AMD 4

Für diese AMD, ich werde sagen von Deutsch Poesie. Auf mein Radio show, ich manchmal lese Deutsch Poesie von Rainer Maria Rilke, und andere Gedichte, aber vielleicht nicht Deutsche Gedichte. Wann ich lese Rainer Maria Rilke auf mein Radio Show, ich versuche zu spielen Deutsch Musik zusammen mit das Poem. Ich finde das immer interessant, denn ich muss gehen um die Funkstation. Nicht so viel Deutsch Musik ist, und was kleine 

Rainer Maria Rilke

Ein Beispiel ist mein Freestailo #11 Show ich mache am Oktober 16tn dieses Jahr. Ich lese vier Poems, und mit nicht so vielle Zeit zu lesen vor. Ich gern Deutch Poem, aber zu lesen ist sehr schwer ob ich lese nicht vor. Denn ich lese über so schnell, oder nicht, ich muss bearbeiten das Poem schnell. Vielleicht ich verstehe nicht so viel, aber denn ich war erzwungen zu lese es, mein Kopf versteht mehr dann ich denke. 

I don't know if that actually makes sense in English, but what I'm really trying to say is that having to read the poem quickly in German and English made me use my gut instincts about German to understand the poem, and to read the poem effectively. I also learned a lot about how to actually read German poetry, since we don't necessarily do that in class. Reading poetry is so different from reading a textbook, and you have to put more emphasis on certain words and syllables to get your point across. And if you don't know what that is, then the poem is ineffective. I was really happy (for the most part), how my readings went, even if I made a few mistakes here and there. I think I will definitely read more German poems in the future, both on my show and for pleasure. I also want to find more German music at the radio station, even though there is a German music show called Krautsiders for that purpose. 

Auch hier ist vielle Poems von Rainer Maria Rilke. 

AMD 4

In 2009, my sister spent the year studying abroad in Austria. She told me that one of the biggest things she missed while she was there was American music. So, for my 4th AMD assignment, I thought I would look at music in German. Really, other than the fact the lyrics are in German, I can't hear a distinct difference in the style of the music, and sometimes the songs by German artists are in English. The way the music sound is almost the same as American songs; fairly simple chord progression, pumping bass line, and a lead vocalist with some harmonies.

Since there isn't much to talk about with German music as a whole, I will discuss my favorite song I came across.

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

It's called Nein Mann by Laserkraft 3D. I recommend watching it for 2 reasons; 1 the lyrics are really simple and even as a German 101 student, I am able to understand most of the lyrics and 2 it's gloriously hilarious music video and strange song. It starts out with a girl saying that the club is lame and she wants to go home, but the singer of the band responds "Nein Mann," and talks about how he wants to stay and dance. Then, another girls comes up to his and asks if they can go to his house to do a difference type of dancing ;-) But, again he says "Nein Mann" and goes into the chorus. Finally, the bouncer tells him the club is closing and he needs to gather his things and leave. Once more he proudly proclaims "Nein Mann" and continues to dance. Nothing can stop this dancing machine, and his moves are nothing short of legendary. Check this video out, you will not soon forget it.

Not Funny!!!

I have recently started looking into the website that Hartmut has posted onto the Deutschkurs page.  Nichtlustig.de, or Not Funny in English, is based off a series of comics made by Carlsen.  It is a comic series that reminds me of the Far Side comics produced here in America by Gary Larson.  The comics take a decidedly German twist with subject matter that includes a lot of dark jokes about death, injury, and bad luck.  Death seems to be one of the websites main themes with such merchandise as the Tasche des Todes, or bag of Death.  I spent a lot of time going through the website looking at the different merchandise.  It is sometimes hard to go through and read the product description when I am not close to that level of German yet, but the experience in trying to read the different entries is a good one. 

http://www.nichtlustig-shop.de/product_info.php?info=p287_Tasche-des-Todes.html&cat=c92_Taschen---Mappen.html

I find a lot of the darker humor to be pretty funny.  To go along with the death theme, Nichtlustig features a lot of Lemming memorabilia, which of course are famous for their habit of jumping off cliffs.  Some of the shirts feature other forms of Lemming suicide.  Some of my favorite shirts include these:

This translates to: "Respect the Food Chain"

The ever popular, iTod.

"Inside I'm already dead"

And the "Duck, Vampire Duck"

These shirts only cover a small amount merchandise that the website has.  Along with shirts, the website also has games, coffee mugs, books, and a whole lot more.  The prices aren't too bad, but the shipping is kind of a hassle.  When I do finally make it over to Germany I plan on picking up at least some of the cool stuff shown here.   I am also debating on getting some of these shirts and starting a Hartmutesk collection.

Again signing off...

AMD 4

For AMD 4 I met with Seth Howes, a colleague of Jennie’s in the German department, at the Amer’s on State Street. He went to school at the University of Texas and, for a little bit, in Germany at Universität Halle-Wittenberg. He is in his 6th and final year of graduate school and is writing a dissertation of the last 15 years of German socialism, although he was more inclined to ask questions about me then give detailed answers about himself. He told me about some interesting German related courses in the philosophy/ political science/ history department and he talked about the philosophy department and their “analytic tradition” in general. He also talked to me about what it was like to be a graduate student and talked about attending long, once a week seminars on rather specific topics. He explained to me his impression of the major differences between graduate school in political science and philosophy.

