Kultur 6

The article about the closed doors was really interesting. I always think that's an awkward situation when you're supposed to meet someone, like a professor, but their door is closed and you don't know what to do so you don't interrupt them. It seems like it would be easier if they left the door cracked or something if they weren't busy so you wouldn't feel bad about possibly interrupting them. I don't think I would do well in that situation where you don't know how you should go about knocking. The recycling article was interesting too, I didn't know they were that into proper recycling. It seems weird when you contrast that article with the one where they just write about sex scandals and stuff and have sex shops everywhere; on the one hand they seem very clean and environmentally conscious but then very liberal about other things.

AMD 6

For AMD 6 I decided to do some research on some of the many pieces of classical music that have come out of Germany. I like to play classical music on the piano sometimes and I've started to notice that I can read more and more titles of songs that are in German. Probably the most famous composers that came out of Germany were Mozart and Beethoven. For example, Mozart's chamber ensemble called "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" would translate to "A little Night Music." It was interesting to think about how many influential composers were from Germany and some of the best pieces of music ever written (in my opinion) originated there. I also learned that a lot of nice opera is a big part of the German music culture, like Mozart's "Requiem." I found out that back in the 15th century a guy name Oswald von Wolkenstein travelled across Europe and learned a lot of different music techniques and styles and brought them back to Germany, which led Germany to produce so many great composers and classical musicians.

Kultur 5

I wonder if Germans not saying "excuse me" is limited to Germany, I kind of think that has started to become a general trend everywhere jetzt; some Leute have less common courtesy than they used to. Whenever I open the Tür for someone they always look genuinely surprised even though to me it's just being polite and something everyone should do, just like saying "excuse me" when you're walking through people. The article about the sex shops was kind of funny, I don't how easy it would be to get used to seeing stores like that commonplace, I don't think any of those stores exist anywhere near my hometown and now I would feel awkward seeing one. The article about the Klofrau was interessant, I didn't know anything like that existed. The flirten techniques they described were really funny and make the Menschen out to be kind of stalker-ish. It's weird to think that smiling at someone would be considered too aggressive.

AMD 5

I think that the "Denglish" phenomenon results from us becoming more and more globalized and integrating with other nations. I think it's interesting that even more words are being borrowed from both languages considering how the languages are so similar as it is. There are so many cognates between English and German (Musik, Auto, Freund, etc) already that it's interesting to me to see that they're becoming even more mixed. It kind of seems like this mixing of languages and vocabulary is somewhat inevitable given the global connection now compared to years ago. I understand where people are coming from when they said some people were upset about using Microsoft's coined term instead of the proper German term; but I don't know how you would really prevent this language exchange. Maybe the only way to keep the original authentic written language is to have a totally separate alphabet or something so it would be impossible for words to be borrowed. We were actually just talking about this topic in my Spanish class because were translating some slang from different spanish-speaking countries and my professor was saying how spanish, especially the spanish that's spoken in Mexico, is becoming more and more inundated with English words and cognates. Spanglish is the exact same idea as Denglish. Again I don't see a great way to prevent this from happening, especially since I see English and Spanish as very similar languages. I don't know if Denglish and Spanglish are entirely bad things; it's interesting to think about how maybe in the future the languages will be borrowed from even more and people will be able to communicate on a basic level with people across the world, even if they don't necessarily speak that second language.

Kultur 4

The article about the bike paths made me think about how some people say that when you're in a car you hate pedestrians, when you're walking you hate cars, but everyone hates people on bikes. I think nice bike paths like the ones they talked about would be really beneficial, especially if a lot of people ride their bikes places. I know at home the bikers ride on the side of the road and never follow the normal road rules and I'm always afraid I'm going to accidentally hit someone. You really have to watch out for the people that bike on this campus too! The article about stopping for pedestrians definitely reminded me of Ann Arbor. People here just walk into the road and assume that all of the cars will stop for them, and people never seem to wait for the crosswalk signal. I guess when I came here I was naive and always waited until the signal changed, but now I think I've started walking like the people who have lived here for a long time. It's funny that people over there and very strict about waiting for the crosswalk signal. I've never really been to a big city where I had to take public transportation, but I hear a lot of stories. The article about the bus tickets makes it sound that much more confusing, and it seems like it would be hard for a tourist that hasn't traveled much to find their way.

