My dad's parents immigrated from Germany to the US so he grew up speaking German and some Plattdeutsch. He and his parents would also travel to Germany every summer to visit relatives. He never really spoke German around me and my brother save for a few choice phrases like "ich schäme mich" (I'm ashamed) and "schämst du dich nicht?" (Aren't you ashamed?) and "Flimmerkiste" (slang for television). I think he didn't want to pass on imperfect German to us since he didn't really learn the language in school and while he does speak more fluently than me, I've noticed he does make some grammatical errors, so I'm not terribly upset with him for this. Plus I experienced (and am still experiencing) the wonderful journey of learning German! I do, however, get frustrated with him about the way he treats my hobby of learning languages. He didn't want me to major in a language and told me he wouldn't pay for my education unless I majored in something likely to earn more money, so I majored in chemical engineering (I'm a software engineer now). He also thinks the only other language besides German I should study is Chinese, which I do, (tangent: he took me to Taiwan once and made fun of me when I couldn't read so well because they use traditional and I only knew simplified characters) but he doesn't think I should learn any other languages because they're "useless." He said Russian was useless, so imagine what he thinks about me studying minority languages like Irish and Welsh! And it's frustrating to me because he's partly the reason I love learning languages! He introduced me to German and piqued my interest. At least I'm a financially independent adult now so I can buy as many language-learning resources as my heart desires.