Same Genes, Lame Queens

Wow, they sure are a different breed of humans. Closed doors, recycling gods, and disgusting journalism, how can they be so different from us and the world. Perhaps we're different from the rest of the world. When I lived in Korea, they also were nuts about recycling. They had a similar recycling system: cardboard box section, newspaper/papers, metals, plastics, and organic wastes. But I questioned these methods: don't recycling plants sort these out automatically anyway? From what I've seen in Toy Story3 with additional research of my own, nowadays recycling plants can sort out metals using magnetism. With advance in technologies, I feel like there also would be a way to sort out plastics using machines. I feel like all of the human efforts that was spent toward recycling could be simplified by machines. In Ann Arbor, there used to be 3 types of disposables: regular trash, paper/cardboards, and plastics/metals. Now, there are only regular trash and recyclables. This must mean that there is a method to sort out the recyclables.

I don't believe they make journalism into such a disgraceful field. Boobies and news? I guess it would be funny once in a while, but I don't think I would able to read it seriously. Imagine New York Times article with bunch of blondes with busty boobies hanging out. Credibility of the publisher just drops down. Plus joking in the article is also unbelievable.

Germans are seriously so weird. But I like it

Rammstein in Pandora

My friend Jeanne talked about how she knew how to count one to five in German. She said she heard it in a radio by a singer Rammstein. Because I never had much interest in German music, I didn't know who they were. So I opened Rammstein station in Pandora to hear who they were. And man, they sang some rock hard music. I've heard some American metal before, but wow German metal is in a different level. Perhaps it's the accent, but German metal sounds much more intense. It sounds like couple of demons scratching a blackboard and singing along with it.



I also played around with the music stations and also found different German music and that was still pleasant to the ear. And the only ones I liked was Mozart! Haha, but really, it shows the difference in modern German music and German classics. How much German music have changed. Why couldn't Germans continue to produce music enjoyable to the ear?

Toby Turner

I visit Youtube often to have a good laughter. One of my favorite youtubers is Toby Turner, who hosts CuteWinFail page in Youtube. I always enjoyed his videos of funny fails, cute babies, and awesome wins, but I never expected this. When I was working on a German skit with my German classmates, David told me about this funny videos called 'Ich bin Toby.' I couldn't find the video with the exact title, but I was able to find 'German Lazyvlog.' And guess what? It's Toby! The Toby! I thought Toby would be talking about how Germans are either cute, winners, or failures, but he wasn't talking about them. He wasn't even in talking in English. He was talking in Deutsch.

My God how much Deutsch 101 have made a difference. I could actually understand him talk. I admit the things he said was quite simple, but I could have understand most of things he was talking about. And WOW, he's actually pretty good at speaking German. He's got the pronunciation down and even the tone. Man, the things you find out and surprise you these days in Youtube and Internet in general.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RhxcI3WP-U

German Bathroom

Wow that's really crazy. I always thought that having an attendant in the bathroom is a high class thing, but I didn't know in Germany they had it everywhere, from gas stations to regular restaurants. I guess this is one of the reason why people say Germans are of different breed compared to other Europeans. This must be really frustrating and annoying to go to a bathroom since one always have to tip the attendants whenever they use the bathroom. Whenever I go to a bar, I would choose the bushes over the bathroom any day of the week if I have to pay to use the bathroom.

But I feel really bad the attendants. They do not get decent pay, and they only receive party of the 'tip,' as the rest goes to the company that hired them. And the quality of the job in general, it just seems so bad. One's gotta remain in the bathroom when people are excreting, and that just seems so unfair. I wouldn't want to hear someone excretion process, let alone smell it. This job reminds me of the movie Deuce Biglow: Male Gigolo (1999). The main actor's father is a bathroom attendant in some fancy restaurant in the states. You could hear people farting and taking a dump in the background in the movie. Later on, someone clogs the toilet, and you could see how dirty this job can get. I suppose whenever I have to use the bathroom in Germany or see a bathroom attendant, I should tip them well.

