Nein Tense of the Law

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm Bailiff Maeve Higgins.
I'm filling in for Jesse Thorne. This week, nine-tenths of the law, Colleen brings the case against her husband, Kevin.

They send their children to a German language immersion school. Kevin has begun taking German language classes and wants to practice speaking it with the kids at home.

But Colleen thinks that his terrible pronunciation will have adverse effects on the children's learning. Who's right? Who's wrong? Only one man can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

Alstas kint kin vahr, waras die seit der Folgen and Fragen, warm bienich, ich und warm nichtu,

warrum biencht, her und warm nicht,

van began deseit und wo end derchaum,

ist tas Leben undter der San nie bloss, ein drom

ist vasik sehe und Ur und Rich, Nicht Bloss der Schein, Einer Welt, wonder der Welt,

Gibd estatza

Klich, das Berse, und Lut,

Die Werklich de Bersen Sind

Vikane Sein, Das Ich, Der Ichbin, Perwor Ich Werd, Nicht War, und Das Ein Mal Ick, Der Ichbin, Nicht Mer der icht bin seinwerde.

Guest bailiff, May Viggins, please swear them in. Colleen and Kevin, please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God, or whatever? I do. I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that his knowledge of German pronunciation comes from Alan Rickman's character in Die Hard?

I do. I do.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed. Actually, Maeve, it is pronounced Diehard.

And obviously, that is not my only reference for the German language. I have one other reference for the German language, and I was quoting it as I entered the courtroom.

For an immediate summary judgment in one of yours favors, Colleen or Kevin, can you name that piece of culture? Let's see. Colleen, let's start with you.

I'm going to guess a poem by Goethe. A poem by Goethe.
Okay.

I shall write that into my guess book here with the proper

New York Times-y font. What is that heavy-duty typeface that the Germans use called Colleen? What is that called? I know this, but I can't think of it.
Do you need my help? It's wingding.

Thank you so much, Maeve. All right, now, Kevin, what is your guess? I think I'm going to go with David Hasselhoff's lyrics from a concert atop the Berlin Wall.

You know, I don't know for sure that David Hasselhoff did not sing a rendition of this poem.

I'm pronouncing poem incorrectly on purpose because I am in Maine here at the studios of WERU in Orland, Maine, with guest producer Joel Mann. Hello, guest producer.
Hey, Judge. Yep.

And because my father-in-law lives in Maine and he pronounces poem this way, I'm going to pronounce it this way. And we're going to be pronouncing a a lot of things in a lot of funny ways.

But I will say it is possible, I suppose, that David Hasiloff did sing a version of this poem at some point in Germany, but it's unlikely. And I'm going to say all guesses are wrong.

The answer is that it is a poem that is recited in a film called Wings of Desire, directed by Wim Wenders,

1987, I believe.

The film and that poem were written by Peter Hankey. And it was one of my very favorite movies when I worked at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Have you ever seen it, Colleen or Kevin? I have not. Can't say that I have.

It's a very pretentious movie

in which Bruno Gons plays an angel who decides to become human. And it's in beautiful silvery black and white.
And that poem

is recited over and over again. And I'm sure my pronunciation was terrible.

But if some listener wants to send in a translation without looking it up on the internet, I'll give them a free copy of Vacation Land. First person who gets close to that.

But meanwhile, go out and see that movie. Bruno Gans plays an angel who falls in love with a woman, decides to become human, and he's tempted along on his path towards rejecting his immortality.

by the American actor Peter Falk, playing the American actor Peter Falk, who's in Germany to film a movie.

And it's revealed in the context of this film that the American actor Peter Falk also used to be an angel who rejected his immortality to become the American actor Peter Falk, which is not

a bad deal. And at one point in the movie,

Peter Falk is saying to the angel, because he's the only one who can see Bruno Gons and can sense that he's around.

And at one point in the movie, he turns to him and says, You know, everything here is you can taste and touch and feel things. This is a cigarette, and this is coffee.

And he says, to smoke and have coffee. And if you do it together, it's fantastic.

Which single line I think is single-handedly responsible for eight years of my smoking, a pack a day. I think I started smoking.
I already was doing coffee. I started smoking.

I thought that was the coolest thing. And now I'm on the other side of that, obviously.
Please, children, only drink coffee. Do not smoke cigarettes.

Before we go on, so we're going to hear this case between Colleen and Kevin, but I've already alluded to some of the special features of this week's particular podcast, one of which is that I'm here in Maine recording from the studios of WERU with Joel Mann.

And also we have a guest bailiff today, the wonderful Maeve Higgins. Hello, Maeve.
Hi, I'm so glad to be here. Well, Maeve, I'm so glad that you are here because you are really, really funny.

You are really talented. You are a friend.
You're lovely.

