About Colonies and Milk Cows – Germans in Uruguay ****************************************************************************************** * About Colonies and Milk Cows – Germans in Uruguay ****************************************************************************************** Julia Enge, in summer 2011 married Neumann, arrived to the Charles University in the frame programme in the winter semester 2010/11 from the German University of Erfurt. By the occa 25th anniversary of the Erasmus programme, we have asked her to share with us her experien Czech as well as her voluntary year in Uruguay, in one of the German ‘colonies,  as the lo of Germans are called. Julia prepared also a Europe Meets School project about this experi history of the German emmigration to Southern America. Her project in the Třebízského Prim Kralupy nad Vltavou was titled ‘About Colonies and Milk Cows – Germans in Uruguay. ’ Julia, you study languages at the University of Erfurt. One of your chosen study fields is lead you also to Charles University in Prague as Erasmus exchange student in the winter se Why have you decided to study Czech, a language that many people claim to be one of the mo languages in the world? Do you agree with them? Are there any difficulties you still have I have always loved studying languages and after learning the ‚bigger‘ Western European la (English, Spanish, French), I wanted to start with something different and maybe more chal university. As linguists strive to understand language in its complexity, it is important know language structures that are quite different from our mother tongue. Czech was particularly interesting for me as my family lives close to the border to the Cz and we had been there a few times during my childhood. I also have a close friend who spea mother is from Czech Republic, and she always used to tell me what a wonderful language it a try and liked it. As for Czech being very difficult to learn, I have to say that I agree only to some degree certainly more difficult for me than Spanish or English, and I still mix up the case-endin tongue twisted when I’m trying to pronounce some of the Czech ‘funny’ words which don’t ha But still, Czech has quite a lot of connections to German, for example in the way words or built, and surprisingly some proverbs and idioms can be translated word by word from Germa have started studying Arabic a year ago and there you have a system that is so entirely di European languages that it is far more difficult to get used to. Living close to Chemnitz, you come from a region neighbouring to the Czech Republic. Are t classes offered in the schools? Have you studied the language before joining the universit your study colleagues? As far as I know, there are very few schools in Saxony (and in Germany in general) where C learnt, but I can’t offer any numbers. There weren’t any classes at my school, so I starte only when I began my university studies. For most of the people in our course (we were abo like this; there was only one guy who had some previous knowledge of Czech, as he had been Czech Republic for one year. You are currently enrolled in the last year of Bachelor, so you will soon have to decide w be about. Are you going to study languages then as well? What kind of work would you like have finished the university? Do you think the knowledge of Czech will be useful for you t My MA will for sure deal with languages – at the moment I’m checking out different possibi option would be to do a MA in German as a Second Language in order to become a teacher, ei immigrants to Germany or in another country. Another field I’m interested in is the creati teaching material. I believe that for both these options any foreign language I have studi useful and so I hope that I will have the opportunity to make use of my Czech then. After joining the Charles University in Prague, you decided to participate in Europe Meets of the Erasmus Club of Faculty of Arts. The topic you presented was the German settlements America, particularly Uruguay. The topic was selected since you spent a year before coming a volunteer in this particular region, working in one of the German settlements there. Cou something about this experience? It was really a wonderful time for me. I had chosen to go to South America after studying high school, because I loved this beautiful language and also because I wanted to get to k the ‘European standards’. The organisation I applied to work with offered me a place in Ur I did hardly know anything about this small country, I thought ‘Great, a chance to get to entirely new’ and went there. For 12 months I lived and worked in a children’s home which was founded by the German sett Uruguayan village. I did a lot of house work, cooking, cleaning and things like this, and be something like an older sister for the kids – I helped them with their homework, played did all kinds of crazy things together. I really enjoyed this experience and I learnt so m recommend it! How and when were the German settlements in South America created and how do they keep the How is the life there today? The people who founded the German settlements (called ‘colonies’) belonged to the (Protest church and originally lived in the regions around Gdansk which now belong to Poland. Because of their German origin, these people had to flee from their home region at the end II and first came to Germany. As it was very difficult for them to start a new life in a d crowded post-war Germany, members from the US-American Mennonite church decided to help th more far away. Uruguay and Paraguay were two of the very few countries which would take in this