Freikörperkultur

We've read an article in Kulture vier about German nudity and its association with Freikörperkultur. I was very surprised to learn this at first, but it reminded me of the German I watched a couple of years ago. I don't recall the title, but the plot is the group of German teens rebelling against the government, using terrorism as their weapon. They traveled to an African country like Libya and trained for terrorism. On rooftop of two-story building they took off all of their cloth and sunbathed. The Muslims watched them with rolling eyes, as Islamic laws regarding females behavior in public was extremely strict (it's illegal to kiss a women in public). I also was surprised by the causality between the males and females, since they both were completely exposed.

Freikörperkultur (FKK) is literally translated as free body culture. Such culture is to enjoy the nudity without direct relationship to sexuality. Such cultural movement began in the early 20th century and still lasts until today. It is viewed quite normal that even German chancellor Angela Merkel's naked appearance in front of the magazine wasn't too surprising.

Though I enjoy being naked, I don't think I can ever be naked in a public setting. Doing an activity while naked doesn't sound very sanitary or safe, and I want some kind of protection in order to avoid or cushion any risky blows to the groin. I however, would like to try nude beach sometime. Being casually nude with other people might creep me out at first, but I think being naked in a innocent way could be fun, exciting, and diversifying experience.

Humanoid Robots

I've learned that Germans are different breeds of humans that are way too logical and law-abiding citizens. Too different, almost as if they're robots that merely resemble the physical appearances of humans. Anyway, what I found really interesting was when the author saw a group of punks with mohawks waiting for the light to change. Really? I thought punks were supposed to be anti-government and supposed to break rules. This got me wondering what German punks do then for fun? Do they go against the society by having different hairstyles and fashion?

I actually see some of the German traits in all culture, so I don't think Germans are too different from us. The honor system of boarding German buses or trains could also be found in US. When I lived in San Diego the past summer, they actually had a similar honor system. Anyone could have boarded the monorails without showing any passes, but occasionally there would be people associated with the San Diego public transport system boarding and checking tickets. I still vividly remember a homeless person jumping off the monotrail when he saw couple of people wearing uniforms. He was about 6' 1", yet he wore size 5 pink female slippers.

I've actually seen bike lanes before in Korea, though no one follows the lane rules there. I was surprised to hear that bikers would not actually stop for pedestrians in Germany. This made me think that Germans are cold-hearted mindless robots, but it reminded me of the different environment the country developed under. What really surprised me was Germans love for nudity. I thought Germany was a cold humid country, but I supposed they try to enjoy the little things and savor the taste of bright warm rays hitting the naked bodies of theirs. German's culture seems to be very different, like any other culture. 

The German Language

We've been learning German language for a while now, struggling with the present tense irregular verbs and memorizing terms. I thought it would be interesting to take a step back and see the bigger picture. I googled German language, and as always Wikipedia appeared as the first link. I clicked on it, and read through  origin of German language, overview of German Grammar, and use of German in today's world.

I knew that German was a language distinct from other European languages such as Spanish, French, or Italian. I was surprised to find that German originates from Indo-European languages, which comprises of Albanian, Armenian(!), Indo-Iranian (!), Italic (Romance), etc. Indo-European languages are spoken by 3 billion people. Germanic language comprises of mainly English and German.

There are 4 cases of German noun. We've learned two: nominative and accusative. We've got two more to learn: genitive and dative. There are also 3 moods of German verb: indicative, imperative, subjunctive. I believe we're learning indicative and covered parts of imperative in Kapitel eins, but we haven't covered subjunctive yet.

I already learned from class that about 100 million speak German. What I did not know was that it's the most widely spoken language in Europe beside Russian. It is also the official language in EU, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Belgium, and South Tyrol in Italy. It is also the administrative and commanding  language of the Swiss Guard. 

The Awful German Langauge

Guten Tag!

