Kultur6

The whole being idea of being assertive, knocking once, and just entering a room with a closed door literally sounds like the worst thing in the world to me.

Ich bin schüchtern und nicht selbstsicher.  I'm the type of person who, upon seeing a closed door, rather than knocking, lurks around the corner pretending to be on my phone until it opens.

AMD6

For this weeks AMD, I changed the language on my iPad's Siri to Deutch and tried to converse with her.  She had some difficulty understanding me at points (but I'm blaming this one Apple voice recognition technology and not my language skills!) but for the most part I was able to successfully ask her questions and get answers.  Her favorite color was odd, she said "Meine Lieblingsfarbe ist... naja, eine Art Grün, aber mit mehr Dimensionen." I guess computers see things differently than us.

She didn't respond well to my affections.  When I said "Ich mag dich," she replied, "Alles klar."  When I told her "Du bist meine bester Freundin," she responded "Wenn du darauf bestehst."

We got into a bit of a fight then, and she refused to answer me anymore...

Kultur 5

I think it's interesting that the articles said flirting in Germany is so subtle, but that the sex shops are so open.  In America, it's the opposite.  Flirting here is extremely overt, to the point of sometimes being vulgar.  However, here people are very shy about porn and sex shops.  I've never really liked how America at large treats the whole sex issue, because it seems very hypocritical--people are judgmental of sexuality, but still condone the hook-up culture.  I think I like the German view of it better.

AMD5

Ich habe der Artikel "Denglisch" gelesen.

I never thought of other languages having a term for the mixing with English in the same way that Spanish does with "Spanglish."  Probably because here in the States we encounter Spanglish more than we would encounter Denglisch.  It was interesting to me to read how a lot of German speakers resisted the trend towards incorporating English much in the same way that many Americans resist the inclusion of Spanish in the vernacular.

I think this trend is an example of how the world is changing as it becomes more globalized.  This is indicated simply by the types of words that are Denglischized, which are mostly computer terminology. Computers, and more specifically the internet, have become the hub for cultural transmissions, so it makes sense that most of the mergings of language would happen around computers.

AMD4

For this AMD, I watched a few clips from "Friends" in German.  I was surprised at how much I was able to pick up, actually.  Even when I wasn't entirely sure what specific words meant, I could get the gist pretty well from context.  To completely understand, I had to watch the clips a few times through.  But even on the first watch through, I picked out a bunch of phrases that I was familiar with from class. For example, when Chandler first walks in Ross asks, "Was hast du?"  In another clip, Monica tries to get Chandler to smile for a photo by saying, "Du hast immer ein wunderbares lächeln."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCoNSZV--z0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLHwkNqNhoo&feature=related

Kultur 4

I thought the articles were interesting because of how they highlighted the contrast between daily life in Germany and in America.  The jaywalking thing in particular stuck out to me.  After all, in Ann Arbor jaywalking is a simple fact of life--in fact, I've been yelled at more times for NOT jaywalking than not.  The other articles also pointed out some differences.  For example, the bicycle lane one also showed an essential difference: in America, the pedestrian always has the right of way, but in German bike lanes it's the cyclist who has it.

I think a lot of these differences point to the fundamental mind-sets of the citizens.  Germans seem to have more faith in the system--the laws are there and must be there for a reason.  Americans, however, tend to think that they are "smarter" than the laws, and that they don't have to follow them for that reason.  It seems as if Germans view the rules in black and white, whereas Americans see the gray in every situation and try to work it to their advantage.

Kulture 3

I read "An Obsession Explained," "Capping the Bottle," und "German Fast Food."  I thought the two articles about drinking were particularly interesting because they took ideas I already had about German culture and either reinforced or modified them.  For example, I knew that Germans prized their beer, but I wasn't aware of a lot of the subtleties in production and in consumption that the articles pointed out.  I'm not a huge expert on different types of beer either, so it was interesting to read their tongue in cheek descriptions of the German varieties.  I found it pretty amusing to read their description of Berliner Weisse in particular, because that was the drink I zeroed in on when I was in Berlin (hey, it was cheap) and now I'm a little embarrassed at having ordered it (repeatedly).

AMD2

Since I spend a lächerlich amount of time on Facebook, I figured that would be a good place to practice German.  I changed my Facebook language to German and have been trying to navigate it that way since.

Some things on there were already familiar to me, such as "Wohnt in ____ " "Studeirt ____ " or "Aus _____ " in people's info sections.  Also, it has been helping to reinforce my memory for the days of the week and the names of the months (otherwise how will I know if that party invitation I got is for friday or saturday?)

I enjoyed seeing familiar things in a different language, such as the "like" button saying "Gefällt mir" or  notifications being "Benachrichtigungen"

Some phrases weren't as familiar, but I've been able to work them into conversations with my friends who speak German, such as "Was machst du gerade?" ("what are you doing?" which is the prompt in the status-update box).

Kapitel 2 Kultur

I thought it was funny to read about Germans complaining about the train systems, because when I was in Berlin this summer I got to experience that first hand.  It was the day of the Deutschland vs Greece football game, so the city was broadcasting the game on huge projection screens at the Brandenburg gate.  It was, understandably, very crowded, so the trains to get home were extremely packed and delayed.

At the time, I only knew a few phrases in German, one of which was "Das ist schlecht!" So I decided to try this out on a few Germans who were waiting on the platform with me.  To my excitement, one boy answered, "Ja, das ist schlecht!" and then proceeded to animatedly complain about the delays.  It was a bonding moment hampered only by my lack of any fluency in German.

AMD1

I have a freind who lived in Berlin for three years during high school and his freshman year of college.  I asked him about life there--what he did for fun, what music he listened to, what parties were like, etc.  He highly recommended this song, which both sums up the atmosphere of clubs and features basic German phrases about dancing and partying.  Plus it's a super fantastisch video.

Laserkraft 3D - Nein Mann

I roughly translated the chorus to get the gist of what the song was about:

Nein man! ich will noch nicht gehen [No man, I will not go yet]
Ich will noch ein bisschen Tanzen [I will dance a little more]
Komm schon alter ist doch noch nicht so spät [Come on it is not too late]
lass uns noch ein bisschen tanzen [Let's dance a little more]

The video is quite helpful in giving visual context clues, so I didn't have too much trouble understanding the parts that I couldn't translate.