Kultur 6

The more I read about Germany, the more intimidating it seems. I feel like there would be a lot to keep in mind if I were to visit, and I would probably mess something up. Knocking loudly and more or less bursting into a room doesn't seem like the most polite way to go about opening a door that's always closed, but it might be the best. It's all about what you're used to, though, so I suppose it's to be expected in Germany.

The popular, smutty newspaper isn't totally unexpected for me after reading about the sex shops in the open. If you walk past a window of sex toys on the way to lunch, it's probably not a big deal to also walk past the Bild's front page girl. The fact that it exaggerates so much and is still taken seriously is surprising, however. I would think that Germans would appreciate a more literal and straight-to-the-point news source, so the Bild being so big seems a bit strange.

Germans also seem to take tradition seriously, although Germany is very progressive. They have one of the best garbage collection systems in the world, but they keep the tradition that it's closed on Sundays.

AMD 6 - Benjamin Oztalay

So, I watched the Simpsons for this AMD. Unfortunately, I couldn't find Bart's day anywhere, so I watched a chunk of another episode. The only things that I really noticed that were similar to Lola Rennt were the scene where Lisa was running, and the couple of times a car almost hit somebody.

Watching the Simpsons in German wasn't exactly easy, as I couldn't pick up on most of what was said. It was easier than other German TV we've watched before, probably just from practice. I think the biggest change I noticed in understanding the German that was being spoken is that I was able to hear individual words better. I didn't know most of the words, nor was I able to pick out the sentence structure, but it's a step in the right direction, I suppose. It let me recognize words that were said more often (I think I heard "Tut mir leid" or something like that a few times), and I could hear words that I already knew.

I don't think I could watch TV in German and pick up on any details, and most of my understanding of the story comes from the images, but I can tell that it's starting to come together, which is exciting.

Kultur 5 - Ben Oztalay

Earlier articles definitely talked about the straight-forward, no-nonsense style of communicating that many Germans have, but when it comes to flirting, it's completely different? When I read the article about saying "Entschuldigung" (or not saying it), and then the one about German flirting, my first thought was "Maybe Germans are subtle... they really mean "Entschuldigung" when you get bumped on the street, but just don't say it." But according to earlier articles we read, that's definitely not the case. It would be so confusing for an American in Germany, since it seems as though most Germans are pretty forward about what they want, except for flirting.

The sex shops didn't necessarily surprise me, Americans are pretty prude compared to other nations. Having the sex shops wide open in what would seem to be unusual places for them might be a bit unsettling at first, though.

AMD 5 - Benjamin Oztalay

I also read the Wikipedia article on Denglish, but the topic was interesting, so I found a few more articles on Denglish to see what people were saying about it. I was surprised by the intensity of the opposition some people have to Denglish, but at the same time not surprised by the fact that many people simply don't really care about the "invasion" of German by English.

It's easy to see why English is making its way into German, and many other languages. Scientific papers, in order to receive the most international recognition, should be in English. Most, or all, of the terminology associated with IT is English, so it's natural to adopt the same terms in other languages. At the same time, the opposition is understandable. German and English are so closely related that it's easy to imagine the Denglish trend continuing until German is just a different dialect of English. That would be unfortunate, but I'm not sure it would happen quite like that.

Seeing the use of English terms in some German speech is comforting for me, as an English speaker learning German. It means that in my communication with German speakers, I might run into fewer unfamiliar words, which is a good thing for understanding them. I might be unhappy, though, if I put all of this time into learning German and it just transformed into English!

Kultur 4 - Ben Oztalay

The more we read about German culture, the more I'm surprised. It's cool to learn that bicycling is so well supported in Germany, and that it's such a common mode of transportation, but the cold attitude that bikers and drivers take to pedestrians was unexpected. There's quite a difference between Ann Arbor and parts of Germany! Here, pedestrians rule the city every hour, on the hour. Having said that, it sound like Germans are very safety-conscious. That's why you obey the red hand, and why there are separate bike sidewalks in cities. It's also why you can't start driving at all until you're 18 (you can start driver's ed and be on the road with an instructor when you're 14 in Michigan), and why the driving test and course are so serious. It's almost a joke here, at least in Michigan, so I'm sure that new German drivers are much better than new American drivers.
The prevalence of nudity also caught me off guard. Naked people in public tanning and frolicking just never really came to mind when I thought of Germany before, to be honest. The fact that there was/is such an organized movement is interesting, but I can see why nudity is on the fall lately.

