AMD 2

For my second abenteuer mit Deutsch, I read the article "Duden publishes words of the decade volume." This article is about the German dictionary publisher, known as Duden who recently put out a volume that featured words that were added to the Duden that came from between 2000 and 2010. I thought it was interesting to see that many of these words that were added in the past 10 years are identical or very similar to words that we use in English. In particular, I found it interesting that the word googeln was added because this just shows how google has had a truly global impact these past few years, as google has been added to many other languages as a verb in English as well as many other languages. I also found it interesting that during the Cold War when Germany was divided into West Germany and East Germany, even though the 2 countries were divided a for a relatively short time in terms of the history of the language there were different words that appeared in the East German version of the Duden that were the result of the influence of the Russian language.
-Mike F.

Der Fliegende Holländer

For my first abenteuer mit Deutsch, I listened to the opera Der Fliegende Holländer by Richard Wagner. The title of this work translated into English is "The Flying Dutchman." Just based on what we learned already I was able to know what the title means. The of the Flying Dutchman is somewhat well known and some of you may be familiar with it. The plot of the story is that there is a captain of a ghost ship known as the Flying Dutchman, who once invoked Satan and thus was cursed to roam the sees forever. However, every seven years he is allowed to go on land and if he is able to find a woman to marry then he will be released from his curse. When the Dutchman's ship crashes into another ship run by a man named Daland, and this man takes the Dutchman back to his home, there Daland's younger sister decides she wants to break the curse on the Dutchman but I won't spoil whether she is successful or not. I enjoyed listening to this and I was able to pick on some words even though there were many that I didn't recognize, it can also be hard to understand what opera singers are saying. The fact that I was following along with the text that had the German text and the English text side by side and I was able to pick up on some new words this way, such as Gespenst or ghost.   

Kultur 2

I found reading these articles about elements of German social culture that seem unusual to Americans to be highly entertaining because during my senior year of high school i went to German for a few weeks and for part of that time I lived with a German family, and during that time I encountered basically everyone fo the things that the articles talked. The first article which discussed German's tendency toward complaining  was one of the things that I noticed the least while I was there. That's not to say that it went unnoticed though. When I was talking to my host family I often found them asking about things that i didn't like in America, and I found myself wondering, "Don't you want to know what's good about it too?"

The staring that was discussed in the second article was probably the thing that disconcerted me the most while I was there. The first time I rode on a train there I found myself stuck in starring contests with 2-3 different complete strangers. And I kept thinking can they tell that I'm a foreigner without me even speaking. Also I found it very funny that people will not like if you cross streets at the wrong time in Munich because I was actually staying in Munich and I crossed the street at a red light and some old man started yelling at me.

The brutal honesty that is discussed in the 3rd article is not something that I particularly noticed while I was there but I guess just didn't get into any conversations where I thought people said anything to me that would be considered rude in America. However, I think I would prefer this societal convention to what we have in America cause I have always found myself wondering why can people just say what they really think rather than hiding it behind polite language that is open to varied interpretation.

Finally the fascination with statistics was another thing that I did notice to some extent while I was there as well. When I first arrived my host family kept asking me many questions about America and Chicago,
similar to what is in the article. I noticed that my host family was always eager and willing to provide statistics about their city, Munich whenever given the slightest prompting.
-Mike Flinn

How German is American

While I don't personally have any German in my ancestry, I feel that I have always been quite aware of the fact that German culture has had a profound on American society. I believe that the fact that I lived my entire life in between the southern border of Wisconsin and downtown Chicago, both places that are known for having very high German populations and being influenced by German culture. In particular I felt that I was aware of how much German cuisine has shaped the American diet, because I basically grew up eating German food as it is so common in Chicago. Also as the article stated I was aware of how German design and architecture has been important in the architecture of American cities, Chicago specifically. I was actually aware of this before I read the article because my Uncle is very interested in architecture, and it makes sense that this is the case since Chicago has such a strong German community.

There were somethings in the article that i wasn't aware of despite growing up in a heavily german area. I found the fact that Germans played such a pivotal role in designing some of the most famous icons in American culture. I was surprised in particular to learn that the modern images of Santa Claus, The donkey and elephant of the two political parties and Uncle Sam were all created by the same person.
-Mike Flinn