Our two children, one of whom turned forty earlier this month (!), were both born in West Germany. I met and married their mother while I was stationed in Germany as a slick-sleeved member of the US Air Force and I remained in-country as we used to say for a number of years after leaving my uniform days behind me.
We spoke, for the most part German, in the house when the kids were small. Except for me. I spoke German badly (practically a separate language I should point out) but I don't think the two of them actually noticed the difference between the way their dad spoke and how Oma and Opa or their mom spoke. I'm grateful for their indulgence and forgiveness on that count.
When you are astride two language horses (metaphorically) like that, you create your own space. After we relocated, somewhat abruptly, from Germany to Norwich, Connecticut, our children's German became more passive as the actual language was used less and less every day, especially outside the house.
Our daughter often said 'dunkel night time' to describe the evening's darkness while our son slalomed between the two languages (being a full-time third-grade student at the time accelerated his progress). As they grew up, they outgrew their German but both still retain a better than the average grasp of the language to this day.
I was thinking about them and the vagaries and similarities of idiomatic paths of different languages such as the English expression 'watch and wait' which in German is 'abwarten und tee trinken' (wait and have some tea) while digesting a fascinating (to me) article on how our brains cope with speaking more than one language.
I think, in my case, just speaking one is too often a bridge too far.
bill kenny
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