Antauchen

I predicted that it would someday happen, as long as Nikolas continued to learn German. That someday was today. Sort of.

I remember a professor at UMaine once telling us that if we kept up with German, it wouldn't be long before we learned words that HE didn't know. How could that be? we wondered. He was a native speaker, for goodness sake. He went on to explain that we all have our own interests and if you pursue those in a foreign language, there are terms that not everyone is familiar with. He used pottery as an example. If you're involved in making pottery with a wheel and using techniques that don't involve everyday words, well, you're learning vocabulary that not everyone knows.

So Nikolas was swinging today and very proud to show me that he can now pump with his feet to make himself swing. Interestingly, Jenny and I have both, throughout the year, tried to explain this to Nikolas, but he either didn't get it or he secretly didn't want Mama or Papa to stop pushing him on the swing!

I asked him how he learned this. I often ask him this question when he talks about things he knows, and he always says, "In der Schule" (in school). But when he said that what he was doing involved "Antauchen," I really wanted to know where he's learned that word.

Because I didn't know it.

Now I knew "tauchen" and "untertauchen" mean 'to dive' and 'to dive under' or 'disappear,' but I'd never heard it with the "an" prefix. He said that his friend Cornelia (next to Nikolas, she dressed like a zebra, he dressed like a monkey for Sommerfest at Kindergarten) had used the word. He's understood it to mean "kick with your legs."

So after he went to bed, I looked it up. It wasn't in my dictionary. So I looked it up online, and it wasn't in my favorite online dictionary (LEO). Then I went to Beolingus, which I don't use that often, and there it was. It's an Austrian German word. Much like British and American English, there are many differences in vocabulary between German in Germany and German in Austria. The same goes for Switzerland.

Interestingly, "antauchen" doesn't mean to kick with your legs after all, but instead it's the Austrian term for "anstossen" or 'to push someone on a swing.' My only guess is that Cornelia was telling Nikolas that if he pumped with his feet, he wouldn't need someone to provide "antauchen."

So although it wasn't quite the scenario I predicted, Nikolas' German-learning did lead me to expand my own vocabulary, even if it is Austrian German. Will I tell him what "antauchen" really means? Yes and no. The next time we're swinging, I'll ask him, "Kann Papa dich antauchen?" His mind might puzzle over it for a bit, but he'll learn it if we keep it in context, the way he's learned so much this year.