Kultur 6

As the semester comes to a close we finish it off in the way it was started, by shocking us silly American students. We are once again shown the vast differences between our two cultures when reading the Bild Zeitung Rules Germany. The understanding here being that the tabloids we see in the U.S. use much less smut and employ many more ridiculously schemed stories. In order to gain a better understanding of this massive difference I took a look at Bild's website and the National Enquirer's website. The most significant, and probably most obvious, difference is that the National Enquirer markets itself as a source for "Celebrity news" while Bild is one of the main sources of news in Germany.

Another one of the articles Come On In, My Door Is Always Closed. Here we are once again given insight into some of the backwards logic that is used in Germany. This once again leads me to the conclusion that Germany would be a scary place to visit, since many of the cultural norms there make no sense to me.

My fear of Germany is only further reinforced when I read the article Worshipping the Garbage Gods.The garbage can mentioned in the article is shown below. Personally even though I can read what it says, it is still far too complicated and I can guarantee that I would mess up what should be a very simple process.

AMD- 6

For my final AMD assignment of the semester I watched the three part Simpsons episode as recommended by the AMD 6 page. As stated in the prompt the episode is a clear allusion to everyone's favorite movie Lola Rennt.

From what I can tell the three parts had loosely intersecting plot lines which eventually tied together to make more sense of exactly what was happening. The episode differed slightly from Lola Rennt, in that it does not have alternate plot lines. Instead the plot line is maintained but is shown from varying points of view. As can be expected, since my understanding of German is still relatively limited I did not fully understand the episode, but watching the cartoon closely gave me a greater understanding of exactly what was going on.

It is very interesting to see how a German production had such an influence on an American television program, but then again the Simpsons have done just about everything by now, so the fact that they produce an episode alluding to Lola Rennt is not all that surprising.

Kultur 5

For this chapters Kultur assignment we were tasked with reading articles that were all across the board in subject matter.

First we are given an understanding of bathroom etiquette and the centuries old tradition of the Klofrau. This article clearly gives insight into a very important aspect of life, which is what takes place in a bathroom. The system used to clean bathrooms in Germany is very different from that which is used in America-- where a bathroom can go uncleaned for months, maybe years, at a time. It would obviously seem to be common practice in my mind to keep these people happy, because then your bathroom experience will be as pleasurable as possible.

We are also given some insight into flirting etiquette and street etiquette. In respect to both situations more seems to be less. In the realm of flirting the U.S. style is a little too forward. And when walking through a crowd being overly aggressive is no reason to apologize!

And finally we are given the opportunity to talk about dildos and other various sex toys! Needless to say the lesson to be learned here is that Germany is very different from the United States. Does this make me a little scared to travel abroad, well yes it does. Of course new experiences are always welcome, which should make for my abroad experience slightly more interesting.

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.

Kultur 4

The kultur texts that seemed most interesting to me were the ones on transportation and traveling in Germany- not to say that the text on nudists were not interesting but they seemed thoroughly bizarre. The most amusing fact that I took from the text was the one on the one-way streets. Once I got a good understanding of the meaning of the word Einbahnstraße I understood the underlying comedy behind the street sign. The idea of having to one way streets meeting while going in opposite directions.

The texts also made light of some good tips for navigating the mass transit systems in German cities. The idea of an honor system for paying would almost undoubtedly not work in the United States. Even with the fear of being caught, the American public is arrogant enough to take their chances and would not pay.

The final article on logic is one that brings to light the need to be specific in what you ask, and how you ask it. All of these articles gave insight to how to survive in Germany, which hopefully I will one day be able to apply this knowledge while traveling abroad.

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...