[Cz-L] Czernowitz and languages

Bless you Hedwig, with your incredible memory. What would we do without
your lively mind? You are a real encyclopaedia!

As to language - My father spoke excellent German with a light
Czernowitz/Austrian accent, having studied and spent years in Vienna and
Switzerland. He understood a little Yiddish of course, but would not
speak it.
My mother spoke typical Czernowitz German, and with two of her three
sisters, as soon as they started talking they would switch to Yiddish.
With the others, she spoke German. At home, we always spoke German, in
Romania and in England.
  My parents never got the Romanian accent. My father spoke it
correctly, my mother managed quite well, but myself, born in Bucharest,
often
   made fun at their accent, especially my father's. And when we lived
in England, my mother wrote the most incredibly incorrect Romanian to her
friends in Bucharest, although she had spoken it better . And I just
laughed to tears. Her friends too, must have had their fun at reading
the letters.
I came to England when I was 14. I grasped English fairly quickly, but
until today my accent did not quite make it...not much of a British
one...probably one must start earlier.
Gabriele

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Received on 2014-01-15 08:05:40