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 3 Ben Oztalay

I decided to watch a couple episodes of South Park in German for this AMD. It had less to do with German culture than I suppose I would have liked, but it was interesting nonetheless. Hearing how German sounds from many different speakers in different tones and speeds was cool, and it made me realize that listening to German is a rather difficult thing to do. I kept noticing that whenever I would hear a word or phrase that I recognized, my brain would catch on it and I would automatically stop listening to the rest of what was being said while I translated that word or phrase in my head.

I wasn't really able to understand what was happening in the episodes from the speech alone, but I was able to pick it up from the imagery. I think I have a long way to go before I can actually watch German TV, but I did start to get accustomed to the sound of the language as I kept watching. I noticed that I got better at hearing individual words, instead of a block of syllables, and that I would be able to move on quicker from something I recognized, although that was a very small portion of what was said. After having done this, I think I'll continue watching German TV, like news and other shows, to get more familiar with the language, even though I may not understand what's happening.

AMD 2 - Benjamin Oztalay

I read Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language", and I don't think I've laughed more studying language. His rants and comparisons and descriptions are pretty hilarious, and he really illustrates the problems he found with German.

One of the interesting things I noticed right off the bat is that his English, that is, English from 1880, sometimes feels a bit like the German he was describing. Lots of pieces of sentences out of the order you might expect to see them in, which makes it necessary to hold a bunch of stuff in your head before you get to the part of the sentence that brings it all together into something that means something. For example, there's this sentence:

"We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one may see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers: but with us it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the Germans it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual fog which stands for clearness among these people."

That probably has to do with the fact that English came from German, and has been branching further over time. It used to be that nouns were always capitalized in English, as well.

This article didn't necessarily introduce me to any new difficulties the German language has, but it certainly showed me the extent to which German's stranger facets can be stretched in practice. The separable verb has never been as frightening as it was after I saw the "depart" example, where "de" was said miles before "part", and entire clauses were stuffed between the two. It also made me nervous for learning Genitive and Dative and such, it sounds like a lot of memorization.

Things like this make me wonder how one becomes fluent in a language like German, or if anyone actually is. Do people in Germany just let small grammar mistakes slide, since it would be difficult to keep up with all of the tiny variations on adjectives and articles and nouns? And is spoken German anywhere near as confusing as written German? It would be difficult to construct such complex sentences on the fly while you speak, but it's a different matter if you're writing them.

Mark Twain spoke for a bit about the softness of German words used to describe eventful or intense things, like explosions and such. I think I would disagree with him on that front, since, to me, at least, German sounds more intense in general than English does. For the swearing example, things like "Damn it!" in English feel more like attempts at getting the same hard-consonanty sound that something like "Mein Gott!" has in German, although Mark Twain argued that the German version is softer, almost fluffy.

Kultur 2 Post

It was interesting that one article reflected upon Germans' love of statistics, but then another complained about their tendency to complain about their country. These two things seem at odds, because if Germans generally had such an awareness of statistics, you would think that they would understand that there are many advantages to living in Germany over many other places in the world. They would understand that the trains are actually very quiet relative to other trains, or that have 1-2 months of paid vacation is a great thing that many people don't have outside of Germany. Then again, Germans' awareness of statistics might also make them aware of the downsides to living in Germany. All of the bad statistics would be in their head, and the bad stuff usually sticks out more than the good stuff in one's mind.

In general, the other articles portrayed Germans as very conscious, rational, and direct people that are fine with honesty as long as it's honesty. But the one about staring makes me feel as though Germans are suspicious, and it's difficult to get on their good side. If their first reaction is to stare you down in the subway to make sure you don't do anything funny, it would seem difficult to later befriend the same person. But the staring might also be perfectly normal in Germany, and not much is to be thought of it. It would certainly be offsetting to me, as an American.

But then, as rational people, it seems irrational to complain about living in such a country. It sounds like a very different culture.

Ben Oztalay

AMD 1 - Benjamin Oztalay

I wrote a small program to help us all with memorizing the genders of nouns in the Kapitel Eins Wortshatz. It's called "das Genus".

Once you start, it randomly selects a noun from a list and gives you a word. You then have to write the correct Artikel (der, das, die) for das Wort. If Sie sind falsch, it'll tell you the correct Artikel, then let you try the same Wort again to reinforce it. If Sie sind richtig, it'll select a new Wort for you to try.

To get it, klicken Sie heir. It'll download as a ZIP file. Just open it and double click dasGenus.exe to get started!

It was fun to machen this, I've always liked programming. It was interesting to try to program in Deutsch, since many of the words you use have to be in Englisch for der Computer to understand them. I used as much Deutsch as I could, though. Also, putting together the vocabulary list definitely helped me learn some of the words!

Hier ist a screenshot of das Genus:

Ben Oztalay