AMD 4

I read Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language." I thought it was really funny because it was so relatable to language learners. What he said about the rule exceptions is so true. I remember in Spanish when we would learn all the irregular verbs and grammar exceptions it seemed like that list was longer than the verbs that were conjugated regularly. I'm sure this is equally frustrating when learning German or any language where you have to conjugate verbs. It will be interesting to learn more of the cases since that whole system is new to me and different from English. Like Twain I'm still confused by the total separation of the verbs and subjects in some cases. It seems like by the time you put in all the rest of the predicate and finally reach the verb at the end, you forget who the original subject was. It was really interesting to read about the gender of the different things, I always wonder how they decided the gender of everything. In Spanish the gender system seems to have a pretty logical order most of the time, but in German when you add in the Neuter it gets really confusing. The example he gave about the turnip and the lady was really interesting. The fact that the turnip is referred to as "her" while the lady is referred to as "it" is really strange. It was also interesting to read about how all of the different body parts all have different genders assigned to them. I wonder how they decided what gender all of the nouns would have. The paragraph about Schlag and Zug was really funny, it's weird to think that one word can mean so many different things. When I was reading I was sort of comparing what he was saying about German to English and I guess I found many of the same things to be true, like how one word can mean multiple things. The part about the compound words really caught my attention because I think this is one of the most distinct parts of German. I don't really understand why they don't put spaces but those huge words are really funny! Overall it was a really funny paper to read and I would recommend it to any language learner; it's so true.

Kultur 3

These articles were interesting. The one about how Germans think it's no big deal to drink beer throughout the day makes me think about our own drinking laws. I wonder if there is a higher occurrence of alcohol-related incidences in the United States than in European countries? I don't drink but I sometimes think that part of the reason why people act irresponsibly with alcohol is because we treat it like a "forbidden fruit;" something we can't touch until we're 21. I wonder if that aspect of their culture and how they view drinking has had positive effects as far as accidents go. It was interesting to compare the article about organic foods to our own culture. To me organic foods aren't really common at all, and honestly I do associate a certain type of person with organic foods, like the article mentioned. I didn't know that they were very health-conscious like that. The article about pessimism was news to me as well; I'm not sure if I would enjoy being in that kind of environment for very long. I tend to always lean towards the optimistic side of things and I pretty much laugh at everything, so I would just want to try to make everyone happier :) The article about the jokes was really funny. Makes me want to go to Germany and see it for myself!

AMD 3

Heute abend at dinner I tried to only speak auf Deutsch mit meine Freundin who has taken fünf Jahres of Deutsch. We started out with stuff I had learned, like we were telling each other our names und where we were from. Ich told her meine Lieblingsfarbe was blau und that mein Lieblingswort was überglucklich. Sie said her Lieblingswort was wunderbar. Then I told her that we were learning different foods so I told her some of the ones I could remember off the top of my head, like Apfel, Schwienelfleisch, Banane, Wurst, Fische, Bier, und Obst. Then she started listing off a bunch of other foods that me and my other friends were eating at dinner. I learned Huhn which is chicken, Pasta which is still pasta, and Französisch frites which is french fries.

