My Language Class and my Identity

My language class is very international in its student composition. During classes we also discuss German culture, and that inevitably turns into discussions on how it is different in our respective countries.

I love learning about the culture in other countries, but when it is my turn, sometimes I find myself questioning my knowledge! There was this one time when we were discussing children's tales. The teacher asked me to talk about a famous character from children's tales in my country that every Nepali child would know about. I thought, and thought some more but only characters from English fairy tales would pop into mind. It was sort of embarrassing not being able to come up with anything, so I made something up that I don't even remember now! My parents never read Nepali tales to me, and when I read, it was always English fairy tales. I wonder if it had anything to do with the glossy paper they were printed on and all the colorful pictures they carried.

But, we did read a lot of Nepali stories in our textbooks. The one where a thirsty crow drops pebbles into a pot with very little water in order to elevate the water level to an accessible height, for instance. (I just did the whole story in a sentence! haha) But these characters never had names! Or maybe there were characters with names but I was just too dumb to remember.

Then there are times when where I come from makes me the odd one out. We were talking about what color certain things are in different countries. It was going fine until I was asked what color the telephone booths are in Nepal. I told the teacher that telephone booths aren't very common in Nepal. Then she said, "Ok then, what color are the public telephones at the airport for instance?" I had no clue, but said white. Ultimately it was about learning the language through discussions rather than about facts, I reasoned. I have never looked for public telephones at the airport and so have no idea if they exist, and if they exist, what color they are!

Another time there was this exercise where the instructions told us to translate the fifty or so German words into our own languages. I was the only one who did not follow the instructions to the word. The teacher seemed rather surprised that I was using English instead of Nepali. The Japanese used Japanese, the Spaniards Spanish, the Italians Italian and so on. I even tried trying to translate some of the words into Nepali but drew a blank, especially when it comes to translating words that have to do with modern technology. "Staubsauger" means a vacuum cleaner, what is it in Nepali?

The language classes definitely put me on the spot multiple times, and made me question where I stand with how much I know about my country and language. More so, the language. In the US, it was always taken for granted that I spoke English. In my language classes here, however, German is the medium used. All my classmates have dictionaries translating from their languages to German. An Australian and I are the only ones with English-German dictionaries, and are the only ones who take notes in English!

Nepali texts hardly ever find a way into my daily reading, and I think this has begun to catch up to me in the form of a stagnant knowledge of the Nepali language. In fact, it might be eroding away, and perhaps taking with it a bit of my identity itself.

[edit: rereading it, the post does not appear very well thought out, as was indeed the case. but the topic is too boring for me to make me want to redo it! :)]