You are obviously a person of direct Irish descent. You're an Irish citizen, are you not? Yeah, I'm an Irish citizen.
Yeah, they haven't renounced me yet.

I share a name with the President of Ireland, but we're not related.

And you not only share a name with the current president of Ireland. Yeah.
And you share a podcast with the former president of Ireland. Yeah, I never thought of that, but that's true.

I make a podcast with Mary Robinson, who was the first woman president of Ireland. And she,

when I was eight, she was my president. And now,

all these years later,

we do a podcast together.

How the mighty have fallen. No, she wants to do it.
and all of ireland says finally finally these two got together it was a will they won't they make a podcast situation for decades

we did have a meet cute actually because i got lost in london where i was supposed to be auditioning for the job and

oh i got lost in such a stupid way that i found the cafe that we were meeting in but it was like a hotel, but I couldn't find the door. So I was gaping in the window, knocking.

And oh, she's very regal. I mean, she's a Republican, but like she seems like a queen because she's like an old stateslady.
First of all, when you say Republican, you mean to say that she is

like she believes in

the Irish Republic. She is not a monarch.
She is a duly elected president. That's what you mean.
Yes. The topic of your podcast is climate change, right? Yeah, we talk about climate justice.

So we interview all these different women around the world who are working to create a fair response to climate change. And it is called Mothers of Invention.

Yeah, it's called Mothers of Invention, and it's available for free online. And also, Maeve, you have a book that has just come out called Maeve in America.

And it's really funny and interesting and probing essays about you being in different parts of the world and America and being an outsider here.

Yeah, thanks, John. I finished that book and I gave it to you to read and you were so kind about it.
You said that you didn't read it, but you were so nice of it. No, I'm just joking.

You were so good.

I did read it and I really liked it. And that's why I gave you a quote for it that I hope is on the book.
But if it's not, it's fine. Yeah, it's on the book.
Oh, good. Yeah.

I'm a big Maeve Higgins fan. Obviously, we're talking about German language.
This is a very international podcast. Even Joel Mann.

How you doing, Joel? Pretty good, Judge. Good.
Even when you're not spinning Joe Bird and the field hippies here at WERU,

you go and lay down some base on Tuesday nights over there in Castine, Maine, at the Pentagoet Inn. Pentagoet Inn.
Every Tuesday night through when? End of September.

Until the end of September, when it's just as the snow starts to fall. The Pentagoet Inn, of course, is named for Fort Pentagoet.
That's right.

Which was the fort defending Castine when it was the capital of French North America from 1670 to 74. So again, welcome to the Eurozone.
Castine is still French territory. So here we go.

Colleen and Kevin. You guys are having a dispute

about

when Kevin can practice his German

on your two children guinea pigs. Is that correct, Colleen? Yes.
Yes. What's going on? Why are you guys talking German all the time?

Well, we're not speaking German all the time. Our children are learning German in school.
Kevin and I do not speak German. Oh.

So you do not speak German? I do not. Where Where do you live? In Portland, Oregon.
In Portland, Oregon. And that is not a German-speaking state in the United States.
It's not.

Yet you are raising both of your children in a German language school. Do I have that correct? That is correct.
That's correct. And why are you doing that, Colleen? Well,

my mom spoke German growing up. My dad did not, so she did not pass it along to me.

I have tried to learn a second language many times, and I feel like it's a gift to our kids to give them the opportunity to be bilingual from a very early age when it's easier to learn a second language.

Well, that's absolutely true, but I'm sure your children are furious at you. One of them is.
One of them in particular, yes. The older one? The younger one.

Oh, the younger one is mad. He's mad.
How old are your kids? Our daughter is seven, and she loves speaking German. Our son is four, and he hates it.
And I presume they're named Hansel and Gretel.

Exactly.

Because of your whole weird thing. Yes.

Our plan from the beginning. For our purposes, because I can't remember any more names that I've already got in my head between Colleen, Kevin, Joel, and Maeve.

I'm going to just say Hansel and Gretel. Perfect.
Okay. And Hansel, the young Hansel,

is very distraught about being forced. to go to a, is this an immersion school? Like all they spreched is German there?

They do. About 70% of their day is in German.
They learn English as well and grammar and all of that in English.

But their teachers are native German speakers and they speak German to them all day.

So he went in without a word of German and he, like that first day when you picked him up from school, was he like, you don't understand? Like, that's another planet. Or what was his take on it?

Yeah, a year later, he just basically says, I don't understand German. And he gets mad anytime someone speaks it around him.
But our daughter picked it up and she loves it.

Colleen, who initiated this idea of sending them to a German-speaking school, would you say? I would say it was me, but partly because I drive past the German school on my way to work.

So in addition to it being a gift for them to learn German, it was also a conveniently located school on my way to work to drop them off.

It was either that or they would go to a Taco Bell Prep.

Exactly. Just anything that I'm passing.

That actually explains a lot, Colleen, because,

I mean, I don't often say this on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm glad to say, I'm grateful to say, it was taken as a very tolerant podcast, but what you're doing is weird.

I mean, it's weird, what you're doing. Sure.
I'm not going to say weird in a pejorative sense, but in an unusual, it's a little rando. You're not living in Germany.

The fact that there is a German-speaking academy in Portland, Oregon, I mean, that feels a little rando as well. Yeah, how many kids are in the school? Is it just that you're two and then another two?

There's about 200 kids total. It's a K through fifth grade.

Actually, pre-K. Preschool through fifth grade.

And yeah, well, Portland has a lot of different language schools. Oregon is okay with that.
Not every place has that opportunity. Portland, Oregon is a very cosmopolitan place.

Yeah, and there's some big multinational companies here. So there are some people who are here because of work.

But it's a majority of the school, they're American and they have no connection to German or Germany.

And of course, you know, K stands for kindergarten, which means, you know, whatever that means.

Childgarten.

And so every American child goes to kindergarten. Yeah.
But there are some children, say, of German-speaking business executives and workers there. Yeah, yeah.

So for some children, English is their second language. But it's mostly Portlander American kids whose parents are like, we got to make these kids interesting somehow.

We already bought them the cool t-shirts. Let's shoot a dart at a board to find out what other language they're going to talk.

Weren't you ever tempted to, you know, learn Spanish or Mandarin or, you know, a sort of a more popular language? Yeah, I mean, I've traveled to Germany quite a bit. I have good friends in Germany.

Because your grandmother is from there, is that right? So both of my mom's parents were from the border of France and Germany. Yeah.

In fact, my grandfather was also from there, and so there's a bit of a cultural connection on both sides. Oh.

Maybe, until recently, you were a member of the European Union.

No, you still are. Excuse me.
I apologize. The Republic of Ireland is still, and will always be part of Europe.
Yes. So you can go to Germany any ding-dong day you want.

I think that's a German phrase, ding-dong day.

Yeah, it's the best. I mean, if you get to be a German citizen, you get to be a European citizen.
Yeah.

Have you been to Germany?

No, I haven't actually. No, close, but oh, wait, I have.
I've been to Berlin. Yeah.

Berlin is amazing. Ich binein Berlin.

Don't confuse me further.

Yeah,

it's a fantastic country. It's just to think of a four-year-old in Portland, you know, thinking that far ahead.

I don't know. Right.
Yeah.

They're dead, like Ansel and Gretel are definitely going to become members of the European Parliament, right?

So that's the plan. Let's take a quick recess.
We'll be back in just a moment on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman. I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.
Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast, always brought to you by you, the members of maximumfun.org.

Thanks to everybody who's gone to maximumfun.org slash join. And you can join them by going to maximumfun.org slash join.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by Aura Frames. Now, John, as we sit here and discuss this right now,

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Court is back in session. Let's get back into the courtroom to hear more about Colleen and Kevin's dispute.

So when I came into this case, Colleen, I understood that you had cultural and familial background in Germany, that you've traveled to Germany quite a bit, right? You like going there. I do.

I didn't know that you did not speak German. Are you learning to speak German along with your kids? Because I know Kevin is.
I'm not. You're not.
I'm not.

And you're trying to keep Kevin from learning German.

I'm not trying to keep him from learning German. I'm trying to

protect the kids from his German.

You're trying to protect the kids from his German. Yes, it's just not good.

Kevin, you are learning German when Colleen is clearly blowing it off, having just tossed these kids into this school because it's on the way to work.

In fact, she signed us both up for this class and then she dropped out.

Colleen, you signed Kevin and yourself up for a German language class and you dropped out. I did.
Oh my goodness. How come? Too busy?

Yeah, I commute about an hour each way to work and he works from home. So he has a lot more time on his hands than I do.
What What do you do for a living?

I work in a college art museum.

Okay. Are you a curator? Are you a docent? I am a registrar.
You're a registrar. All right.

And what do you do for a living, Kevin? I do computer engineering and chip design kind of things. Right.

So you're working from home about 30 minutes a day and the rest of the time you're filling up your time with hobbies.

Did you decide to take German because you had enrolled the kids in Hansel Hansel and Gretel into the school? Yes, they offer adult classes at the school. Oh, so it's a whole family thing.

Yeah. Yep.

So, Colleen, you should, even though you're blowing this off, shouldn't you be glad that Kevin is continuing the family project? I'm thrilled that he's learning it.

But I feel like he should practice with other adults and other people who are at his learning level.

What's wrong with Kevin's German? It's mostly pronunciation. Do you have an example? Like, is there a word that he mangles so badly that it's hurtful to you and the children?

Well, it's the sound, like the

CH sound, which happens a lot in German. Yeah, it does.
It's right there in

I, yeah.