difficult time in history, so some of the uprooted German Mennonites came there by sh their US-American fellow-believers. They built farms in areas where there was nothing befo a long time kept to themselves and didn’t mix up with the local people. This has been changing recently – today the colonies are not as isolated as they were befo the people there speak Spanish as well as German and especially the young people often cou Uruguayans. But still, the colonies preserve their German heritage to some degree – church often held in German (with Spanish translation available), they have their own primary sch children are taught partly in German and the families speak German at home most of the tim How different is the German language used in Uruguay (and Southern America) compared to th spoken in Europe? When you come from Germany and talk to the people in this region you really have a lot to First of all, people are constantly mixing up Spanish and German. Especially for modern th didn’t exist when they went away from Germany and therefore the names for them don’t exist language, they simply take the Spanish terms and use them in their German sentences. You c like: “Gib mir bitte mein celular!” (= ‘Please give me my celular.’, where celular is the mobile phone – in Germany we would say Handy.). Apart from this, you can notice that their German is somehow old-fashioned, for example th say “Propaganda” for advertising, which is not used in this sense in current standard Germ it reminds everybody of Nazi times. Moreover, their German is somehow ‘wearing out’ and they make quite a lot of grammatical a mistakes. Some of them can be really cute – for example, I heard a boy telling his mother car: “Du kannst da drüben durchdrehen.” (‘You can go crazy over there.’) when what he real kannst da drüben umdrehen.” (‘You can turn around over there.’). All this was really interesting for me as a language freak, and luckily the people there l about themselves and their funny language as well. The children in your host class (the host school of Julia’s project was Třebízského Primar Kralupy nad Vltavou) certainly enjoyed to learn so much about such a distant country. Have teaching them? How was it to cooperate with an interpreter (Julia’s project was translated Club tutor Kristýna Omastová)? Yes, I enjoyed it very much; it really was an interesting experience. The children were re and I think they had fun participating in the project – I was amazed at the creativity man in decorating the cows (see picture). I had been wondering whether this would be somehow t them, but they were really into it and it was fun working with them. The cooperation with Kristýna was also great – she was really good at translating and also kids, so I was glad to have her with me. Although I speak some Czech, it would have been r me to give the whole presentation in Czech, so I think that with the translation the whole more smoothly and enjoyable for everyone. Is a Czech school and children different from the German one(s)? Well, I can’t really answer this question very well after visiting a Czech school for only Of course there are some differences in the whole school system, so for example Primary Sc Germany takes only the first four years and then the children switch either to the ‘Gymnas ‘Mittelschule’, according to their grades. As for the children, at first I had the impression that they were a bit shy because they d questions when they had the possibility after my presentation, but then I was really surpr motivation for designing the cows for the poster; I don’t know whether this would have bee German kids. Your region, Erzgebirge, is a rather traditional area and your parents have very tradition the region (Julia’s mother is creating traditional Saxon Christmas decoration and Julia’s Protestant Priest). What is the best to live in such environment? Are there any disadvanta Well, as for me personally my faith in God is very important, I am glad that it always pla in our family, too. And the congregation my father is working for is a very active and nic that I especially like is that there is good cooperation between the different Protestant region. In our village there is not only the common Protestant Church my father works for, other local Protestant groups but they are not quarrelling with each other about who is ri but doing a lot of activities and projects together, especially the young people. That’s a know my husband, who belonged to another Protestant group. So there were really a lot of g along with growing up “inside” the church. On the other hand, there have of course also been some disadvantages. Due to his job, my f most of the holidays (there are always a lot of church services on Christmas, Easter and s Christmas, which is very important for people in the Erzgebirge, has always been a very bu family and we never had the typical calm family holiday most people have. So it was a real for us when my father broke his shoulder while visiting me in Prague shortly before Christ spend the whole holidays at home! Would you like to stay in your home region also after you have finished the university? Or people from your home region prefer to move rather to bigger cities? Most of the young people indeed move away as there are not so many jobs and especially not in our region. A lot of them go to Western Germany where the salaries are higher than in o As for myself, I don’t know exactly where I am going to live in the future. For now, I wou some more of the world. I’m planning to go abroad again soon and I also could imagine leav altogether someday. But I really don’t know yet. Thank you for the interview.