It didn't hurt that there were lots of
Yiddish-speaking merchants in the
neighborhoods through which I walked to and from school. Yiddish is quite
similar to German and certainly makes conversation easier.
Let's get this straight, Yiddish _is_ a German language.
To be more exact it's in most parts a preserved German
as spoken during the 14th centurie along the middle Rhine.
Note that I said it took 6 weeks to "catch
on" and not the seven or eight
years it typically takes here with the ESL/ESOL programs.
Same effekt over here - whe I went to school, we didn't
had seperate classes for Turkish children - and they
performed as average as Germans - just two hours a week
they had a seperate class. In other states (than Bavaria)
they introduced seperate classes for foreign workers
children - result: 18 year old pupil bearly able to
order a meal.
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa am 29./30. April 2000 in Muenchen
http://www.vintage.org/vcfe
http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe