AMD 2- Kyle O'Meara

For my AMD Two blog assignment I decided to read Durden's "Words of the Decade". I felt that this was a very interesting article because it offered new words added to the main German dictionary and I usually follow what is added to the Webster dictionary. I was very interested to learn that English terms such as Gangsta-rap and Googeln were added to the official German language and how American mass culture influences the rest of the world. I also read that some words were added to the German dictionary such as Hüftgold (fat on hips) were added that don't really have an English equivalent. I was also generally interested in how two different versions of the dictionary were published during the Cold-War era and the East German version included many words that were brought over to Germany from the Russians. Being born after the Cold War I never really have realized how much East German culture was effected by the Russians. I also learned about cool little traffic signal men called Ampelmännchen that were popular in Eastern German during the Cold War and they are now regarded as a kind of cult culture icon.