AMD II

For my second AMD post, I decided to look at something that truly defines a culture through the use of language: television commercials. I went on YouTube and searched "german commercials." At first I had to sort through a few VW ads that I've seen in America and a bunch of faked commercials with men in metallic tights drinking beer from a boot. I narrowed my search to "german commercials mcdonalds" so I could compare the typical American McDonalds commercial with a German one. What I found is that there are quite a few constants between the two. First of all, the tagline in Germany is "Ich leibe es" which translates to "I love it". Close enough to the American "I'm lovin' it". Also, there seems to be a common theme of little kids in the commercials, which we often see here. Although I wasn't able to understand everything in the commercials, the word "cheeseburger" was oddly recognizeable. I hadn't realized that the word was shared between languages, but after doing some research it started to make sense. I knew that someone from Hamburg was by definition a Hamburger, but I never thought to look up the origin of a hamburger/cheeseburger. It comes from "hamburg steak", which was a style of cooking beef that migrated to America through trade with Germany in the 18th century. The name and the style both changed into the modern hamburger.
Another similarity between the commercials were the use of celebrities. Here, there are a lot of sports stars in McDonalds commercials. There, Heidi Klum appeared in a few, along with a few that I am not familiar with but were obviously treated like celebrities in the commercial.
One inconsistency was the menu items. The one thing that I had expected to remain the same was the biggest difference that I found. It seemed in a few that what was being advertised was the American roots of McDonalds food. One commercial was titled "The Stars of America" and they advertised chicken wings. This surprised me in that I never thought of American food as being something that could be marketed. Plus, chicken wings are something I've never seen on a McDonalds menu, and I wonder what else German McDonalds decide to carry that is different from here.