Maeve, do you have any German? A little bit. I did it in school.
I mean, really? I think I might have more than Colleen.

You know, it's not easy, but I think, you know, for pronunciation of any language that isn't your first language, you have to get it wrong and make a fool of yourself to get it right.

But then I guess that's, you know, not helpful for the children.

Is that your point, Colleen? Yeah, it's, well, so they're, all of their teachers are native German speakers. So they speak beautifully with perfect grammar.

And I feel like to their ears, if they're hearing it correctly and they're imitating it, then they're getting the best benefit from their teachers.

And when they hear Kevin's pronunciation, I feel like it kind of might drag them down a little.

So, Kevin, why don't you say something in German? And Maeve, since you know more German than Colleen, you can offer your expert opinion as to how bad he sounds. Okay.

I mean, understanding, Maeve, that you're not fluent, but you have less German than any of us.

Yeah. That's right.
But you are. Okay.
Brag about it. Why don't you?

Go ahead, Kevin. Okay.

Ich machte, mit mein tachter, Deutsche sprachen.

Oh.

I see. I see what the

K. He's doing a hard.
I'm sorry to speak about you like you're not here, Kevin. That's fine.
But what he's doing is

it's too hard that you're going k k

instead of.

So you say ich macha, mit mein dotter. I'm exaggerating, but spocken instead of icht mucha.

Can you try it with a softer K?

Okay.

No, no, softer K. Don't just say okay.

All right, one more time. Begin.
Ichmakte mit mein tachter. Smell! Schmell!

I'm sorry. I was watching Raiders of Lost Ark this week.
Go on. That was good from what I heard.
The little bit that I heard was good. Ichmachte mit mein tocter Deutschesprachen.

Yeah, the first Ich was good, no? Yeah, you have to work on your soft K's, your soft kchs, right?

But immediately, Kevin, Maeve could hear what Colleen's problem was.

So, how often do you try to practice at home with Hansel and Gretel?

You know, maybe, you know, five or ten percent of the time, I think, just sort of small phrases phrases and things like that.

And do they respond to you in German or do they roll their eyes and go? So Gretel responds and Hansel rolls his eyes and screams, I hate German.

That may be another issue.

It may be that Hansel is not on board. Hansel is a four-year-old, so that's kind of par for the course for four-year-olds.
Yeah, but Gretel seems to be into it.

and seems to have accepted the reality that she's going to be going to a German language school and wants to learn German. So she's the one whose future Colleen is trying to protect here.

Colleen, does Gretel take you aside and go, dad cannot say words right? Have you noticed her noticing his mispronunciation?

She corrects all of us all of the time, no matter what the situation, but she does correct his pronunciation, but she does not mind speaking German with him.

In fact, I believe we asked her this morning whether she wanted me to be able to speak German and she said yes. She wanted to continue.

So that is evidence that you are entering. Correct.
That Gretel is cool with it. Yes.
But according to Colleen, Gretel likes to correct people. So that might be why she wants him to continue.

That may be why she's down for this entire project of speaking German. This is the rare case the seven-year-old gets to be the instructor.
Yeah.

What's wrong with that, Colleen? That sounds kind of cool.

I do like her noticing the difference between what she's hearing at school and what she's hearing from Kevin, because that to me means that she knows what it's supposed to sound like, but she's still a novice.

I mean, she's just going into second grade. She has two years of German down already, kindergarten and first grade.
Do you have any evidence that Kevin's practice with Gretel is actually

inhibiting her in any way or mucking up her German?

No, I can't say that. But you did send in evidence, both of you.

And most of the evidence is photographic, and it will be available, obviously, on the JudgeJohn Hodgman page at maximumfun.org and also at our Instagram page, which is at judgejohnhodgman.

And Colleen, your evidence

is just photos of visits that you have taken to Germany, this lovely family, in various lovely settings. Here you are by a river.
I'm going to guess it's the Rhine because that's the one I know.

Where is that, actually?

That is probably the lake in my grandparents' hometown in France.

Oh, okay. Not Germany at all.
My mistake. Nope.

Strange evidence. Okay.

What are you trying to point out here? Well,

actually, it was Germany when my grandparents were growing up. Oh, okay.
Yeah, there's a history of some shifting of borders there. So, yeah.

That's why my grandparents were German-speaking French people.

Right, okay. And are your grandparents alive either? No, they're not.
Okay. But your mom grew up in this area or going to this area? My mom grew up in New York State.

Yeah, so she was first generation, born here, and grew up speaking German.

Right. Okay, gotcha.
What is spoken in this region now, just out of curiosity? It's French mostly,

and something they call Hauspelschit Deutsch, which is kind of a mix of German and French.

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah.
But there is still some remnant of German language in this region. There is, yeah.
And most people in the region are bilingual. Mm-hmm.

