Wallons, nous! – Us, Walloons!

Walloon and French cohabiting

One of the biggest feature of the European Union is its language diversity. Apart from the official languages, there is a large diversity of regional languages. In Wallonia, the French speaking part of Belgium, the most spoken regional language is Walloon. The numbers of speakers is constantly diminishing as younger generations, like me, speak and learn exclusively French. Nonetheless, the language is still relatively visible in various medias in Wallonia.  

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Me!

I grew up bilingual, with Portuguese and German both as mothertongues. My father, a Northern-German, my mother, a North-Eastern Brazilian, did not have many difficulties in raising me in a multi-cultural mindset. By the age of 4, that’s as far back as I can remember, I spoke ‘fluent’ German and ‘fluent’ Portuguese, something extraordinary in the little village I grew up in. By the age of nine, I was introduced to the English language in elementary school. Very basic classes and teaching methods laid out in games and playbooks, which made me develop an understanding that the world is bigger than Germany and Brazil. With this new international outlook, I took great interest in finding out about and explore the world. My travels as a child took me to destinations such as Brazil, Spain, the US, and France, with a lot more to follow. When I entered High School I chose French as a 4th language but stopped practicing it when I switched school with 14. The new school, an International School, laid great emphasis on a multicultural student community and hence offered a lot of different languages to learn next to English, which was the common academic language. Thus, I started to practice Spanish, which went on for 6 years. After graduating from High School and moving on to University level, I took up the Italian language course which I needed for my semester abroad in Torino, Italy. In a very short time, I learned Italian and brought it to a level that would allow me to follow Italian lectures and read Italian books. When I came back to Maastricht University I found myself in situations, in which I could even communicate with Italian students in their language, something very comforting for them and also lots of fun. Currently I am trying to perfect my Portuguese grammatical and vocabulary skills, in a Portuguese language course. This is, because I was raised bilingual but never learned to properly read and write in Portuguese.

I believe that multilingualism can only be beneficial to academic, professional, and social contexts. At least this is what I have experienced. Academic because I took an interest in international studies, literature, and was even able to give language lessons to fellow students myself. It prepared me well for entering the international environment at university and when it came to writing academic papers, I could rely on sources that many other students do not have access to because they do not speak the language. specifically when researching online news articles, I researched on Spanish, Italian, German, English, and Portuguese websites if it connected well to the paper topics. It benefited me professionally, as I underwent internships in different countries, and experienced on first hand the benefits of living and working in the European Union. When I worked for a political association in London, I had no troubles in filling out the tasks given to me and was even adapted to the way of business of the UK, which is different than in Germany. In a social context, multilingualism helped me in establishing personal contacts, communicating with international people and through them raising my awareness on different cultures.

These 5 languages, did not rip apart my identity as it is formulated by various experts but rather gave me a new identity. This new identity was that of a multicultural German, which in fact represents what Germany stand for, multiculturalism. I am German, but at the same time I consider myself a world-citizen.

From the After Babel course I expect to learn more and in more detail about what I already experienced. I want to find answers why and how the languages that I speak make me act and think a certain way, and with the course literature, I have many experts to base my personal research upon.

My Identity and My Language(s)

 

My name is Benjamin and I am currently a student. I was born in Belgium but 15 days later I moved to Burundi. In a way, it is representative of how my life has been so far . The constant moving around allowed me to live in numerous countries spreading over Africa, North America and Europe. And now I am in Maastricht.

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Finding my Identity

Do you feel more Italian or Dutch? So many times i was asked such question, but I never managed to find a right answer. For many people reading this, it might seem like the most obvious and easy question. That is, because they have a clear idee of where they come from and especially which cultural identity they relate to. For me it has never been so simple. My life has been subject to so many different cultural influences that it is hard for me to express with words. My parents are both Dutch, from Alkmaar. They moved 28 years ago to Mexico, for my fathers work, , where my brother was born. They moved again 2 years later, to Rome. Well, that is where my home is, where I feel like walking in my own backyard and where I recognize people’s behaviour. Continue reading Finding my Identity

Zerwas

 

chalktalk_LM

I am Marie and I am 22 years old.  I was raised in Singapore and Bregenz, a small town in Austria at the lake of Constanze. Bregenz is my home town where my parents and most of my childhood friends still live. Currently, I am in the last semester of my studies in European Studies at Maastricht University. I speak German, my regional dialect, English, and French.

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From Russia to Germany. From England to the Netherlands.

The tongues I speak…

Hi my name is Ilja, I was born in St. Petersburg, grew up in Germany, spent a year in England, currently study in Maastricht and lived half a year in Turkey during my Ersamus. I already came into contact with many different cultures and their languages and do not intend to stop anytime soon.

Russian to GermanWhen I was little me and my parents lived in an area in Hanover (Germany) with a higher amount of immigrants. Therefore, I had a couple of other Russian speaking friends which I saw practically everyday at the local playground. Our families became friends and thus an environment was created for all of us to learn and practice our mother tongue in a foreign country. In kindergarden and primary school I simultaneously learned the German language and German values that were communicated advancing in this language much faster then my parents did. When I entered high school we were already living in another area of the town and the new friends I made were more or less all German. Speaking Russian was now bound to the setting at home and even conversations with my Russian peers were held in German as this language simply occupied more of our personal life. Now that I moved out and do not even have Russian conversations on a regular basis I myself observe the demise of my Russian vocabulary and even an accent that is continously getting worse to my pitty.

Collecting languages and cultural impressions around the world…

The year after my graduation I spent in London doing an European Voluntary Service (EVS). There I was working at the West London YMCA, which is a on-profit organisation that offers social housing to homeless young people. During that time I could practice my English language skills as I spoke English everydBritish-flag-hand_smallay in my workplace and with my very British host family. I realised for the first time how different cultures can be expressed through their languages. As opposed to the Germans I found that people in England were much more indirect. If somebody wants something from you it is almost never asked in a direct way, almost hidden. Therefore, you have to be accustomed to identify what your conversation partner really wants from you. Confrontations, how I found them, were also tried to be avoided.

All in all I can say that knowing 3 languages and a bit of French only brought advantages to me. Even the bits of Turish I learned during my stay in Ankara are already a good tool to start communication with Turkish people. At the last exebition for example where I worked as a barkeeper, I could make use of some Turkish words making myself very prominent amongst the Turkish visitors, which then were returning more often. From this couse I expect to learn more abut the impact of language on the different cultures and how these define themselves over their languages. I want to explore the history of certain languages and understand in what way these have changed overtime.

 

Wat mutt, dat mutt

Introducing oneself is something only very few people enjoy, but Wat mutt, dat mutt (Plattdüütsch: nl. wat moet, dat moet; dt. was sein muss, muss sein)

Daarom: Moin! This is the Northern German equivalent to the Limburgish Hoi.
I was born and raised in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony and although our regional dialect is not as strong as it is in other regions and the capital of the Bundesland, Hanover, is the city where the German spoken by the people does allegedly resemble the High German taught in language schools the most, there are certain peculiarities which are mainly derived from Plattdüütsch.

 

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Excuse me, onde ist thuis?

Hey, my name is Nik. I am 23 years old and just like everyone else in the “After Babbel” course I am studying European Studies in Maastricht. In my view, language, culture and identity are deeply connected to each other and you can’t talk about the one without naming the others. So instead of starting out which languages I speak, let’s begin with where I am from. Continue reading Excuse me, onde ist thuis?