AMD 4 - Joe Schafer

For this AMD post I decided to try out livemocha.com. While setting up my preferences I chose to emphasize exploring the German language in the hopes that I would be introduced to material we haven't covered in the course yet. Sure enough this worked! During my first "course" I was being shown how to say "good morning", "good night", "My name is...." and then up popped "Freut mich dich kennenzulernen." This translates as "Nice to meet you." I think this will come in handy since we didn't cover any colloquial statements to respond with after learning another person's name.

However, I did find the site a little difficult to use as a way to study grammar as it seems to use a different set of grammar rules or employ rules that haven't been taught yet. For example, in class we learned to say "Ich verstehe nicht" for "I don't understand" however on livemocha it uses "Ich verstehe das nicht." This is not a big change but it is different from what we have learned so far.

Overall, livemocha.com seems as though it will be a great tool to reinforce the instruction we recieve in our class and homework. And an awesome way to learn informal speech. I will most likely be using this as another study tool.

AMD 4

For my fourth AMD, I decided to look up German proverbs and expressions to see if they are similar to those that we say here in the United States. Some of the proverbs were the same, and easily understood in their German form. Examples of this are "Übung macht den Meister" which translates to “Practice makes perfect”. Another is “Ich bin nicht von gestern”, which means “I wasn’t born yesterday.” The proverbs I likes the most though, were the ones that meant that same thing as an English proverb, but translate awkwardly into the English language. For example, “Aus einer Mücke einen Elefanten machen”, is the equivalent of “To make a mountain out of a molehill”, but it literally translates to “To make an elephant out of a mosquito”. Some others I really liked were, “Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund” which is the equivalent of “The early bird gets the worm”, but translates to “The morning hour has gold in its mouth.” And “Lieber ein Spatz in der Hand als eine Taube auf dem Dach.” Which is the equivalent of the the English proverb “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” It translates to: “Better a sparrow in the hand than the pigeon on the roof (be happy with what you have)” It’s amazing to see how the same advice and truth is given in both the American and German cultures.

Ever since I was little, my dad (who speaks German) and I have been singing this German song. He told me a while ago what it was about, and apparently it's a nonsense song about elephants walking through the woods. For this week's blog entry, I decided to look up the lyrics and figure out exactly what the song is saying, since I now know quite a bit more German than I did when I was 10. Here are the lyrics:

Was müssen das für Bäume sein,

wo die großen Elefanten spazieren gehen,

ohne sich zu stoßen?

Rechts sind Bäume, links sind Bäume,

und dazwischen Zwischenräume,

wo die großen Elefanten spazieren gehen,

ohne sich zu stoßen!

Basically, the lyrics translate to:

What trees are these where the elephants go walking without hitting anything?

To the right are trees, to the left are trees, and in between there's space.

What trees are these where the elephants go walking without hitting anything?

It was fun to try and see how much of the song I could understand without translating it, since it's really quite nonsensical. I knew the general idea of the song, but now I know how to pronounce all the words and what individual words in the lyrics mean! I had fun singing through it, too. My roommate gave me some weird looks while I was singing a German song about elephants.

AMD 4 - Matthew Simpson

I'm feeling pretty hungry at the moment, so reviewing some German restaurants sounds like a pretty good idea. Well, here we go!

Marktwirt:

Pretty cool bird's eye view of the place, located in central Munich right next to the famous “Viktualienmarkt” square. But that's besides the point.

Food? Food.

Full menu here

This restaurant features a different selection of meals for every day of the week. Very trendy.

Item of Note: Kälberne Fleischpflanzerl mit Kräuterspätzle und Champignonrahm

From what I could gather, this means veal meatballs with a mushroom and herb sauce. 'Nuff said right there. I'm already booking my flight.

Brecht's:

"This is a restaurant for enjoying the relaxed atmosphere with a glass of wine and getting swept away by luxurious pleasures. Brecht's is open to new ideas, but at the same time doesn't want to completely neglect the past." (www.bestgermanrestaurants.co.uk)

Sounds good to me. Me too.

Food now? Yes alternate version of myself, food now.

Full menu

Item of note: Rücken vom Salzwiesenlamm unter der Mandelkruste mit gedünstetem Blattspinat, Portwein- Honigkirschen und Maiskuchen

Oh, that's obviously gratinated saddle of lamb in a crust of almonds with steamed spinach, port wine-honey cherries and corn cake. My thoughts exactly.

