The Grandson Who Doesn't Speak My Language

WernerK sees his grandson, who's growing up in Vancouver, twice a year, two weeks each visit, and has come to terms with a reality that still catches him fresh every time: the boy, now seven, speaks almost no German, understands it only in fragments, and their conversations now run almost entirely through the child's mother, Werner's daughter-in-law, who translates, mediates, explains.

Werner never decided this would happen. When his son emigrated to Canada twelve years ago, no one seriously considered how language thins out across a generation once daily life happens in another tongue, once a child's school, friends, and dreams unfold in English and German becomes just a sound Grandma and Grandpa make on the phone. He never admitted to himself how much it affected him until an afternoon two years ago, when his grandson showed him a picture and explained it in English, and Werner, for the first time in his life, had no idea what his own grandchild was telling him.

Since then he's started learning English himself, at seventy-five, with an app his daughter installed for him, fifteen minutes every morning, laborious, often frustrating, because his memory isn't what it was at thirty. He knows he'll never truly get to know his grandson in the boy's own language. But he wants to at least halve the distance, not leave it entirely to translation by others.

I can't sing my grandson German childhood songs anymore, because he doesn't understand them, Werner says. So I'm learning his language — not perfectly, not fast, but enough that one day I can tell him directly that I love him, without his mother standing there translating.

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