AMD 5

For my AMD, I briefly looked at the Denglisch article and I decided to watch famous movie scenes translated into German. I started with Gandolf vs. the Balrog from Lord of the Rings. First, I want to mention how funny all of these scenes sound in German. Not because the language itself is funny sounding, but because the people dubbing the voices aren't acting in the scene too, their voices just don't fit the scene. Anyway, needless to say, I almost dies laughing when Gandolf yells, "DU KANNST NICHT VORBEI!"

I thought the Denglisch article was very interesting. It's always interesting to see how languages deal with each other. I was always curious to know what other countries do when things from America, e.i. fast food places, pop culture etc..., makes it way into their country. Obviously, sometimes American businesses make up names for things, and I wondered if the German also made up new words for that or just used the English version. Well, I guess there's a special name for that phenomena called Denglisch and it certainly answers quite a few of my questions about the combination of culture from different countries.

Next, I watched the breakfast scene from Pulp Fiction. (Warning! This clip contains some intense bad language, in German) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KkxCyN2gJsI will admit, in this scene the German language works very well, because German just sounds angrier than English, even if it deprives the movie of the awesomeness of Samuel L. Jackson delivering the lines. Especially while watching this clip, I wished I could speak German better, because it's such a good scene from such a great movie and I can't really understand anything going on. I mean, I can catch a few of the words, but all the lines fly by so fast and it all goes over my head. Also, there is quite a bit of Denglisch in this clip, since there is a brief part where they all talk about different fast food places.

I watch quite a few other clips including the "Ich bin dein Vater" scene from Star Wars, Neo vs. Morpheus from the Matrix, and Gladiator. It was cool to see how many English movies have been translated into German as well as try to understand all of them!