How languages changed my life:
I am going to go back a generation to explain how languages changed my life. Both my mother and father came to North East as refugees in 1938. My mother from Berlin with her parents. My father and two of his brothers and their families from Warsaw, setting up a paper making factory in Team Valley.
My mum was pretty fluent in English having been an avid reader of novels. However, German was the main language of our household, though my father begged my mum to speak English to him.
My Omi (‘grandma’ in German) refused to learn much English and consequently my sister and I grew up bilingual. Omi loved the radio and my sister would translate ‘Mrs Dales Diary’ into German for her. At 5 to 10 there was what we would now call the ‘G-d slot’ and being Jewish, my sister would tell Omi, “Must nicht hören. Ist mit Jesus” (“You mustn’t listen. It’s to do with Jesus!”).
We were lucky enough to go to Bad Gastein in Austria on holiday and a German professor and his wife took a shine to two English girls who spoke pretty fluent German and bought me my first book in German.
After my Omi passed away, we spoke less German at home, but my mum would frequently start a sentence in English and finish it in German! At school German wasn’t taught, so I went to night classes at Heaton Grammar in Newcastle and took ’O’ level. Many years later I ended up teaching French there, when it was known as Heaton Manor. My sister took her GCSE in German many years later.
At one time, post World War II, many of the German refugees were told not to speak German in public. I never encountered that.
I took ‘A’ level French and grew to love the language and the literature and studied it at Newcastle University. I had an amazing academic year in Paris, though the University only found me schools to go and do English classes in, but nowhere to live! Fortunately my father’s best friend, from Poland lived there and found me a place in a Jewish hostel. It was a time when you were fairly safe as a young woman to travel on the Metro and visit theatres and concerts. I saw everything from Molière to Rostand and some of the top American jazz artists.
Once I was married, it seemed obvious to go into teaching French and it was offered to all students not just the academic ones. We used a system called Tavor written for English people working for the United Nations in Paris! Thank goodness Longmans came along!
Sadly my Biblical Hebrew isn’t very good, through non attendance at after school classes. However it’s a fascinating language, even to look at.
I never learnt Polish just the odd naughty word!
Linking Hebrew, Polish and German is Yiddish, spoken in some of the ultra Orthodox families and spread by American comedians. It’s a hugely evocative language that has seeped into the English language. Recently at a SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education) meeting one of my colleagues used the word “schlepping”, meaning dragging a heavy load. I’ve heard people using the word “schmooze”, meaning to butter some one up – it sounds much better in Yiddish!
Deanna Van Der Velde
- Director of Newcastle Council of Faiths
- Chair of Newcastle Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) and member of Durham and Northumberland SACRE.
- Chair, local branch of the Council of Christians and Jews
- Outreach volunteer for the United Hebrew Congregation of Newcastle
- Vice President, St Oswald’s Hospice Council
- Board member, International Newcastle
