AMD 3- Kyle O'Meara

For my AMD 3 I watched an episode of the show South Park in German. The title of the show in German was Mongolen vor South Park, which I believe roughly translates to the United States title Abduction is Not Funny. My impressions of the show were that the voices of the characters actually seemed to sync with the mouths of the animation, so this leads me to believe South Park, is popular in Germany. The character Cartman had a distinctly different sounding voice than the US version and overall it seemed all of the children in the show had higher pitched voices. I was able to pick out a multitude of words during the show, and it helped I had watched the episode before in English. Some words I picked out were Kinder, Kaffee, Eltern, Bitte, Nein, and I also noticed the video player on the bottom said Spielt ab. I assumed this means that it was playing. One other thing I noticed is God seemed to be a universal word and had the same pronunciation as it does in English. I played the video streaming from South Park's German site southpark.de. I noticed a variety of German ads during the show and overall enjoyed watching one of my favorite TV shows in German. The language barrier does not disrupt the pure humor and ideas of the show.

Danielle Ayres

For my activity this time, I decided to look up some German music on Youtube. The first one I listened to was labyrinth by Oomph. The music video was a scream-o version of Alice in Wonderland and it kinda freaked me out. The main phrase they kept repeating was links, rechts, geradeaus. Which translates to: left, right, straight ahead.

The next song I listened to was "Das alles aendert nichts daran" by Maya Saban. The title translates to "all this does not alter" It seemed to be about a couple who were broken up and now living in different places but still missing each other. Although I didn't understand a lot of what was said, I could still see how sad they were and that translated to me and my current situation with a long distance boyfriend. It was interesting that even though I didn't know what was said I still knew how they felt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY38R6x0w7I&feature=related

I then watched Wie konntest Du nur by Doreen. The title means "How could you". This music video was really sad too. It showed this girl crying for most of it and then her flash backs of all the great things she used to do with her boyfriend.

I then found a band called Juli which I knew was July in German so I was interested to hear their music. I actually really liked this band and their music is very similar to the music I listen to in english. I first listened to Zerrissen or Torn. At this point I was sick of sad music so I listened to another song called Elektrisches Gefuhl, or in English, Electric Feeling. This song was fun and up beat. She was getting ready for the day throughout the whole music video and talking about how you have to "Lass es Los": let it go.

It was really interesting listening to German music and comparing how it is different from American music. It definitely has way fewer gimmicks and the music videos don't seem to have to cost millions of dollars in order to be an effective visual aid. It was also interesting that really none of the songs I listened to were entirely up beat and catchy. Most were sad and had slower melodies. I'm not sure if this is something typical for German music or not!

AMD 3 - Eric Vander Putten

For this chapters AMD I chose to watch another episode of South Park. The episode I chose to watch for this chapter was the second episode of the imaginationland series. I am starting to understand more of the words that they are saying in the episodes, which is making them even more enjoyable to watch.

It is very entertaining to watch this show because of all the different voices that the characters have. I also think that these are some of the funniest episodes of South Park that have been made and i enjoyed them very much. While i was not able to understand most of what they were saying, I was able to understand more words this time than I was able to last time and I feel that watching these episodes is actually helping me learn more German.

I recommend anyone who enjoys South Park to watch these episodes in German for an AMD. They are very entertaining and I am sure you will enjoy them.

AMD 3

I figured that, since I thought the video of the German comedian in the McDonalds' drive-thru to be quite funny, I'd look into some more German comedy.
I searched the internet and found some videos of German's doing stand up. From what I could tell, it seemed a lot like American comedy in the sense that it was diverse. Some of them were really witty, some made fun of themselves, and some were just plain silly. I even saw one video of a German guy making Nazi jokes. He was doing a spiel on buying weapons in America and how if you're German you have to take the "Nazi-Test" in order to be allowed to get one. I found most of them to be pretty funny.
One in particular that was good was a young guy who was doing this act of how he eats McDonalds in his car, depending on what music is on the radio. 'Twas quite entertaining.

Here's a link to another guy going through a mock-court dialogue. The subtitles are in English, but everything he says in German rhymes; just check it out.

Enjoy!

AMD3

Guten morgen!

For my third AMD, I watched "Inglorious Bastards". This movie showed America's involvement in WWII, but with a comical twist. However, it is still a movie about war, and thus is incredibly violent and crude. While not meant to be a serious movie, there seemed to be a few nuggets of truth throughout the movie, like the fact that Americans do not tend to be nearly as cultured as Europeans. Es ist sehr komisch, aber graphisch . I would give it 3.5/5 stars (because of the incredibly long, and absurdly boring middle section of the movie).

Willkommen!!

Welcome to our class blog!

We will be using this blog throughout the semester for two kinds of assignments:

1. Once per chapter, the homework plan will direct you to post a response to the culture readings for the chapter on the blog.

2. Roughly every other week, the homework plan will direct you to post here for your Abenteuer mit Deutsch (AMD) assignment. First you do a fun activity that involves German, then you post about it. You should spend an hour total on this (maybe 45-55 minutes doing something, 5-15 minutes posting about it). See Was ist ein AMD, AMD Ideen and Beispiele for ideas. This should get you excited about the kinds of things you can do!

Whenever you post something, please include your name and the name of the assignment (e.g. AMD2, Kultur5) as labels. See "Blog: How To" for more details!