for Marcell’s translator app to process his request. 

Nothing was trivial in our discussion.  Every word mattered because it was clearly thought out.  The majority of our conversation dealt with the differences and similarities of German and American life. 

On separate occasions both Eric and Marcell mentioned Nazis.  They both told me that foreigners often confront them about Hitler and Germany’s role in World War II.  Some have even hailed to them while pressing their two fingers about their lips to suggest the Hitler ‘stache. 

“What Germany did was horrible,” Eric said.  “But we are never allowed to forget it.  We shouldn’t forget so that it won’t happen again.”

 

“You had nothing to do with the war,” I told him.  “You weren’t even alive back then.”

“Exactly. But people always ask me, ‘Were your grandparents Nazis?’”

In order to console him, I surmised that maybe certain Japanese people felt similarly toward Americans because of the atomic bombs.  But this is only an assumption, which I’m sure contains at least a sliver of truth.

I could tell this was a touchy subject with my German friends, so I tried to be sensitive and to use an appropriate tone when I told them about the Holocaust literature I had been reading.  I listed some titles (Maus, Night, If This is Man, Man’s Search for Meaning), but Eric has not heard of these books.

“Maybe I don’t know them,” he said, “because I don’t recognize their English titles.”

That was probably the reason, although I wonder if Americans are more likely than Europeans to find Holocaust material to be intriguing. Since the American public was so geographically removed from the war in Europe and the concentration camps, the Holocaust took on more of an imaginary quality.  In the novel A Separate Peace, Phineas, an unruly student in New Hampshire, doubts the very notion that the United States is at war with Nazi Germany.  In his world of delusion, he claims the war is a hoax designed to placate the rebellious youth.  Non-combatant Americans were far from the action, but to European citizens the horrors were immediate.  I could understand why they wouldn’t want to stir up old nightmares.

I read in Bill Bryson’s Neither Here nor There that during the ‘90s there was still tension between Germans and other Europeans.  For many Americans I would wager that this mindset is difficult comprehend.   The U.S. has had its share of internal conflicts, but I don’t think the country has fought its immediate neighbors since Davy Crockett died at the Alamo. But even during the Texas Revolution, much of the country was largely unaffected by the conflict.  Germany, on the other hand, dominated nearly the entirety of the European continent during the Second World War.  After Germany’s defeat and dissolution, the consequences of war were widespread.  If my neighbor attacked me, it would take me a while to grow comfortable living next to him.  Likewise, if I were living in the Netherlands, I wouldn’t be so quick to forgive Germany for forcefully annexing my homeland.    

Despite the sensitivity of the issue, I risked making a joke.  As the three of us strolled through St. Stephen’s Green under a faint drizzle, I said, “You’ll find this funny.  Or least I hope you will.”      

“When I was in the seventh grade, I had this English teacher who was very strict about grammar.  If you had just one comma out of place, you’d have to fix your mistake and state why it was wrong. She was so strict about this that everyone called her the Grammar Nazi.”

Nobody laughed.  I offended them, I thought.  Stupid Americans will say anything.  I’m an insensitive foreigner.  I couldn’t possibly understand the social stigma attached to their country’s troubled past.

But, alas, the joke was simply lost in translation. 

“Oh, in English, are the commas important?” Eric asked me.

I tried not to bore him with a grammar lesson, but I don’t think I was successful.  Nonetheless, I explained the various ways you could correctly use a comma.  Once they understood, I received delayed laughter.

The Germans are a tough crowd when it comes to comedy.  As we were eating fish and chips, I told them about what I had read in a book by Chuck Klosterman (Eating the Dinosaur) wherein he analyzes aspects of American culture. 

Perhaps we’ve been influenced by laugh tracks from sitcoms.  Whatever the reason, many Americans have this habit of laughing at remarks that aren’t funny.  We laugh when we don’t know what else to say.  If one is buying groceries and the cashier says, “Nice weather we’re having,” some would laugh rather than partake in small talk.  I am guilty of this habit.  I fake-laugh in order to appear polite and to feign interest during minor interactions.  I don’t have the type of personality to appear abrasively honest, so I sometimes laugh at sentences that clearly are not hilarious.  My laughter is not always genuine. 

Chuck Klosterman is a fake-laugher as well.  When he was in Germany, he made small talk with a cashier.  After making inconsequential comments, Klosterman would laugh at his own words, but the German clerk would stare back, clearly not amused.  Ever since I read that passage, I have tried to break this habit. 

“Now I try to be like the Germans,” I told my friends.  “If a joke is not funny, I will not laugh.”

Apparently, this story was a hit because even the Germans were chuckling.