That even sounds expensive. It's priced at 26,50 euros which comes out to about 37.50 dollars (at the current exchange rate). That is definitely one fancy meal.

Well that about wraps it up. I'm gonna go make myself a not-so-fancy eggo waffle or something... Tschüss!

AMD 4 - Adam Zientarski

Over the past two weeks my good friend Jeremy and I had been scoping out houses around Ann Arbor for us and a few friends to live in. This can get very boring so we decided to make it a bit more interesting and say what we liked and did not like about some of the houses we went and looked at. Below is a paraphrased conversation about one of the houses we looked at... (we were aided by the german dictionary app on my phone in some cases).

Me: Ich finde der Boden klein.
J: Ja, das stimmt. Aber the die Wohnzimmer ist groß. Gut für eine Party.
Me: Das Haus hat viel Parken.
J: Ja, das ist gut. Die Farbe auf das Haus ist auch gut.
Me: Nein, ich finde rosa hässlich.
J: Wie viel kostet es?
Me: Das Haus kostet dreitausendsiebenhundertfünfundsiebzig Dollars per Monat.
J: Nett! That ist sehr preiswert!!!
Me: Ja, das ist richtig. Wohen wir ins das Haus.

New German learned:
der Boden: Basement
das Parken: Parking
dasWohnzimmer: Living room

AMD 4

This AMD I decided to visit the social networking site (livemocha) for people trying to learn languages. I played around the site for a bit and tried out all the different tools they have to help you learn a foreign language. The one tool that was my favorite was a tool that plays a recording to you and then you have a prompt and you get to record yourself saying the prompt. It allows you to play back what you record. I found this very helpful to be able to hear how it is actually said in German and compare that to how you say it. I think that this site would be beneficial to someone that wanted to be exposed to a language before they were going to visit it. I don't know how well this website would be if you wanted to become fluent in a language but it couldn't hurt.

-Katherine

AMD 4 - Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten

For this AMD, I decided to revisit one of the classic German fairy tales from my childhood - the Bremen Town Musicians, or Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten. My family in Germany is from Bremen, so this was always a favorite story of mine growing up. Whenever we went to Bremen, I loved going to see the statue of the Stadtmusikanten since I knew the story by heart!

The Statue of the Bremen Town Musicians in Bremen, Germany.

An extremely blurry photo that my mom texted me of me and the statue when I was 10.

I found a website that has a dual English/German text of the story, plus German audio as well. My mom used to usually translate the story while she was reading it, but occasionally she would read it to me in German, so it was cool getting to hear the German version again. The story is about a group of animals (a donkey, dog, cat, and rooster) who are all getting old and are being abandoned by their owners, so they set out for Bremen to find a better life as musicians! I won't spoil the ending for anyone who wants to read it, but it's a pretty cute and surprisingly happy ending for a German story. Most of the other German fairy tales that my mom would read ended with someone being eaten by chickens or losing a limb, so this was much-appreciated break!

Here's the link to the text/audio I used - check it out!

http://german.about.com/library/bllesen07dual01.htm

AMD 4 - Adventures in Germany

A few years back before my 3rd year in high school I was a part of this program called American Music Abroad. Essentially it was a symphonic band + choir full of students nominated by their high school band directors put together for a 3 week trip in Europe. My particular group traveled through 5 countries: France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, and Germany. I was looking forward to going to Germany and Austria the most. I would have put up some pictures, but unfortunately a very technologically-impaired friend from the trip ended up reformatting my camera's memory card. Similarly my memory is terrible so I won't be able to recall everything...hehe.

When we were in Germany we visited Heidelberg and spent a day or two in Dinkelsbühl, which is a historic city in Bavaria. We spent a few hours in Heidelberg, during which I toured the castle with a few friends and saw the many massive kegs that were there. I had to walk up a whole ton of flights of stairs just to get up to where the castle was. I also went to the main marketplace.

We spent about two or three days in Dinkelsbühl, during which I visited the 3D museum and did some wandering around the town. They were also preparing for a festival called the Kinderzeche, which is a festival to celebrate the town's surrender to the Swedish during the Thirty Years' War when the town was spared from massacre by a child.

Willkommen!!

Welcome to our class blog!

Throughout the semester, you will be posting here roughly every other week 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). And make sure to add your name as one of the "Labels." See the links on AMD Ideen and Beispiele for ideas! This should get you excited about the kinds of things you can do!