The Teutonic Knights

One of my major interests as far as I can remember is that of Medieval History.  I have always loved the romanticism that goes along with the Chivalric Code of the medieval knights and the tales of great honor and deeds.  I have a strong connection  to this myself because of a long family history with knighthood.  I am myself actually a living breathing knight.  Not the same kind of Chivalric Order once formed to go on Crusades to the Holy Land, but one that is based on the other aspect of knighthood, protecting and helping those in need.  If you have never heard of the Knights of Columbus, I would suggest exploring who they are and what they mean.

There were once hundreds of different orders during the medieval period that would go on different Crusades all over Europe and the Middle East.  These include Orders such as the Knights Templar, the Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights.  The Teutonic Knights are to me one of the most interesting Chivalric Orders created.

Back in the day, many of the knights spoke only the romantic languages, z.B. French, Italian, Spanish.  This was fine for those leaders that were from these different countries, because even if you second in command didn't come from where you were, at least you could kinda get the point across.  This however became a very big problem when the Deutsch Ritter finally entered the fight.  Battles were fought with half the army not having a clue what the plan was.  This needed to be changed.

At the end of the 12th Century, the Pope decided that he needed a Holy Order for the Germanic speaking knights.  In 1190 AD, the Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, or more simply, the Teutonic Knights were born.  These Catholic Knights fought in many conflicts ranging from the Holy Land to the Baltic.  They acted as both holy warriors and battle field hospitals during these different campaigns. 

AMD 5

OK, so I had the best idea probably in my entire life for AMD 5. I decided to play ZELDA AUF DEUTSCH!!! I've downloaded ROMs of games before, so I had some emulators on my computer already, so it was just a matter of finding a SNES, NES, or GBA game auf Deutsch, which I found at SuperRomWorld. Yay internet!

INTERNET!!!

Right off the bat it was super interesting, because the start screen was totally different from the English start screen, and the main menu was in German too (duh)! Instead of "Name" or whatever, it said "Name Eingeben" which I assumed to mein "Give your name" or whatever. Not too different, but because I've played the game before, it really struck me, and especially because I could understand it! Playing the game for awhile made me realize that video games are so easily accessible for a lot of ages, and for a lot of reading levels as well. An actual "game" is translated as "Spieler," and "Auswahl" is a choice, so together it's "Game Choice!" 

Yes, I realize that's common sense, but it's amazing that I can understand it! For some reason being able to interact with the actual game made it so much more meaningful to know the German. I think this is because video games are a "virtual reality" literally, and so being able to interact in German within a safe setting like a game is like another step closer to interacting with people in real life. Nicht?

Anyway, right from the beginning I could understand it, like I said. Here's the beginning where Zelda speaks to Link in his dream:

"Hilfe...

Bitte hilf mir...

Ich bin es, Zelda...

Ich werde im Verlies der 

Burg festgehalten. Ich habe 

furchtbare Angst!

Agahnim hat die Burg voll unter 

seine Kontrolle gebracht und er 

versucht nun alles, um das 

Siegel der Sieben Weisen zu

brechen. Deshalb hat er den 

anderen sechs vermißten

Mädchen etwas Schreckliches 

angetan. Nur ich bin noch

übrig! Hol mich doch endlich

hier heraus! Hilfe!!"

Although it has a lot of vocabulary we haven't learned, I could get the general idea of the text. If there was something vital that I needed, then I could look it up.

Here are some vocab words I picked up from playing (some necessary, some not):

Fackeln = to light

Drücke = press

Knopf = button8

Verlies = dungeon

Zugang = access

die Sache = thing (knew this but keep forgetting, derp)

der Schwert und Schild = sword and shield

die Kräften = powers

Halten = to hold

Retten = to save (die Prinzessin, natürlich)

die magischen Kräfte = magical powers!

energie = energy (heheh, obvious, but I think it's cute because it's above the screen at all times)

die Karte = map (also knew, but was excited that I KNEW the word for map before I opened the chest to find it YAY!)

Wählen = to choose

Großen Schlüssel = big key!

Irgendwie = anything

unmenschlicher = crueller

gewaltiger = mightier/huger

solche = such ("Ich habe solche Angst!" hahahaha)

verschwinden = to disappear

merkt = note (or maybe notice in this context)

Geheimgang = secret passage

dazu = thereto

ersten Stock = first story/floor

Thronsaal = throne room

Mut = guts/strength

Hahahaha one of my favorite parts was when she asked "Verstehst Du mich?" and one of the options was "Nicht genau." It's not actually that funny, but now I'm going to use that phrase a lot. 

That's all! :D

AMD 5

Für diese AMD I registered on "Livemocha.com". This is a website that allows people who want to learn languages connect with people that speak that language. I found speaking and writing exercises of all difficulty levels designed by German speaking people. Instead of following a preset curriculum, Livemocha allows people all over the world to teach eachother. The concept is very interesting to me.
Immediately after creating an account I found a beginner-level writing exercise that had me write a paragraph about myself. "Ich heise Lukas, Ich komme aus Michigan, etc..." I then had the option to submit it to another Livemocha user who speaks German natively, where they could then review it and send feedback to me. There are hundreds of exercises like this ranging over all levels of difficulty. They even have courses that you can enroll in.
The entire website is based off of a mutual-feedback system. To request feedback on a submission, it costs you a certain number of credits. To earn credits, you have to give feedback to someone else that is learning English. This system ensures that everyone helps each other and the website can run completely autonomously. Pretty neat.
In the middle of tinkering around the website, I received a pop-up of someone from Shanghai requesting to chat with me in English. I thought I would give it a shot. I chatted with the gentleman for a few minutes about where he was from and what food he likes. He had some mistakes but for the most part he spoke great English. What an easy way to connect with people around the world!
After completing the writing exercise I decided to try a speaking exercise. I chose one called "Lange und kurze Vokale/Umlaute." To complete this exercise I had to submit a recording of myself pronouncing a list of words that use different vowel pronunciations. If I wanted to I could spend some credits to get some personalized feedback on my pronunciation. I think this website is a very helpful and effective way to practice/sharpen up your German skills in both speaking and writing. Whoever came up with the idea for this website is a genius!

