AMD 5 - Terrence Tigney

Guten Tag! Heute, habe ich Germany, Pale Mother, gesehen. Ich finde es gut. Aber, ist es sehr unglücklich.

This movie was about the life of a young woman and her love. Soon after meeting, they dicide to marry. However, its not long before her husband is sent of to the front lines of WWII. While he is off fighting, she must go on with her daily life. Her husband does make it back for several short visits; after his first visit, they decide to have a baby. Following a short time skip, the young mother and her daughter must take refuge in a bomb shelter during an air raid. The attack demolishes their house, forcing them to travel across all of Germany to find a place to live. Periodically her husband continues to return and then leave, as the war goes on.

About half-way through the movie, the war ends and the family is reunited. However all is not well. They all seem to be incredibly unhappy, and just dealing with each other's company. The young mother suffers from facial paralysis, because of her teeth and must have them all pulled out. It's after this point that the family seems to give up on trying to be a family. But even at this point, the mother and daughter are still very close. Overall, I would give this movie 3.5/5 stars.

This part of the movie is following the mother's facial paralysis.

AMD 5 Kyle O'Meara

For my AMD 5, I read the Wikipedia article on Denglisch. While reading the article, it seemed like English words have planted many information or technology era words into different language with universal names such as "Computer" and "Software". This is particularly interesting to me because as technology expands and human interaction across the globe increases, I feel like many words will be the same sounds and have the same meanings in multiple languages. This leads me to wonder what language will be like deep into the future and wonder if languages just morph into one universal language. I was also interested in the Pseudo-anglicisms, which are German creations that have different or no meaning in English. A rather humorous one I found was the word Streetworker, which is supposed to mean the English Equivlent of Social Worker. In the United States, a street worker usually has the connotation for a Prostitute and not the respected field of social work. I also found it interesting how Deutsche Bank does most of its business in English. I could never imagine an American company doing most of their business in German.

Denglisch

For this blog, I read the Wikipedia on Denglisch which in the article is defined as; an influx of English, or pseudo-English, vocabulary into the German or Dutch language. Before I started reading the article, I expected it to be much like "Spanglish" which is a combination of Spanish and English

I came from a farming town where it was very common to have students in the school system who would come to work as migrants for a few months. I befriended a few and they seemed to always be speaking a little mixture of the 2 languages. Even when they tried to speak in all English it was very common for them to slip up and say "y" instead of and or "pero" instead of but.

However, from when I read the article on Denglish it was actually quite a bit different. Instead of using the 2 languages intermittently, Denglisch has just a few words that have an English influence. Most of these words also have to do with technology such as downloaden or Handy.

I was also surprised that it mentioned the fact that the older generations do not approve of the English influence in their language. To me, it makes sense that some words, especially when it comes to technology, sound quite alike for the convenience of all involved.

Danielle Ayres

AMD 5 -Ashley Britt

For this AMD, I chose to read the wikipedia article. I have always noticed that English incorperated many words and phrases from German, French, and other languages, but I never really considered this incorporation going the other way around. I was actually quite surprised at how much English is found in Deutsch "slang." I am not surprised, however, that the slang is more accepted by the younger generations than the older. This is, I would have to believe, true of most any culture. Its definitely true of English slang. I have found myself having to explain different English slang words to my grandparents, and even to my parents (though to a lesser degree). I am also not surprised that advertising utilizes alot of this Denglisch. Most of the listed companies are geared towards the younger generations, so it makes sense that they would "speak their language" in a way. The one usage that surprised me was that of banks. I would not have expected them to conduct more business in English/Denglisch than in Deutsch.

AMD 5 - Eric Vander Putten

For this AMD I chose to read the wikipedia article about Denglisch and found it very interesting. I did not know that using English words had become that popular in other countries, especially Germany. From the article it seems like many new words that are being added to the language are coming from English and the article seemed to say that many of the people of the older generation are not too happy about this.

It was interesting to read that with these new English words being added, the rules of the German language are also being bent to seem more similar to English. They gave the example "Was passierte in 2005?", which would seem more natural to a native English speaker, but is not correct German. It was also interesting to read that many fast food places only partially translate their food names, which seems like it would be very confusing for German speakers. Overall I enjoyed reading the article and am happy that I read it.

AMD 5 - Jeremy Kohtz

Guten Abend!
Für MEINE AMD 5, ich habe "Denglish" gelesen.

I honestly can say I didn't know America had THAT much influence on German in terms of changing their language. That's quite the feat. I know its not really "changing" it, per say, but it obviously has quite the influence, especially on the younger generation. I found it funny that the German Windows said "downloaden", but then a bunch of people got upset about it, so they changed it back to "herunterladen."
I also liked the fact that the article specifically referenced the history of the word "Handy" becoming an English-German word, seeing as how that word is portrayed in our textbook as just a standard German word!
I sort of want to look up the German parody songs they talk about. I was once a big Weird Al fan, so I can appreciate a good, classic parody. I feel like they'd be funny for us Americans, too, because we can understand some of what they're saying once they start using Denglish words.
One other thing I was pleased to see was the reference to Will It Blend?
If you don't know what that is, LOOK IT UP!

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!