Apart from life itself (and the fact she loves me so much still, despite me pushing her buttons for so many of my younger years) it is probably the greatest gift my mum gave me: her language.
Those that have read more of what I write will have seen me talk of my roots before. I was born and raised in Germany to a German father and an American mother, and moved to the UK in my late teens. Born into this setup, I was blessed with not learning one, but two languages from day one. Part of it was a necessity: my mother didn't speak much German when I arrived, although she is fully fluent now.
However, there was another reason I was pushed towards languages growing up: pure pragmatism. I had a teacher in Germany that warned us that unless we wanted to spend our whole life holidaying on Sylt, an island on the north coast of Germany, we would have to learn to speak a language that wasn’t German. Obviously, learning languages isn’t just to make holidays go more smoothly, but what they said holds true: most people outside of Germany do not speak German and, if we wanted to communicate, we would have to adapt.
It is common for most Germans to learn at least two foreign languages while at school. We learned English in school from when we were about eight or nine, followed by French when I was about 12.
Knowing English was a big part of me moving to the UK and staying here. Growing up bilingual, I took comfort in the knowledge that the culture shock a move to a new country would bring, would at least not be paired with a language barrier, and I was right. That is something I see as a gift, and I’m forever grateful for.
Another gift is what it has done to my brain. Aside from the often hailed cognitive benefits, learning a language has made me open to - and slightly better at - picking up more of them. I liked French in school, and was reasonably good at it. I have dabbled in other languages since, always finding it relatively easy, which has helped me make connections in so many places.