Die Feiertage in Deutschland

Uh... when did it become Halloween? That was quick.

I learned as a little kid that Germans didn't really celebrate Halloween, and I wondered if that was still the case. Turns out since the 1990s Halloween as an American holiday has really been catching on in Europe. Kids don't go trick-or-treating but the scary theme is popular for parties, especially with school-age kids.

German holidays similar to Halloween appear to have a stronger religious connection than any of ours. Martinstag (the Feast of St. Martin, for Catholics) and Tauftag Martin Luthers (Martin Luther's baptism day, for Protestants) are both celebrated on November 11, often with processions of children holding lanterns. These days they mark the start of the German Christmas (Weihnachten!) shopping season. :)

Martinstag procession, from http://archerayla.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/reisen-bildet-blicke-ubers-tellerrand/

Apparently Herman Goelitz, Inc., best known as the manufacturer of Jelly Belly candy, also produces candy corn - having invented it in the 1880s. There were 3 Goelitz men who immigrated to the US after the American Civil War and started a candy company. Sort of sad that the US would be such a receptive market for something like candy corn. I'm convinced all the original candy corn was produced pre-1900 and nowadays just circulates like Sacajawea dollars.

Another holiday, Erntedankfest, is generally celebrated on the first Sunday in October. It is comparable to our Thanksgiving in concept, but isn't a national holiday and is generally religious and/or rural. Any celebration in major cities tends to occur at churches, with a service, procession, music, dancing and food, but no family gatherings like you'd see in the US. Rural Germany (all three days of it I've seen) is definitely comparable to rural US, with a less globally-connected population, less foreign-language proficiency, more religious focus, stronger traditions, etc.

In general some American traditions seem to be creeping into German holiday celebrations. We may be getting to that point as a country where we have enough history to influence others' cultures. Which is odd, considering we're such a mashup of everyone else's cultures in the first place. Perhaps all the initial inputs have had time to mix and ferment and form something totally new. Yes, Germany, you're welcome to our commercialized holidays. Please keep the candy corn.

AMD- 4

For my AMD I chose to watch a South Park episode in German. It is episode 197 titled "Als die Kacke Pipi musste." Since I normally do not watch South Park due to it's crude content this was a new experience for me. From my limited memory of the character's voices the German voice overs provide a fresh take on this television show. Although it is very different from anything that I am used to it still manages to carry some humor through the whole ordeal.

The complexity of the German language did shine through this as I was trying to keep up with the fast moving exchange of words between Cartman, Kyle, Kenny and Stan. Although it did pose a major barrier I feel that I got a decent understanding of the episode. I was able to pull out some familiar words and piece together the beginning, but by the time that they began to write their own book I started to get lost in what they were saying.

As I've said before in my blog posts the German language has a reputation for sounding very harsh, and this holds true as seen by the harsh dialect used by the voice-over here. Overall it was a new experience, and watching German television shows might be in my future, but probably not anymore South Park...

AMD 4

Für mein AMD in dieser Woche lese ich deutsch Zeitschriften. Sie heiβen Kultur Spiegel. Sie sind in der UGLi, on the first floor mixed in with the rest of the magazines if you feel like reading them yourself! Sie waren ein bisschen schwer für mich, aber nicht so schlecht. Ich kann nicht alles the articles lesen, aber the advertisements and the articles with a lot of pictures were usually leicht und interessant. I struggled through the cover stories of each, and then focused mainly on the smaller stories and advertisements for the rest of the time. Ich lese zwei Zeitschriften total, but I'll break down one of them here for you.

Zeitschrift Eins:

Cover Story: Jetzt mal ernsthaft

- This story was an in-depth interview with zwei Schauspielstars: Jens Harzer und Lars Eidinger. As far as I could tell, this interview was pretty similar to something you'd find in an American magazine. One big difference though, was when the interviewer asked (I think...) about some people's fear of "how hot [sexually] foreign premieres can be." They started to talk pretty casually (and rather vividly) about some sexual things that I don't know if I'm allowed to write about here.

Other things:

There were viele neue Filme advertised, such as "Kuss Der Spinnenfrau" und "Die Einsamkeit der Primzahlen." There was also quite a bit of talk about Französisches Kino and it's influence in Deutsch Kultur.

There was also a big section on Essen! Zum beispiel: Grüne Hähnchen; Zarte Sau Vom Mars (mit Schweinefleisch); und Trenchtown Dream Bream, which includes an entire fisch and was mentioned as being something Ziggy Marley eats.

Neue Wörter:

- Schauspielstars: acting stars

- überwinden: overcome

- fein gemacht: dressed up

- hörbücher: audio book

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!

Throughout the semester, you will be posting here roughly every other week 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). And make sure to add your name as one of the "Labels." See the links on AMD Ideen and Beispiele for ideas! This should get you excited about the kinds of things you can do!