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!

Die Deutsch-Schriften

I'm a bit of a font nut and thought I'd look into the history of European typefaces. For starters: Ever heard of Helvetica?

How about now?

Helvetica is freaking everywhere and even has a recent documentary devoted to it, which I promise has you on the edge of your seat but it's hard to find good clips.

As you can see there are many variations on the font, such as narrower letters, rounded ends, heavier strokes, etc. but the underlying forms are the same. Helvetica is the most widely used typeface in the world. It was actually invented in Switzerland in the 1950s but Germany has its own history of well-known lettering. You're probably familiar with Old English, or at least the Microsoft Word version of it:
There is also an Old English language, a recent ancestor of what is now spoken in Britain and the US. But it turns out die altenglischen Sprache war nicht geschrieben mit altenglischen lettering. Old English - die Sprache - ist alterer als die Schrift. Incidentally, Germany has its own versions of ye olde fancy scripts dating from various ages, most famously Blackletter from medieval times. It was used throughout Europe for a few hundred years but Germany was slow to adopt it and last to stop using it - hence it being associated with Germany today. It does still appear in unexpected places, like the Bad-Bellingen train station in rural southeast Germany.

Yes, I took a photo of script on the side of a building. Don't judge me.

Blackletter is not a specific "font" in the computer sense. It encompasses families of lettering with cool names like Fraktur, Textualis and Cursiva, the main three historically used in Germany. One cool feature of fonts how much history they have behind them, because many of their features were meant for ease of writing or, later, pressing. Fraktur is in fact evolved from a calligraphic script. Blackletter is also known as Gothic letter and its distinguishing feature is its broken lines, as compared to "antiqua" styled fonts which have smooth forms with less interruption. Antiqua tends to be more legible and is (I believe) the type of writing you'd see on the signs and menus at an old-timey German restaurant like the Heidelberg or Metzger's.

In case you think this stuff doesn't matter to people, the Gutenberg Bible (first book ever printed with movable type) was printed in 1455 using textualis, a type of blackletter, and even Hitler had an opinion on fonts: In 1941, after a long dispute probably only famous in very particular circles, the Nazis officially phased out fraktur fonts in favor of antiqua.

Now you know. Think about the lettering next time you see an ad, and thank or curse Europe at will.

AMD- 5

For this AMD I chose to read through the Wikipedia article Denglisch. When studying the Spanish language in High School I ran into a fair amount of Spanglish, but never really thought about how other languages would also develop a subset of language like that. The article gave valuable insight into how Denglisch has become a common practice in many German speaking countries.

The article gives an interesting take on how German has influenced English and vice verse. The prime example of this trend is the use of the apostrophe. Although it is a very common practice forenglish speakers to use apostrophes in order to show possession, while this is not an idea practiced in traditional German. The article even gives an interesting name to this which is the "Idiot's apostrophe".

The application of this style of language is especially helpful for any new learners in a language. although my study of German is still in its infancy, from my Spanish studies I can say that Spanglish was an integral part of my learning. Although it may not be a formally recognized subset of language-- meaning that it would be able to be used in academic settings such as this class-- it is still very helpful to be able to successfully combine the two languages in order to ease the learning process.

AMD 5

Für mein AMD, ich habe "Denglisch" gelesen. "Denglisch" ist das Wikipedia Artikel that Hartmut recommended. Es war sehr interessant! Ich habe gelernt, dass viele Deutsch und Englisch Wörter interconnected sind. It seem as though technology is the most significant factor behind this connection. The article talks about some of the features of Microsoft word that were translated using "Denglish." The primary example given is the use of "gedownloadet" as the past test for download, instead of the already established and commonplace German word "heruntergeladen." Even on one of the transparencies shown in class, the word "googeln" was used as a verb representing the use of search engine Google. (Which, during the writing this blog post, I discovered is an official English word. See: "http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/google" or you can google it to find a few other definitions...) In addition to computer technology, modern science seems to be a cause of a lot of the "germanization" of English words.

The article also discusses changes in German idioms and grammar rules. For example, some younger Germans might be caught using an apostrophe to indicate possession or a plural or putting a space between a normally compound word. This is likely derived from English language rules, however is obviously incorrect in German.

What I found to be most interesting was the reaction of the older generation to these mistakes. They're often called "deppenapostroph" (idiot's apostrophe) oder "deppenleerzeichen" (idiot's space). I can only imagine how detrimental these mistakes might seem to native Germans and their very compact and logisch language. While there are definitely sticklers for English grammar as well, it seems as though most English speakers always looking for a creative new way to say something, and perhaps more readily accept slang into their culture. (Note: That's a huge assumption. I don't profess to be an expert on informal German diction after reading one Wikipedia article.)

I used to think that the merging of two languages was an utterly tragic event. I believed that it could only lead to a lost of the rich history and culture of a region. As I've started to learn more about other languages and cultures, my feelings towards this have reversed. It's become exciting to see how cultures can use language to build off of one another and grow.

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!