Languages

dier·ha·ge·nisch, Adj

 

An adjective created by a Finnish language student. Derived from the proper noun Dierhagen, which is “a municipality in the Vorpommern-Rügen district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany” (Wikipedia). The adjective is used to describe life in a small German village by the sea – and to display the nerdiness of the author of this blog.

You could also argue, as undoubtedly quite a few Germans would, that dierhagenisch means nothing. It’s made up, it’s nonsense. In my defense, I could argue that most of what my colleagues and other people around here say is also nonsense. Curiously enough, this rebuttal would most likely be denied by Germans. 

I’m beginning to cope better with the spoken everyday German now, after almost a month in a sink-or-swim environment. These days I usually need to ask “Excuse me, could you please repeat what you just said?” only once after each instruction or remark. And if I still don’t get it, I smile and nod. This approach has worked quite well so far. Yet, like with most things, the beginning was far from easy.

To begin with, my colleagues are an international lot, so they know how to be incomprehensible in various languages: Czech, Russian, Polish, and of course, German. Not being able to follow discussions in most of the languages spoken at our coffee table doesn’t really bother me, but I have been slightly frustrated with not being able to make out what people say when they speak German. I learned German for eight years in school and I’ve studied the language as my minor subject at the university for some time now. What else can you ask for? Sometimes I get the feeling that I should be doing better than I am. I should be participating more, instead of only having a vague idea of what the topic is. But then again, it’s easy to think that spoken, everyday language is simple. Yet, it’s actually quite far from it. It can be rapid, blurred or inarticulate. Or all of those at once. All the early mornings in German class didn’t quite prepare me for this. Yes, I learned structures, I learned bits of various aspects of grammar, and I learned vocabulary. And no doubt there were aims regarding spoken communication as well, but like I said, I was unprepared nonetheless. 

At this point I could let this entry become a rant about language teaching and the shadow of the matriculation examination, and ultimately a discussion of what language is. I spare you from that for now. Instead, let’s end on a positive note. 

I was just thinking back to the day when I made up my mind to study German. It was around the change of the millennium. Due to group size requirements there wasn’t going to be a German language group in my school. I was bummed out. I didn’t feel like waking up early to bike to another school a couple of mornings every week, while my classmates slept in their comfortable beds. No way. Yet, my teacher sensed my uncertainty and urged me to think about, sleep on it. Can’t remember to what extent I discussed this dilemma with my parents, but in the morning I decided I was going to start learning German nevertheless. Now, a decade later, I’m pretty happy to have the opportunity to spend a summer in this idyllic environment and manage my everyday life in German. Losing a few hours of morning sleep wasn’t such a bad price for all the opportunities I now have.

Introduction

Dierhag…what? Is that a bird, is that a word, is that German? To be perfectly honest, I could say that about most of the stuff that flies around at the housekeeping coffee table, deep down in the basement of hotel Fischland.

Hold on. First this Dierhagenisch monster of a word, and now something fishy about basements. Right. How did I end up sitting confused in a hotel basement in the first place? To begin with, let’s just say it’s not the first time. I have been in the hotel housekeeping business for the past couple of summers and it seems that there is a tendency to shove the kindly housekeepers in the dark basements and out of sight. This summer I wanted to do something different. Break out of the box. Break the box. After a fair chunk of time brushing up my language proficiency, googling, perfecting resumes and firing off summer job applications, I succeeded. 

So now I sit in a German basement occupied by a bunch of housekeeping ladies. 

Maybe not as grand as you were hoping for, but it’s still enough to confuse me. To make me feel giddy. To make me feel uncomfortable. To make feel both out of place and at the right place. 

I’m about to ditch this talk about feelings for moment and set the record straight. For the summer of 2013, I, Mika Tompuri, work in the housekeeping department of Strandhotel Fischland, a fairly big German hotel by the Baltic Sea. The four-star superior holiday resort is conveniently located in the North-German seaside landscape dotted by small idyllic villages, which seem to exist only for the summer. To breathe summer and gently to shake tourists out of their holiday money, and make a run for it when the seasons change. In all honesty, that sounds awfully lot like what I’m doing here - except that my lungs aren’t all that big, I only get tiny trickles of the currency flow, and I don’t run all that fast. 

Finally, I know it’s already nearing the end of June and that it has taken me a while to get this small writing project started. And I know there are tons of exciting blogs about clothes and cats out there, but I thought it’d be nice to have place to collect and organize my thoughts. And, let’s not lie, it’d be even nicer if there was someone out there to listen to my ramblings. So friends, welcome to this journey through a summer in Germany. 

So, was this Dierhagenisch monster actually a bird or a word?

And yes, I intend to end my first post with such a cheap way of building up suspense.