German-English as a Home Language

For my Languages of Power and Resistance project I am presenting German-English as a home language. This is how we speak in my household, and I thought it would be interesting to try and research and describe the differences between the two languages. I-a fluent speaker in German and English-find bilingualism fascinating [a description of myself set of by parenthetical dashes]. My final project will be more formal since I am an English education major with a focus on German, hoping to teach it one day. My project will look like a book, where you can see a showing a clear similarities compare and contrast between the two languages. My main connection between these two languages and power is that in some ways, bilingualism is praised, but in similar other cases it's definitely not that appearance plays a huge role; if you're white, bilingualism is praised and if you're anything but white, you're seen as incapable of speaking correctly. I find it fascinating that just because I look white and American, speaking German and English is awesome and people ask me a ton of questions but my Mother and Oma and Opa, speaking Hungarian, German, and English, are seen as immigrants and almost peasant-like for speaking a mixture of languages [changing the order of the usual adjective then noun to show emphasis on my family's language]. The part I have chosen to share for this blog post is a rough draft of one of the pages I will include in my blog post, most of the pages will look similar. I will add personal writings as well to show my “broken English” household language, I just haven't decided how I'm going to do that yet.

I'm challenging Edited American English as the standard English because varieties of language I think it adds so much add character and teach a lot about a person when they have their own style of language. I'm not saying one language doesn't sound better as the business language, but if I am, is it only because society taught me that was the language that sounds best? Showing culture through language is an incredible thing that I think more people should challenge themselves to do; changing to fit societies “norm” of a language is just causing an identity split. Speaking your language, expressing your culture, is something to challenge the norm and be who you are [two back-to-back present-participle phrases]. This has always been a big part of my life because I've always had two or more languages in my house. In grade school I'll admit I was embarrassed and didn't want people at school knowing I was “different,” but I soon embraced it and now I'm going on to teach it to more students!

"German-English" as a home language

Mikah Wilson, Page 1

Language and Power Project