Triple language connection

On the way to a wonderful sushi dinner, we took the Kyoto subway. I was sitting next to a Japanese woman reading, of all things, a German textbook. It had various German sentences, and their Japanese translation, and she was deep in studying. But I couldn’t resist the opportunity to use all three of the languages I know, so I leaned over and said, “Sumimasen—Sprechen Sie deutsch?” (Excuse me [Japanese], do you speak German? [German])

She smiled, and said she was learning it. We struggled through a few sentences in German — each with our respective accents :-). She asked if I was German, and I explained that I was American, but that I also spoke German. I mentioned that I knew only a little bit of Japanesisch [German for Japanese], and she didn’t understand that word, so I translated it to nihongo.

We got off at the next stop, so I just had time to add, “Hier muss ich gehen! Aufwiedersehen! And nice to meet you!”

What a trip! I found it was a little hard to separate the German and Japanese in my head. It was like I was accessing the general bin called “foreign languages,” and various phrases would come up when I wanted to say something. Then I had to check them consciously to see if they were German or Japanese. I almost created some mixed sentences like, “Watashi wa nur ein bisschen Japanesisch hanasemasu.” Ooof. I can see why people who are bilingual often speak mixed sentences among other people who are bilingual in the same languages.