Just today I began reading "The German Genius", the industrial-sized history of German Kultur recently published by Peter Watson. At 856 pages it's the second largest book I own behind only Victor Hugo's burning but only half-engulfed Les Miserablés.

My interest in the book is motivated by a simple question: What is Germany? 

Since my initial exposure to German and after having visited Germany on more than one occasion, I am left with the impression of a deep fracture between the Germany of my American imagination and the embodied Germany of today. Indeed, my repeated visits to book stores and libraries in search of a history of Germany are always frustrated by the narrow but over-sold window which opens up (muddily, I might add) upon the years between 1933 and 1945. The awkward amalgam of American fetishism for the technologies of war-making ("Fighter Planes of World War II") as well as an undying obsession with the gratuitous violence enacted upon minorities in other countries ("Auschwitz: a New History") produces a cartoonish understanding of Germany. (In fact, one of the most popular graphic novels today is "Maus", a history of Nazi Germany told through a comic book mice.) 

I often try to imagine if historians reduced U.S. history to its corresponding exterminations and institutional racisms for the kind of popular public consumption that drives World War II literature: "Tools and Technologies of Slavery", and "Native Americans: The Extermination of Those People". This is no apologetic for what should rightly be a thoroughly condemning examination of the atrocities of the past. But I suspect, first, that such a narrow view of Germany misses important historical events (if you'll excuse a momentary lapse into historical fundamentalism), and second that a focus on World War II in Germany creates a moral landscape which valorizes warfare and justifies American aggression in its purported incomparability to the Holocaust.

Watson's claim is to deal directly with both the history of Nazism and German history without compressing one under the teleology of the other. It's a book I expect to take the better part of this year to complete. But having launched effortlessly into the first 100 pages of rewarding and well-composed text this evening, I expect the time to be worth it.

Update (13 June 2011): "The Bilingual Advantage" from the New York Times. Your brain wins when you are bilingual... but you have to use both languages regularly. High school Spanish isn't enough.

I love the commercials which mock fickle cell phone reception, mostly because it doesn't take faulty technology to show how fragile human communication is. Ever since I was a freshman in high school I've been fascinated by languages. By tragedy or providence I've had the opportunity to learn (with various degrees of success) ASL, Spanish, and German. I think learning foreign languages are crucial to maintaining an understanding of differences, while it seems globalization makes it easier than ever for US'ers stay in a language bubble. So check it – here's my own list of myths and realities about learning a second language.

Myth and Reality

1. Myth: I have to be fluent in a foreign language for it to matter. Reality: Even just a little familiarity with another language can help you appreciate the perspectives of others and to situate your own world view. Language is about connecting with people. If you show that you're willing to learn about others, you open the possibility for mutual exchange.
2. Myth: Everyone in the world speaks English, so I don't have to learn a second language. Reality: You can go all the way around the world and speak only English. But that path would probably be driven more your monolingualism than the objective truth that "everyone speaks English". Furthermore, it would greatly limit you ability to build cross-cultural relationships that last beyond ordering food or buying a bus ticket.
3. Myth: Anything I need to know is translated into English. Reality: Like #2, this logic is more circular than causal. Only 3% of works published in the United States are translations (learn more here), a mere fraction compared to many other countries. Second language ability helps you to appreciate the diversity and depth of work available in other languages, and might help decenter our American-centric views of knowledge.
4. Myth: People in the U.S. speak only English, while people in other countries often speak four or five languages. Reality: This might be true in some places. But there are many non-English languages spoken in the U.S. numbering over a million: Spanish, Chinese, German, French, Vietnamese, American Sign Language, Italian, and increasingly Arabic, Korean, and Russian. In Columbus, Somali is probably the second most spoken language.