Kultur 6

So these Kultur readings are only confirming my suspicions that Euriopeans are pretty crazy, at least the Germans. How can taking out the trash be that complicated? And do not even get me started about how strange it is that the German magazine has so mch revealing material inside of it. At least that is somthing to do with the KLultur and stuf, it just seems that the trash thing is rather inefficient. But I guess that we cannot really critioque the Germans right now  as they are pretyty much the fiscal leaders of Europe and are pretty much in control of the futrure of the Euro. Anyways, I look forward to visiting Germany to see how maccurate these Kultur assignments actually are. Until thjen I will just continue to think that Germans and Europeans in genearl are jyst a little bit off.

Apologies, this was typed with one hand.

AMD 6 John Borger

This is definately the best assignment so far with watching the Simpsons.

I actually feel I understood a lot. There was a lot of es tut mir liet. And then homer talking about how his thumb does not have a brother and the doctor expaining that a thumb is not the same as a finger. And the robot: ist tote. Don't know if this was just me or not but it seemed like people were driving with the steering wheel on the right side of the car. Most sentences Iunderstod the the subject as well AS THE VERBBUT IT WAS HARD TO GET THE WHOLE SENTENCE. Sorry for caps.

Lisa running was really similiar to Lola rennt. 123 Fakestreet was also pretty funny. Entshuldigung for excuse me \by Lisa in the hall. Mein Dad ist nicht hier. Another sentence by Lisa I actually understood.

Overall I really enjoyed this activity because3 it was a lot different from the typical articles and other things that we normally do.

kultur 5

I find it funny how in Germany walking on the streeet is such a contact sport. This seems to me to really uphold the stereotype of Germans eing rather rude. While customs will odf course differ from country to country, the idea of Germans never saying sorry for such a simple interaction is quite comical for me to think about it.
I also  found the article about the German flirting to be particuarly interesting becase whie this is something that clearly should differ from country to country, I just always assumed that men would have the leading role in the flirting process. The idea that women have a greater role in the process seems to me to show a higher level of respect towards women which is a good thing. I just wonder how this practice will continue to shaspe through time. I also find the idea of eeing a tourist who is unfamiliar with the situation make a complete fool out of himself to be really funny. I'm sure internationalincidents of flirting mishaps happen all the time but becase things are so diferent in Germany, I'm sure that they happen even less freqeuntly.

Sorry for the typos and brevity of this post. Typing with one hand is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

AMD 5, John Borger

So for this AMD I decided to read the article about Denglisch. I found this article kind of funny. I think it is funny how some of the older German generation is trying to resist this transition for many reasons, including the fact that they are less familiar with these English phrases. Also, how can Microsoft just create new German and ignore all of the complaints? English seems to be really taking its place in Germany. I find it more interesting though that a lot of the words that are now present in German usage do not necessarily mean the same thing that they did when they were in English. (Z.B. Paper would mean a scientific paper or brief, but not a paper in the sense of a piece of paper) I wonder how this came to be as it would seem that a piece of paper would be a much more frequent word. I also noted how some of these incorrect German constructions are being used in newspapers and other formal outlets. I feel that this gives some validity to the Denglisch and justifies its usage throughout Germany.

John Borger Kultur 4

Well Germany sounds like a lot different place than Ann Arbor, that is for sure. I love being a pedestrian in Ann Arbor simply because I can pretty much get away with anything. Whenver somebody is giving me a ride they normally complain about how everyone and their brother just steps out in front of oncoming traffic with the full faith that the car will come to a nice stop for them in the nick of time. Of course, I am one of those pedestrians and it looks like I would not fare to well in Germany. I thought it was funny how a couple of the articles both mention a young child charracter who more capable and believes to be more morally justified than the older tourist. I wonder how my dad managed to do in Germany with all of this. I'm sure he was fine but the idea of not being able to cross an intersection even if it is empty is a pretty rediculous idea to me.

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!

AMD3

Alright so for this AMD I decided to call mein Vater. He just got back from Deutschland and so I decided to try and ask him about his trip and such. Many of the questions did not quite make sense for the situtation but that is okay. Beyond asking him where he is from and where he went on his trip (things that I already knew), I couldn't really ask too much. Most things came out as: "Isst du was?" instead of something more appropriate for what did you eat over there?

While the conversation was mostly a struggle, it was good to hear from mien vater over fall study break. Turns out that he tracked down my sixth cousin (he is into that family tree stuff) and he had lunch with her and everything, so that is pretty cool.