Kultur2

I thought those articles were really funny and a unique insight into German culture. The staring article was really funny, especially when thinking about the contrast with American culture where we are taught that it's not polite to stare at others and people get really creeped out by it. The article about the honesty was interesting to read as well because we can all relate to how we tend to "beat around the bush," as they said it. It's kind of refreshing to see that that's the common way to do things over there since sometimes here it's like people can say one thing and mean something totally different. I feel like it would be really hard to adjust to that style though because I would be so worried about offending people. The article on statistics was interesting to think about; I never really thought about statistics as being a way to kind of represent where you're from, and it was interesting to read how they put a lot of emphasis on data like that. As for the complaining article, it was funny to read because I think every culture can relate to that and you can always find something wrong with the situation you're in. Reading these articles makes me want to travel outside of the United States and see another culture firsthand!

AMD 2

I read some of the current news from Deutschland under the "World" section of the New York Times.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/germany/index.html

A lot of the articles were about the economic status in Deutschland which reminded me how big of a player Germany is in the international economy. It talked about the Euro crisis and about how in the last year Germany's economy has grown by 3% while others have shrunk, and how some countries are turning to Germany's assets to not go further into debt. One thing that I read that I found really interesting was where they talked about how the prosperity of Germany could be causing anger in other European countries, like Spain, that aren't doing as well because it's resembling the past trend of German dominance. On the other hand, when speaking in terms of Germany, they talk about their economic success as a sort of post-Cold War identity that doesn't dwell on the past. I think it's interesting to think about how the current status of Germany will be viewed by other people in terms of their past and how those two will be related in the eyes of other countries. Overall many of the articles seemed to focus on how the Euro has actually helped Germany and that Germany is one of the least affected countries in the Euro crisis and now has one of the leading economies in Europe.

AMD 1

I decided to listen to some different types of German music because when I was learning Spanish it helped my listening and comprehension skills a lot to listen to Spanish music outside of class and now those are still some of my favorite songs. When I first thought of German songs I thought back to a video we watched in a history class in high school and remembered it was sung in German so I found it again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQAKRw6mToA

Now I recognize a few of the phrases and words; I could pick out "du bist schön" and "die Wand" and "rot." As far as I can tell they are singing about Moscow and how it is a beautiful city. I mostly recommend this video though for the awesome dancing!

Then I looked up some artists that were popular over in Germany and one I really liked was Juli:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOx_tZ0qmbE

That's a lyric video to her song "Warum." I find it really helpful to see the lyrics while I'm listening to the song so I can read along with what I'm hearing and I'm able to recognize more words that I know. Obviously I recognize the title as being "Why" and I recognized some other words like "die Augen", "Worte", and "kommt." I had to look up the translated lyrics and she's talking about how "why" doesn't matter and what matters is that she is with him. Another song I liked of hers was "Zerrissen." Overall I think listening to German music is a great way to practice listening comprehension and is a fun way to learn about culture and what is popular in the language you're studying.

Kultur 1

This article made me think about how a lot of times we probably overlook how much of German culture has actually blended with American culture. Some of the words that we use on a very regular basis come straight from the German settlers and it was interesting to read in the article the history of how those people ended up in the United States. I was also wondering why, sort of how it mentioned in the article, German culture has not been better preserved and strongly represented as a prevalent ethnic group. It was cool to read about how the majority of people in the United States claim to be of German descent but I wonder why the specific ethnicity is not more obvious in everyday life even though millions of people identify themselves with German heritage. When I was reading about the different ways that German culture was represented in society it reminded of where I'm from; I live right next to Holland, MI where the vast majority of people are Dutch and many different aspects of the Dutch culture can be found all over Holland, and even during certain times of the year the town can look exactly like the Netherlands just because so many people from the Netherlands settled in Holland. It's interesting to see that culture so strongly represented and I wonder why this doesn't carry over as strongly for the German culture. Or maybe it is and I just don't know about it. Maybe it has to do with the anti-semitist stigma associated with Germans as the article mentioned, and that is why many of them just tried to quickly assimilate to American culture to get away from the stereotype. I think it's also important though to note how the German culture has shaped American culture in a lot of ways from our vocabulary to festivals that we hold every year.

Test

Mein Lieblingswort ist dunkelgrau.