Muttersprache, die ich nie kannte

One's language holds so much culture.

I think that's part of the reason that I love studying languages. I get to see the little intricacies that are contained in the syntactical patterns, or in the words that just don't translate to my native English.

It's the way that tenses just don't exist in Biblical Hebrew, or, in Spanish, how pronouns just fall to the wayside. It's the way that everything has a marked place in Koine Greek, and how the dual scripts of Ladino each beautifully portray its prose.

But also, it's the way that I miss the language that I never knew. It's how my great-grandma's language was robbed from her by the wars of years past. It's how the German of my foreparents has never graced my lips, and the only way it might is through my attempt at a modern-German recreation. I wonder: what words did they make me forget when my great-grandma had it hidden, stuffed down so deep that it became lost within her bones? What words will I never know because this mother’s tongue was stifled?

So, another tongue became mine: the English that reared me. This is the English of my families, their jargon and timbre accented by the same of San Antone and the Hill Country. But, I still feel like I'm chasing phrases I’ve forgotten, words I’ve never known. I wonder what I miss, these pieces of myself that I know not how to see or speak. I grieve the knowledge that was faded when my great-grandma lost her tongue.

Ich trauere um dich, Zunge, die ich niemals kannte. Ich jage dir nach durch die Zungen anderer, doch ich frage mich, ob ich dich je finden werde, meine Liebe. Vielleicht eines Tages, wenn ich die Sprache der deutschen Gelehrten meistere, werde ich einen flüchtigen Blick auf dich erhaschen. Doch ich fürchte, jener Blick wird in fremden Worten geschrieben sein–Worten, die weder ein Deutscher noch ein Gelehrter je wirklich verstehen wird.