"I'm...very confused. Linguistically. I am reading a book at the moment, in German. It's like falling back into Germany. I love it more than any book I've read in English in a long time, which is so sad. Which one is my language? It should be English, I think. I've lived here for long enough. And I teach English, so really..."

This is my father's dilemma, which leads me onto my own, one which I've never written about. Which language should I say is mine officially? English I speak fluently, English I write in and think in, possibly even dream in, if my crazy dreams of falling-out-hair and being force-fed leaks by my well-meaning mother even have a language.

German, on the other hand, is my first language. It's the language I said my first words in. It's the language my parents speak to me. It's the language of my grandmother, and my uncle and his family. It's the language of my favourite soap (Berlin Berlin). It's the language I spoke until my second year at primary school, a language which has an inexplicable link in my brain to nursery, not daring to sneeze, and the song the big ship sails on the ally ally o.

German, however, I don't speak very well. I understand everything when I'm spoken to. Every single word (or as many words as the average English person understands of the English language). But there's a big difference between understanding a language, and being fluent in it. This is something which many people don't know.

In addition to this, I'm not good at differentiating between the two languages. Ever since I can remember, sentences have been an odd mish-mash of German and English. Sometimes the words themselves are odd combinations of German beginnings and English endings. The older I got, the less I could see the difference between one language and the other. When my mother asks a question in German, I instinctively answer in English, something I've done for years and years, and a habit extremely difficult to stop even when surrounded by family who don't know a word of English.

Everything points in favour of English, really, something I'm not happy about. When my grandmother rings, I want to be able to talk to her for longer than three minutes without running out of things to ask in my rusty German. When my cousins say something about their Harry Potter lego castle, or when they tell me tales about six-year-old playground romances, I want to be able to say more than wirklich? and ach so...? Most of all, when people make remarks about me being German, I want to feel less of a fake when I nod and smile. I really feel like I belong in Germany; so why don't I make more of an effort?

So I am doing it the Elisabeth-way. Short of taking up my family's offer for them to put me up while I study over there, there's a lot I can do. I will start a German blog and devour huge numbers of German books. Starting after I finish The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini).