Kultur 1 -Ashley Britt

Hallo!

While reading "How German is American?", I found it interesting that alot of the land in the Washington and surrounding areas was actually marketed towards German immigrants. It was mentioned that advertisements for these land areas were sometimes written in both German and English. I was also surprised by the fact that log cabins, which I always assumed were an American style home, actually originated in Europe!

In the section of the article discussing Pennsylvania Dutch, I was once again surprised to learn something that contradicted my original thoughts. I had always been lead to believe that "Pennsylvania Dutch" and "Amish" were synonymous and thus interchangeable. Turns out that "Pennsylvania Dutch" is actually a language, and only a very small portion of the people who speak this language are actually "Amish."

Perhaps the most interesting part of the article for me was the "Shaping Culture" section. I never would have guessed that Bambi was originally written for adults to warn of "the growing threats confronting European Jews in the period between the World Wars." This is more than likely due to the fact that Disney adapted the story to confront a different issue, and did so in a kid-friendly manner. Something that wasn't terribly surprising to me was the number of words in the English language that either are originally German, or have German influence. I guess this is partly due to the fact that I have two cousins who have taken German language classes while in high-school and have pointed out to me many words or phrases that they have learned which are similar both in English and in German. Many of the words were listed in the article.

Speaking of the cousins I mentioned, they are actually a big reason for why I wanted to take a German language class. They both have had a great experience learning German language and culture, and their enthusiasm for the two actually made me somewhat jealous. I wanted to be a part of the excitement, so that was why I signed up to take this class. I am very much looking forward to this semester and all it brings!

Auf Wiedersehen!!