And you sent also a warning sign that is trilingual in French, English, and German from some kind of ride. Is that right?

Yeah, well, so that was kind of my evidence too that poor translations are

rampant.

The English translation on this warning decal on some kind of, is this some sort of zoo tram or something? It's like a little carnival in that border region.

Right. It says keep arms n yen legs inside the coach.
Remain seated in the bach of the coach until the ride stops. That is the poor English translation of the original German.

I thought you were sending this because it features one of my very favorite non-lingual warning logos that I've ever seen.

It's obviously a big red circle with a no through it, and then it shows the front of the car with people having waving their hands and legs out of it, and it just looks like those people are having a wonderful time.

No fun. Yeah.
Yeah. Just like, don't have fun on this ride.

And then you have a picture of Kevin reading a german language book and wearing a bucket hat and he looks good there and he's at a german holiday market and he's smiling what am i taking from these images here uh he's just a goofy weird dad well you know i traditionally rule in favor of weird dads i know

then kevin submitted some evidence and um

i was reading this over and I i was looking at all these photos that that Colleen had sent in, which

with all respect, Colleen, really amount to nothing. They really don't prove a thing.
They're just fun family photos. Audio kind of.

You didn't have to send anything in. You're just trying to get on my Instagram page.
I get it. It's fine.
We're going to put them up. Don't worry about it.
You're fine.

You did better than Kevin because when I got down to submitted by Kevin, I get a link saying Kevin's evidence PowerPoint. Oh my gosh.

That's what he's doing at home all these days long.

That's right. Working from home.
Kevin, what are you doing to me? I'm sorry. I'm going to see a PowerPoint of your app.
You know, we can't put PowerPoint up on an Instagram. This truly is.

I need a picture of you wearing a bucket hat and making a funny face. This is like the true weird dad thing to do.
Well, I might as well get to work on a PowerPoint.

I need a slideshow to show my pictures, which is all he did. It just shows more pictures.
Pretty much, yeah.

We will post this full PowerPoint, which offers a lot of wonderful photos and details of this family,

including pictures of Gretel wearing a... a karate outfit and Ansel wearing a robot outfit made out of boxes and tinfoil.
Very, very adorable. But I'm not going to go through all of it.

Instead, I'm going to focus on slide six, I believe,

regarding the issue of Oma.

Oma is Colleen's mother, correct? Correct. And you are presenting this evidence that she speaks German and that you could practice with her, but what's the issue there? What's the problem there?

So I think the first is the, you know, you always want to talk to your mother-in-law as much as possible.

And then I think, as Colleen mentioned,

Oma comes from, or her family comes from Hospelschitz, and so she speaks the sort of dialect of Hospelschit Deutsch, which is perhaps not, you know, the exact correct pronunciation either, I guess.

Right.

And

so you make the point that obviously German has a number of dialects like most languages. It is a fluid and changing, unstable mode of communication, spoken language.

But you also make a point in your PowerPoint here.

Is the Hospelscheit Deutsch, Deutsch, I can't even say it, the sort of creole between French and German, is this the subconscious source of Colleen's concern about accents?

Oh,

that's some crux finding there, Kevin. Colleen.

Are you hung up on Kevin's bad pronunciation because your mom grew up speaking something other than high German?

Not at all. In fact, it's funny because I have a very good friend in Germany and I was curious what my mom sounded like to her, like what my mom's accent sounded like to her.

And she said that my mom actually, she would say, spoke German with a bit of a French accent.

But again, she I would consider her a native German speaker. It was her first language before she learned English kind of in school and things.

So no, I I l I love that my mom has an accent in the regional dialect.

And I have no concerns about high German necessarily, but just the

non-fluidity of Kevin's speech. And he doesn't just struggle with pronunciation.
He doesn't quite have a grasp of the grammar yet either. So definitely.
I'm still learning.

He's a novice. And it's good, and I'm glad he's learning.
But he speaks German like a first grader. Gretel speaks German like a second grader.
Exactly. Exactly.

What other options do you have to practice German, Kevin, aside from OMA?

So I do have a couple of coworkers that are in our German office.

What? Your German office? I thought you worked in your house. I do, but I work as part of a large company and they have offices in lots of places.
And some folks on our team work in Berlin.

Like in just in their homes in Berlin?

There's a small office they have in Berlin.

Do you go over there?

No, no. It's basically there for them to work.
It's not the sort of main campus for the company. Oh, so it's not a situation where you might over

for a moment here. I thought German was actually going to be a practical application in your lives.

No, not at all.

All right. My mistake.

But if you have a Skype meeting with them or something, you're like, Gooden Gooden Morgan. Yeah, so sometimes I can like if I dial in early, I'll hear two of them speaking German a little bit.

But but again, you know, for technical discussions, you know, English is pretty much the the language everyone speaks in the standardized.