Kulture 3

Another kulture blog and another insight into the collective mind of Germany. Last chapter we looked at how there was an interesting habit of Germans to "spy" on others. While this bluntness may often upset foreigners, it is simply par for the course. Now we are looking at how there is a seeming lack of humor in Germany. Not only a lack of humor but also a sense of pessimism prevalent throughout the country. I never like to hear about this stuff. Being German myself, I do not like it when my country is being held to negative stereotypes. But never having been to Germany myself, I know that I cannot exactly defend Germany in any way. My dad just got back from his trip to Germany and I look forward to hearing from him how it was and such. I don't really know how things went over there but I know that he was able to get home in one piece so the locals couldn't have been too mean. I look forward to going to Germany myself to see if these stereotypes are true, and of course to have some of that German food.

Direct Directness

I posted this on the wrong blog originally, apologies.

I found these articles rather interesting to read. Being German myself, I like to compare to see how close I am to the typical German, and more interestingly, how close my father still is. My father never complains about anything, but he is direct. Quite direct on a lot of things. It's funny to think that he is going to be there in a week and will have to navigate that culture.

I would agree that the information about the soccer team is out of date. As a German soccer fan myself, I hope much optimism for the team and feel that it is headed in the right direction. But of course this is a result of recent success and of being young and seeing that success.

Being a statistics major myself, it is interesting to see that Germans also have an interest in describing the world through statistics. It is an interesting way to identify with people and I feel that American's do the same thing, but less directly. Around Ann Arbor at least, when you ask someone where they are from they give many signals to how big the place is. Much of this is through words like, "O just some place called" or "A city near".  People often ask about how many people were in one's highschool. It is interesting to see that Germans are so much more direct about it.

AMD Zwei

For this AMD I chose to read the "Awful German Language" by Mark Twain. And boy was it awful. There is nothing better at killing one's optimism for learning German than that essay. It is quite the shelling of the German language. My brother who is in a much more advanced German language class keeps asking me if I have gotten to the "crazy" stuff in German. Well now I think that I know what is talking about. Despite Twain's shelling of the language, I still feel that I am going to continue studying German (like I have a choice)

At this point we are at least aware of most of the things that Twain talks about. Besides the word order, I think that most things are present along a variety of language. Many languages gives gender to nouns and most have a lot of different forms of conjugation depending on the case of the word. I do admit that German is quite tricking when it comes to that. I am by no means defending the German language. While I have had a so far so good attitude toward the language, I am sure that it will increase in difficulty quite significantly.

The extent to which sentences and nouns can extend in length is the most troubling. There really is no way to get around that. The sentences just seem to go on for days and the verbs are split by three different ideas. Some things just don't make sense in the language but there is so much carry over from English that hopefully we will be able to focus on the more tricky stuff. There are a great amount of cognate words which makes learning easier, or at least saves times. I'm excited to see what new challenges are ahead and we will see how it goes from here on out. Regardless of not have Twain's blessing, we will have to carry on.

AMD John Borger

For this assignment I decided to change my Facebook into German. This was kind of a cool experience. First of all, I know what a lot of the tabs and such are supposed to say. So when I see them written in German, I can instantly understand how the word is being used. For example : " ist in einer Beziehung mit " must mean is in a relationship with or something along those lines. I knew that because Facebook puts a heart next to relationship changes. In that way it is kinda cool to pick up on new words like that in a real world type of application.

Unfortunately the changing of the settings does not affect what my friends have actually posted. I would have wished for this to have been incorporated into some type of translation software so I could compare my friends mesages both in English and then in German. But I guess that this might yeild some errors and that would be a bad thing to study.

I just liked something by hitting the

button. It is strange to see such a simple concept that requires so many words in another language. 

Overall this was kind of a cool experience and I think that I may even leave my Facebook on German for a while to see if I can get used to it or not.

John Borger Kapitel

Being a German-American citizen myself, I found this article very interesting. I am myself someone who has grown up without knowing that much about my culture, even though I am fifty percent German. While my dad is currently pursuing this culture, as shown by his upcoming trip to Germany, my brothers and I have not really been exposed to this as of yet.  I know that my family came here six generations ago, and like so many other German speaking immigrants, ended up in the Midwest. They were probably also guided to America by some form of advertising about land and such, possibly in a similar agreement that the banks had with railroad companies back then, but I can't be sure. What is for sure is that there has been a dramatic loss of culture within my family and taking this class is a way for me to retain what is still left and discover new frontiers on the culture boundaries. I do feel that the anti-German sentiment in World War One may have played a factor in the down playing of our culture throughout the generations. As the article said, this may be the root reason behind why so many Germans, despite their position in America, have let their culture go unnoticed. I know that for myself I used to be uncertain about telling people I was German because of the past and the jokes they would make. But one thing that I was glad to hear was that Germans did not make their "Little Germanies" and such over here in America. While I like the idea of visiting a Little Italy or something like that as a tourist destination, as far as community building, that really puts up some barriers between people. I am glad that Germans were able to integrate into life in America without forming exclusive pacts, somethings that I would like to retain as I continue my quest to rediscover my own culture.

John Borger German 101 Section 2 Mate Bojti