Language of My Heart

440 Words2 Pages
I've lived in Zimbabwe all my life, with both a German and Shona heritage. My father was born in Germany, my mother was born in Zimbabwe. They had to meet halfway of course, and so the language we grew up speaking was English. That being so, my mother tongue is English. I speak it, I write it, I think it. All my thoughts are in English, so that would be the language of my heart. As I grew up, my father would serenade me with stories of German cuisine, and German traditions in the little village he grew up in. I found myself fascinated with it all, especially since I have quite a vivid imagination. As a result of this, I ended up going for German lessons at the Deutsch Schule in Harare, and when I was at home, my father would encourage me by speaking to me in German only. I had to give it up because of financial issues, but I still remember some of it. Growing up in Zimbabwe made it much easier for me to harness my Shona roots. My mother and the extended family on her side would talk and talk for hours and so I grew up hearing the language from the moment I was born. Shona culture is all around me, you can't walk to the shopping centre without hearing someone selling their wares, or calling out to their friends jovially. As a result of all this exposure, I grew up fluent in Shona, both in writing and in speaking, up until today. The only other language I learnt a bit of was French. This was because French was one of our compulsory subjects in high school. I can still speak and write a bit, but not much. I would say my German and French are on the same level. I use all these languages now and then, German with my dad, or with my German friends and French with my friends when we are feeling a bit extravagant, we pretend to be bourgeois, using our poor French skills and heavy accents in good humour. Shona and English are my main languages of communication, both at

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