And then some of the folks there aren't actually native German themselves. They're Australian or Russian or Polish.

But it's sad to think you've got such a craving for German that you'll dial in early to a conference call and quietly listen.

Yeah, sometimes. Yeah.

I think, what about more German parents in your school or something like that?

So I take this evening class and there are other folks that are there as well, but it's only, you know, it's maybe once a week and I end up showing up maybe 50% of the time.

Well, why, look, either you want to do this or you don't.

Why don't you show up 100% of the time?

Sometimes I'm traveling for work or, you know, like we're on vacation. You just told me you don't travel for work.
What are the lies upon lies that you're giving me?

I don't commute for work, but I periodically travel for work. 50% of the time? Not 50% of the time, but sometimes we're on vacation or

sometimes, again, there could be, you know, scheduling conflicts or something like that. You understand why I'm asking you this?

Because I'm questioning your dedication to your learning of the German tongue. I see.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

If you're out there going, I'm doing this 100% of the time,

and I'm studying and I'm doing Duolingo and all this other stuff, then you would have basis to say, I want to throw some of my bad German at Gretel. This is part of my life now.

If you're not sufficiently dedicated to it, then I'm going to start to conclude you're throwing German at Gretel in the classic weird dad style.

Because you know it bugs her and you know it bothers your wife.

Is that what's what's happening here, Kevin? I feel like I'm studying it pretty seriously. I mean, I also have like Monly on my phone, which is a language learning tool.

And then we've tried to sort of switch the, like on Netflix, trying to switch it to at least German subtitles,

if not German language, which doesn't go down well with everyone else in the family. Yeah.
Namely, Hansel.

Exactly.

Colleen, it obviously does bug you.

I want you to answer honestly, is Kevin doing this in order to bug you or is this just collateral damage bugging?

I think it's just collateral damage.

You know,

he has lots of ways to go out of his way to bug me. I don't think he's trying to antagonize me.
I think he's trying to just practice or engage the kids in a way.

But like I said, it kind of just hurts my ears and then I just feel.

I don't know. So it's not damage to your children's accents that is the sole mover in your coming to this court.
You also, you hate the way he sounds when he talks German. Yeah.

Have you said that to him? I don't want to be mean to him.

But I have told him that I do not like his pronunciation of German.

And has he made any effort to improve his pronunciation?

No.

Well, I'd probably learn. Kevin, you have to be trying, right? I mean, when your wife says to you, you say this wrong and it hurts my ears, don't you want to say it right and be loved?

Yes, absolutely.

So why, is it, Colleen, do you think it's just the case that this guy can't get it? I just, I don't think he hears it.

And again, he's arguing that my mom doesn't speak perfect German, but I feel like I grew up surrounded by German. I know what it should sound like, even if I don't speak it myself.

I took some German in college. I've taken classes here and there.
I've spent some time in Germany. I feel like I know what it should sound like.

I don't know if he quite hears what it should sound like.

Right. And again, how long has this been going on for Kevin? Year and a half.

If he spoke in a better accent, this would be resolved for you. I feel like once he masters it to a certain level, he can speak to the kids all he wants.
In German.

I mean, he can speak to them anytime he wants in English.

But if he and the kids have this secret language, doesn't that worry you too?

I mean, I can understand a bit of German. I'm not too worried that they're going to get to this crazy level of fluency that I won't be able to understand understand what's going on.

I think you should get worried very quickly

because I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision. I'm going to go into my nacht den ken über simmer,

which is Google Translate for pondering room. And after I finish my ponders, I'll be back in a moment to share my verdict.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

So, Kevin, how do you feel about your case? What do you think your chances are?

I hope they're pretty good. I hope that the judge understands my desire to learn and share German with my children.

Did you feel, was there anything that you kind of felt, oh, I got caught out there, I wasn't ready?

No, I mean, I think the point about the imperfect pronunciation is one point that is true and something I'm working on.

And Colleen, how are you feeling about your chances in this case? Yeah, I have no idea.

I don't like telling Kevin to not practice with the kids, but like I said, I feel like they just have such an opportunity to

speak it really well, learning from native speakers. So we'll see.

And are you willing to accept the verdict, whatever happens? Absolutely.

And how do you think that this has affected your relationship, this litigious sort of hour that you've just spent?

I think we're fine.

Okay, we'll see what Judge John Hodgman has to say about all this when we return in just a moment.

Hello. Hello, I'm calling on behalf of the Beef and Dairy Network podcast.
No, no, I'm sorry. No sales calls.
Goodbye.

It's a multi-award-winning podcast featuring guests such as Ted Danson, Nick Offerman, Josie Long.

I don't know what a Josie Long is, and anyway, I'm about to take my mother into town to see Phantom of the Opera at last. You are wasting my time, and even worse, my mother's time.

She only has so much time left. She's 98 years old.
She's only expected to live for another 20 or 30 years. Mother, get your shoes on.
Yes, the orthopedic ones.

I don't want to have to carry you home again, do I? Right, well, if you were looking for a podcast. Mother, you're not wearing that, are you? It's very revealing, Mother.

This is musical theatre, not a Parisian bordello. Simply go to maximum fun.org.
I'm reaching for my Samsung Galaxy 4 as we speak. Mother! Mother, not that hat!

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom. He is coming now from his pondering room to present his verdict.
Oh, now I forgot the name of my pondering room. What was it, Joel?

Do you remember what it was? Versasas Bibliothèque. Thank you.

The Bibliothèque is, well, they're in Blue Hill, Maine.

Right? That's a bookstore?

Yes, that's correct.

Where do you get your books when you go to the bookstore? Up here?

Blue Hill. Blue Hill Books? Yeah.
Yeah, it's a good bookstore. My Nach Danken Überzimer, my pondering room, has proved fruitful.

Much pondering occurred, and now I come back with justice.

Before all of you guys who are typing your emails send them,

please know that, of course, I remember there is a precedent in this case, going all the way back to verdict number 78, the mother tongue. Very similar case.

Husband and wife wanted to raise their children bilingually, specifically English and Vietnamese. The mother, in this case, whose name is E, the letter Y, pronounced E,

is a native Vietnamese speaker. And the father really, really wanted to...
talk Vietnamese all the time,

but he didn't do a good job of it. He's a bad speaker, and he wanted to have her instruct him and the kids all the time and do full immersion, which she found to be ponderous and tiresome.

And I said he should do his studying on his own and not rope in other members of his family to do the work for him by getting his wife to be full-time.

Vietnamese language instructor as well as mom, wife, life partner, and individual human being with agency.

So

what is different about this case? First of all, we're talking about German. And despite all of the dumb dad jokes I made in the deliberations,

German gets a bad rap as a hard-sounding language. It is actually a beautiful language.
And if you were to go and watch Wings of Desire and hear Bruno Gans

recite that poem, it's gorgeous in the ears. It might be hard to say in the mouth, but when it gets to the ears, it sounds beautiful.

And I think, you know, obviously it's not beautiful when Kevin speaks it, because he pronounces all his K's like K, as in Kevin, because he's in love with himself.

I'm going to say that that's the reason about Freud, famous German.

And in this case, the difference also is that Kevin is not asking something of his life partner, Colleen, specifically, other than tolerance.

as he learns, nor is he asking anything of his children other than that they listen to him, something that weird dads ask vainly of their children every day of their lives.

The burden in this case is on Colleen to prove harm, that Kevin's

terrible, terrible pronunciation

is hurting something

other than his children's and his wife's ears, but specifically his children's ability to learn German good.

And unfortunately, Colleen did not provide evidence that suggested that his practicing

with Gretel was actually harming her German. If anything, it seemed to be playing naturally into Gretel's desire to correct everyone around her and be right all the time.

In addition, Kevin did not display sufficient weird dadness for me to suspect the ulterior motive that that he was only doing this in order to be wacky or eccentric or to bother a family member or to get on a podcast under false circumstances.

There's no question that he is not practicing hard enough. You can hear it in the way he talks.

There is no question that he is not devoted to learning the German language enough because in a world in which his kids spend hours every day speaking German, he's cutting class half the time.

For him, a big move is to change the settings on Netflix.

Colleen, he's doing better than you. You completely blew it off.
You're trying to learn German by osmosis by driving past a German language school twice a day.

No, I think Kevin is sincere in his desire to speak German. And I see no harm in him speaking German to Gretel.
You may notice that I'm leaving someone out of this equation. Hansel.

Sorry. Hansel wants no part of this, and nor do I think it wise, never mind fair,

that, Kevin, you should impose German upon Hansel when he's already going through the supreme punishment of having to go to a German language school for no reason other than mom had an idea.

I think Hansel should speak and hear whatever language he wants when he is off the clock.

But if Gretel's okay with it, the more practice Kevin gets, the better, because he needs it. Kevin,

clearly I'm finding in your favor, but there are certain caveats.

One of which is you got to get better, dude. You got to get better.
We know that it's possible. You got better just in one drill with Maeve Higgins, an Irish person, taught you more German.

in one exchange than clearly you're getting out of talking to your daughter and going to class half the time. You got to dig in.

You're going to dig in. You're going to go to class.
I want you to up your attendance at class to 75% of the time. Okay.
I know you got to travel. I know you got vacations.

But if you want me to rule in your favor, you've got to commit to this. I want you to up your Duolingo or whatever program you like to use because that gives you practice every day.

Not just practice in listening. like watching German movies on Netflix, but also, you know, talking.
You talk back into the thing and it tells you if you're doing a bad job or whatever.

And I want you to watch Wings of Desire.

