AMD 6

For AMD 6 I did some research on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (mostly just checking out his poems). Goethe was so influential the German Goethe-Institut is named after him. This website has some of his work (they also have translated parts): http://german.about.com/library/blgoethe2.htm
Goethe's poetry is usually longer than most poems I see, and they all have an underlying meaning within each one. A problem with translating poetry is sometimes translating a poem word for word doesn't achieve what the writer was always hinting at, and sometimes them meaning or theme of a poem can be lost by translation, but I don't really see this being too much of a problem with Goethe's poems. Some of his poems are quite dark, like Wandrers Nachtlied II and Totentanz. Overall, they are very interesting and it's cool to try and find out what each poem means. It is definitely helpful to have some of the poems translated as well, because some of the words are very difficult! Goethe seemed like a very intellectual and interesting person.

AMD 6

Für AMD 6, I decided to try to learn a whole deutsch song and try to sing along. This was sehr challenging!! Ich habe always liked a deutsch rap song called Monsta and think that it is so cool to hear rap in a different language. To go about this, I first looked up the lyrics.

http://lyricstranslate.com/en/Culcha-Candela-Culcha-Candela-lyrics.html

As I was looking at the lyrics, I noticed that I actually know quite a few of the words! I went through each passage and tried saying the sentences until it was pretty easy. Then when i finished each one, I played that part of the song and tried to sing along. It was very difficult because of how fast they said the words. This took me a very long time but in the end I actually did learn the whole song and am so happy when it pops up on my ipod and I can sing along to it! I think I will try this again soon and learn another german song.

Willkommen!!

Welcome to our class blog!

We will be using this blog throughout the semester for two kinds of assignments:

1. Once per chapter, the homework plan will direct you to post a response to the culture readings for the chapter on the blog.

2. Roughly every other week, the homework plan will direct you to post here for your Abenteuer mit Deutsch (AMD) assignment. First you do a fun activity that involves German, then you post about it. You should spend an hour total on this (maybe 45-55 minutes doing something, 5-15 minutes posting about it). See Was ist ein AMD, AMD Ideen and Beispiele for ideas. This should get you excited about the kinds of things you can do!

Whenever you post something, please include your name and the name of the assignment (e.g. AMD2, Kultur5) as labels. See "Blog: How To" for more details!