AMD 4

For AMD 4 I decided to do some research about my German heritage. My parents always told me that I was almost entirely German; my middle name is Keilen (my mothers maiden name) which I have been informed is also a German surname. I started my inquiry about my heritage by searching the immigration records for people with the last name Keilen. I found that most immigrants with this name were from Prussia; Prussia is a region that makes up a large amount of the northern part of Germany. Historically Prussia was a separate kingdom from Germany and was not fully merged until after World War II. I then became very distracted by the history of Prussia and ended up reading a lot more about the topic. In general, Prussians were highly respected in the military world and were a European power especially in the 18th and 19th centuries. Overall, though I was never able to conclusively find out if I am Prussian or not I certainly would feel proud to have that B.A. heritage.

AMD 4 - Benjamin Oztalay

For this AMD, I created an account on livemocha and chatted with someone from Germany. I gotta say, I was very surprised at my ability to create sentences and find words and put the right words in the right place. That last part is what I'm least confident about when I speak German. However, when I was writing sentences out, I found that if I put a word in the wrong place, it sounded weird to me, so I would just move it to where it felt correct. With just a little help from Google translate on a few words, I was able to understand everything he said. We shared some cultural stuff, since we're both Turkish.

Before we started talking, I was pretty nervous about being able to understand him, but I found that I knew 95% of the words he used (although, our conversation wasn't particularly complex or deep). After we talked for a bit, I was pretty comfortable just talking in German. What slowed me down the most was typing letters with umlauts! I might have to switch to a German keyboard layout. Having a conversation with someone outside of class really helped bring everything together in a larger context. As opposed to studying and practicing one aspect of German at a time, it was all there at the same time, so I could see how everything fit together. I think what helped me the most, in terms of what we've learned, is definitely vocab. Just having a vocab of the 500ish words we've learned so far was key. It seems like you could get by alright in Germany armed with a large vocabulary and the present tense.

AMD 4

For AMD 4 I finally got around to reading Mark Twain's The Awful German language, and boy am I glad I did. Twain really nailed it when talking about the various bugaboos of the German language from placing the verb at the end to declensions. I think my favorite quote was the one where he knew a man who would rather decline two drinks then one German adjective! While Twain did discuss some things I didn't recognize (the dative case being one) I found the article on the whole to be very accessible and  almost timeless. It really makes me appreciate Twain and his writing, along with how hard some parts of German are. When reading the article I was struck by how much harder it must have been to learn a language back in Twain's day. When he was talking about what a chore it would be to look up the gender for the word rain I felt a touch guilty. I grumble to myself when I have to pop a word into Google and that poor man had to probably thumb through a huge dictionary. While I appreciated Twain's suggestions for 'fixing' the language I must disagree with him. Yes, some parts of German are frustrating, but really I enjoy some of its idiosyncrasies. I like the idea of the separable and just kicking one part of the verb to the end of the sentence regardless. While Twain was right more then he was wrong I think imposing his changes would really kill some of freshness of the language and would make it too much like English. It's rules and exceptions may be quirky but figuring them out is really some of the fun of learning the 'awful German Language'!

AMD4

Searching around on Spiegel online for some AMD ideas, I found myself drawn to one particular story, represented by a picture of the ever-entertaining Herman Cain. I read the intro to the article in German, which contained some key words such as “Ignoranz” and “absurde,” which hardly seem out of place in an article examining Republican foreign policy, it not being their strong suit, to put it lightly. The article is actually about German concerns about how willfully ignorant Republican candidates are when it comes to foreign policy, so my guess was more or less correct. Since the American economy is tanking just as hard as Europe’s, most Americans are concerned with the “Staatshaushalt,” or the state budget and not very concerned with foreign affairs. This creates the opening for republicans to blatantly ignore foreign policy, and to get away with it.
Herman Cain for example, when asked about the President of Uzbekistan, or as he calls it in the interview: “Uzbeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan,” says: Ich weiß es nicht, or “I don’t know.” He then claims that it won’t create any jobs in America if he does, but seems to forget that Uzbekistan, which shares a Northern Border with Afghanistan (Germany, by the way, is instrumental in military actions in the North; most of its forces are based there) has been a very open and willing aid to the US for the past decade.
The article analyzes how Rick Perry wants to sell F-16 “Kampfjets” to India, and how he thinks that such a deal actually means something in the region. In reality, India doesn’t want our out-of-date jets, and anyone the US doesn’t like in that region has been dealing with far worse than the F-16 for a long time anyway. Michelle Bachman wants to use a “Grenzzaun” or border to fence to keep out illegal immigrants from Mexico.

The rest of the article shames the Republican party for their ignorance regarding how the world works. John Huntsman, who is at this point an inconsequential candidate, and ex-Beijing ambassador, is the only candidate with diplomatic experience, “konservativer Kandidat mit diplomatischer Erfahrung” and shares the same view as the article: the world works in tandem, and a country like the US can’t simply pull itself from the system and expect it to work properly.

I really liked getting a point of view on US politics from outside of the usual sources. Germany’s writes appear to have good heads on their shoulders, and recognize that the wrong person gaining power in the US could be disastrous to the teetering European economy. It might even force Europe to seek aid from China, which would not be good for the US at all.

AMD 4 - Calen Jones

A couple days ago, I spent quite a bit of time speaking Deutsch with a classmate in preparation for Oral Exam 1. This practice definitely helped for the exam, but it also changed my perspective a bit about der Deutschklasse.

Attempting to speak at length in German was a much needed changeup from the regular iLrn Hausaufgaben; the challenge of verbal communication entertained and motivated me as we soon went way off-topic from the study guide. In the beginning, I tried to communicate complicated expressions that we haven't learned; as these endeavors proved fruitless, I began to think more about different ways to get my message across. We discussed topics such as our families and friends, hometowns, how we spend our freizeit, food and drinks, etc. I was able to say things like "Meine mutter hört die Hosen auf die Familie" and "Ich fahre nach Hause für zwei Wochen." Ich war sehr surprised at my success in communicating my thoughts.

All in all, I envisioned it as something I would experience frequently if I ever go to Deutschland, and it was enjoyable to use the language practically. I hope to make it to the Kaffeestunde in the near future as well.

AMD4

So one of my friends actually went to high school in Germany, Frankfurt I believe. So I called her up for some classic awkward foreign language talk. I mixed up spielen and sehen and she laughed at me despite my "es tut mia lite" or whatever that one phrase is for saying I'm sorry. I learned just how hard it is to try to conjugate everything on the fly. On paper it is al ot easier. Suprisingly I did not find it very hard for me to understand what she was saying. While a lot of things I simply had not learned yet, I felt that I did a good job of intepretting the things that I am supposed to know by now. Wunderbar!

AMD 4

For this AMD, I decided to dig a little bit into German history. I remembered reading in Vorsprung that the city of Mannheim was heavily attacked during World War II, so I decided to read into why.

Mannheim is located at the meeting of two rivers - the Rhine River and the Neckar River. Cities on rivers are very strategic; Germany wouldn't want to lose it and the Allies wouldn't want Germany to have it. During World War II, Mannheim was an important industrial city for Nazi Germany, further increasing its importance.

We learned in Vorsprung that Mannheim was heavily bombed during WWII, but it didn't tell us the extent of the bombing. Throughout the entire war (1939-1945), Mannheim saw over 150 air raids. It was attacked by both the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force. They bombed civilian areas as well as factories. The first deliberate "terror bombing" by the Royal Air Force was on Mannheim.

Despite the amount of destruction Mannheim experienced in WWII, it has certainly rebounded, as has the rest of Europe.

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!