What is it with me and my enduring passion for all things Teutophone?
I mean the enduring passion that causes me to
- fiercely defend the aesthetics of the German language;
- squeal in delight to hear German spoken in my vicinity;
- feel my heart race in love and wonder when I hold a German-language novel in my hand;
- leap across the room to a flier or newspaper in German as two lovers run to each other across the beach;
- squander my hard-earned money on cakes, chocolate, books, and other goods that I may not even like, all because they are from Germany or German-speaking populations;
- and bemoan the fact that my ability to actually speak and write German has fallen through a crack somewhere like a lost love letter.
Books that, were they in English, I would probably despise, I see with new and admiring eyes when I see them printed in German. German somehow makes everything — even overtly Marxist literature like that of Bertolt Brecht — more wonderful and reasonable and palatable. Jokes become funnier, swear words graver. Oh, those endless compound words! Those throaty K’s! That shapely, endangered esszet! That inexplicable guttural “R” sound that I can never seem to master!
Clearly there is something wrong with me.
Yet when I am actually faced with Real German 24/7, I am probably the most unfaithful lover in linguaphile history. I abandon my dear German and flirt shamelessly with other languages, particularly Brazilian Portuguese. When I was in Germany in 2010, I was constantly caught cavorting with Portuguese; and then when I was in Brazil in 2012, I was caught once again with German. It seems I just simply can’t settle for what’s right in front of me.
Yes, I’m unfaithful, but nonetheless, to me German is like a childhood friend that I have always secretly been in love with. We met early in life and got along at once. We grew up together. We flirted, even kissed once or twice, but whenever the question came of turning our flirtation into something serious, we would say, “No, no, that’s silly — we’re just friends! Really we couldn’t stand each other, if it would come down to that.”
And now that we have spent so much time apart — now that I am forgetting the shapely and enigmatic esszet, the quirky-sounding words that end in “-heit” and “-ung” — the old flame is rising into a saudade (oh! Portuguese!) so fierce that I may just have to go back to Germany to extinguish it. Or just break down and marry a German.
