Across the Fence: Sprachraum

Of late, I have encountered quite a few fun discussions in Facebook groups that dealt with the meaning of some English terms. Some simply said that specific terms didn’t even exist for a specific item or meaning. E.g. one American-English speaker said that pasty was not a term for baked goods, and that those were pastRy. They simply were not aware of the different variants of the English language that are spoken in – tadah! this is today’s English Germanism! – the English Sprachraum (pronounce approximately: ‘shpraah-roum, meaning language area).

Born in Europe, I was aware very early that there are different Sprachräume (pronounce approximately: ‘shpraah-roy-mah, plural) in the world. How come? A neighbor of ours had an au-pair from Canada at her home, and my mother sometimes invited her over for coffee and cake. They were talking French all the time; so, I knew that some Canadians belonged to the same Sprachraum as France. And my mother told me that there were other nations in the world that also used French as their official or first language.

Of course, it was a given to know that English was not just spoken in England but also in the U.S. I had family in Maine, after all, and they came and visited. What I wasn’t aware of, until I actually read American literature, was the difference in terminology and idioms. When I returned from my first trip to the U.S. not just with words and expressions that I had never been taught in school but with a Maine accent to boot, my then English teacher thought this was the last straw and graded me down. She probably thought I was showing off and didn’t realize that I was simply at an age when learning languages is still a piece of cake and adopting sounds is simply a matter of musical hearing. Later, at university, the ability to distinguish between American and British variants came in handy. I have to admit, though, that unless I really contemplate everything very hard today, my English will always be an acquired mix of both.

Then, there are the Scandinavian Sprachraum, the Spanish Sprachraum, and the Portuguese Sprachraum. The Slavic Sprachraum. The Finno-Ugric Sprachraum (Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish!), of which I first learned at university when I took a class in Hungarian. You get the picture – Europe has many languages that differ from each other. Of course, so do other continents.

It is also quite obvious how the Sprachräume have spread and probably will do as long as there is human migration, invasion and conquering, and colonialization. The dominant people bring their languages into an area, and due to the conditions of the new area the language shapes. There are objects or activities that might be unknown to the original Sprachraum. The dominant language might borrow loan words from the languages that have them already in place. In the end, different cultures shape a new vocabulary.

Can you imagine the disgust when you tell a British person that you had biscuit and gravy for breakfast? To them that sounds like you had a cookie with meat sauce. If a big British person tells you they are wearing a big mac when it’s raining, YOU might stare because you envision a large burger instead of a large rain coat that the British call macintosh or mac. Pronunciation, vocabulary, and idioms betray where a speaker comes from. And if they are speaking a foreign language, even if fluently, sometimes a one-on-one translation of an idiom of their native language might give you a hint. So, minds and ears open – Sprachräume are fun!