I want you to watch it. And I want you to listen, particularly to this poem, which is called Lied vom Kinsein, Song of Childhood by Pierre Henke.

It's throughout the movie. It comes up all the time.

And I want you to learn to recite that poem exactly as it sounds in the movie.

And I am ordering you to work on this.

And then when Colleen is satisfied with your pronunciation imitation, I want you to record it and I want you to send it in so that we can play it on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

And you have one month from today to do it.

Okay. That is your punishment for my finding in your favor.

So you understand, you're going to up a 10 to 75% in German. You're going to talk German with Gretel and take her instruction and deepen that conversational bond.

Because as you two start talking your weirdo twin language and leave Colleen and Hansel out of it, I don't know what Colleen's going to do, but Hansel's going to be like, I need to get in on this because it's going to make him so mad that you have this relationship with Gretel.

I mean, I'm destroying your family dynamic.

And Colleen, you can do whatever you want. I'm finding in Kevin's favor, but as a consolation to you, I'm ordering him to do all these chores.
I'm not ordering you to do any chores,

but you really should. If you started this thing, you know you should really be learning German.
You should, you need to get back into it.

This is your idea.

It's your idea.

Not making any orders, but I know that you will follow the order of your heart.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules, that is all. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Kevin, you won. Ah, I know.

Can you say I won in German?

Ah, I don't know the... I don't know how to say I won in German.
How are you feeling? I'm feeling happy and I guess a little bit justified in my desire to speak German with Gretel. Won der Ba.

Colleen, how are you feeling?

I feel good that he was ordered to practice more. I think it's, again, it wasn't kind of a forever thing.
I'm like, I just wanted him to get better before he subjects our kids to his pronunciation.

Well,

would you say it's a win-win or a whim-wenders?

Vin-Win.

Colleen, Kevin, thank you so much for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Another case is in the books. Before we dispense some swift justice, we want to thank Rob Waters for naming this week's episode Nine Tenths of the Law.

If you would like to name a future episode, follow Judge John Hodgman on Facebook. We regularly put out a call for submissions.

Hashtag your JudgeJohnHodgman tweets, hashtag JJ Ho, and check out the maximum fun subreddit to discuss this episode.

You can find evidence from this week's episode on our Instagram, which can be found at instagram.com slash judgejohnhodgman.

This week's episode was recorded by the wonderful Allison at ADS Recording in Portland, Oregon, by Ivan Kuriev at Argo Studios in New York City, and by Joel Mann at WERU Radio in Orland, Maine.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmour. Now let's get to Swift Justice where we answer your small disputes with a quick judgment.

Sarah says, I played the word kilt during a round of scategories where the letter rolled was K and the categories was things that are round. My friend says I was wrong and stretching it to lunacy.

My argument is that a kilt goes round your waist and the waistband and hem are round. Judge Hodgman, what do you say?

Oh,

guessed Bailiff May Higgins that only you could see the look on Joel Mann's face here in Maine. Oh, disgust.
How would you describe the look that you just gave?

It is the combination of eye-rolling and disgust. Are you a scategories player, Joel? No.
No. Not at all.
But you clearly have an opinion.

It was a quizzical look, Judge. Quizzical.
Quizzical. Good word, by the way.
Good categories word, I would guess. I don't know.
I play Scrabble myself.

No, he is quizzical about this. Maeve, I have a question for you.

Yeah, Maeve was going to ask if you were a kilt wearer.

I've worn kilts, and I think they're round. When you step out of a kilt, they make a circle on the ground.

Interesting. Do you speak the Irish language? Yeah.

Is there a meaningful difference between the Irish language and what's called Scottish Gaelic?

I don't think there's a big difference, but I think it's there's such a difference in the accent that it can be hard for us to understand each other.

Right. You know, I think they just pronounce words almost totally differently because their accent is so different.
If you were to say then, in the Irish language,

Sarah, you are absolutely wrong, how would that sound? I'd probably say Sarah, Nila, and Kluagoth.

Yeah, that. That's exactly what I would say too.

Sorry to disagree with you, Maeve.

I mean, I see the argument that when you drop your kilt and, you know, you look down at the ground and it makes a circle.

But I just do not think on a gut level that it qualifies as round. What shape is it? Well, you look at it from the side.
It's kind of like a triangle cut off at the top.

Kind of trapezoidal. You're the judge.
I mean, you know, you might as well be saying, well, the category was a straight line.

So I wrote down hula hoop. Because if you look at it from the side, it just looks like a line.

I do not think that roundness is so intrinsic to the kilt that it really qualifies, I'm sorry to say.

But an argument could be had, was had, and I won it. So there we go.
Let's get out of here.

Okay. Thank you, Judge Don Hodgman.
That's about it for this week's episode. Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash jjho or email Hodgman at maximumfund.org.
No case too small.

We will see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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