Language is such a big part of a culture that often goes un-noticed. Or at least it’s not the first thing you think about when you imagine traveling to another country. The food, landscape, weather, and popular activities are things that come to mind first. But every experience you have (besides guided site seeing tours), involves the native language. Using another language for getting public transport tickets, ordering food, finding directions and reading road signs are common things that any traveler can get themselves into, but with an exchange program you get yourself into much more. Staying with host families, they will almost always speak their native language unless they are involving the IFYE in the conversation. That said also all host families’ relatives and friends will do the same. This creates a lot of conversations that you might be around that you don’t understand (for me this was German).
‘Normal’ things I needed help with in German
German lessons from my first host sibling
My first day within the first couple hours of arriving to my host family, I was learning the language. I had a 9 year old host sister and she was so excited to teach me German but also speak English to me so that she could enhance her skills. At this point I knew absolutely no German. I did not have much time to prepare before leaving home. I found myself learning around five - seven random words. Some of these words very useful - like greetings and short phrases. After our short language session, I was able to identify those select words should they be used in conversation. And hearing those words I knew being said over and over with daily conversation locked them into my memory. However I still encountered many conversations that I didn’t understand at all. At first I didn’t mind these conversations - but I’m not gonna lie after a while they got pretty boring. Not knowing what was being said made me even more interested in learning the language. I began to ask more questions about words that I had heard repetitivly or words I thought sounded like words I knew in English. I grew a small vocabulary. I also found myself paying more attention to conversations in an attempt to figure out what was being said without knowing any of the words - sometimes this worked and other times not. Just like with my lack of time to prepare before my departure, I also found I didn’t have much time to study or do a language course while abroad (though I think it would really have helped me). To learn the language I relied on the people, pictures of things, and google translate. After about two months, I had a vocabulary of about fifty words. By the time I made it to my last host family I was understanding simple things. I could also translate simple things that I would explain about myself or my home in a few German words. And I could also ask simple questions in German just using a few words should something not translate correctly. My host siblings at my forth host family noticed this and we often had conversations about it. They would say to me, “Sometimes you understand what I say and other times not”. I would reply, “Yes and the same to you“. Often times in conversations with older family members or even strangers they would apologize for “how bad” their ability to speak English was. But during my entire time in Austria, I was surprised at how much English was understood and how much could be said. I would often say to this, “Your English is way better than my German”. And it was so true! My German was far from being conversational but I would say that I am at a level of ‘understanding’ the language. I definitely do not think I would be able to know this much German would I have not stayed with host families while traveling. Going out into the cities and sites, and watching the German language be used allowed me to pick up some of it. But then having everything around me that my host family enjoyed during downtime at their home be constantly in German - radio music, TV shows, newspapers and magazines, advertisements, conversations with guests; this made for the greatest ability to remember the words that I slowly learned overtime. Throughout my time of piecing conversations and words together in another language, I was also piecing together another way of understanding the culture.