Deutsch ist schwer. This was my facebook status was I was doing the online homework and now that I'm reading Mark Twain's The Awful German Langauge, I had to repeat the phrase. From our perpective, German seems very different from English, even though English is a Germanic language. From European stand point, English is also a weird language. French, Spanish, Latin, and German have gender nouns, but English doesn't. This is why when Mark Twain's essay was translated, the pronouns in the translation sounded awkward. The English pronouns he, she, it, they, us, and you made the whole essay very difficult to understand. Because I've learned Latin in high school, I have a basic understanding of how noun genders work. However, I can't imagine how confusing it must be for other students who never seen gender nouns before in their life.

The sentence structures of the essay also seemed awkward. I don't understand German grammar enough to explain why, but there also must be a component that makes German to English translation and vice-versa hard. I thought German would be enough since English is a Germanic language, but I learned that no language, including German, is easy to learn, as I've experienced with Latin and Chinese.

Kapitel Zwei, AMD2

Guten Tag!

Even though Germans might seem different from us according to the articles, they are in fact not too different. There are still people like the articles described in the US. Everyday, I see ton of people bitching about everything; I see young and old people staring at other people; I see brutally honest people who cannot or bad at lying (myself included); and I also see the nerds, who are absolutely cool, bringing out statistics. Germans and US aren't too different, as Germans have higher percentage of the people the article described. I'm sure there are also a lot of fat people eating burgers in Germany, as we are known to be.

There are however, reasons why most Germans are grown to act like this. There weren't many specific reasons in the articles, but one pointed out that due to cold war, each East and West Germany was in alert of strangers. Due to the threat of capitalism or communism, citizens from each country were looking for people acting out of the ordinary to find spies.

Before I read this article, I did not know that majority of Germans acted this way. But now I know! Before I fly to German to visit my friends, I must study and memorize the population and the size of Ann Arbor in square meters.

Facebook in Deutsch

Hallo,

I learned a lot through setting my facebook page in Deutsch. Alright, I'll be honest, I was so lost when everything turned into Deutsch. I don't like a 'Like' icon. Instead, I see 'gefällt mir.' What the hell is that supposed to mean? I assumed that gefällt was the verb of liking, so I got curious and looked up mir. Google translate tells me that it's suppose to mean 'me.' I thought that it was cute to like a status as if it's an entity. Anyhow facebook asks me 'was machst du gerade?' I knew 'was' is what 'du' is you, but when I tried to figure out what 'machst' and 'gerade' was, I was like it's probably asking me 'what are you doing?'

I posted 'facebook in Deutsch' as my status. Perhaps I could've said 'Gesichtbuch in Deutsch,' but I figured facebook was one of those words that became Germanized. In couple of hours, drei Freunde gefällt my status, and zwei Freunde commented it. I liked it. Finally able to somewhat communicate with my German friends in German, it felt incredible. I even thought I was intruding their privacy as I'm learn how to think in German, and basically thinking like them

I thought watching and surfing my facebook in Deutsch was a pretty incredible experience. People actually responded in Deutsch, unlike when I tried to view my facebook in Latin. No one liked it. Even I didn't like it. I hope by reading more Deutsch I'm able to comprehend Deutsch much faster.

Kultur1, How German is American

Hallo,

I thought it was very interesting to read a brief history of German immigration. This book was able to answer many of my curious questions that I was both actively and inactively thinking. As a second generation Korean American I knew the history of Korean immigration to USA, but I was able to learn many interesting facts about German immigration. I always thought United States was mainly influenced by Anglo-Saxons culture mainly as ex-British colony and huge Irish immigration in the mid 20th century due to potato famine. Somehow I've always thought Germans didn't influence the American culture, but I've learned that in fact they did. What I found very fascinating was their contribution to food. Hot dogs, pretzels, cheese, beer, etc. All of my favorite snack food in sports stadium had Germanic origins. I also didn't know that the Midwest, especially Wisconsin, was where Germans immigrated due to their love of forests. I thought it would've been the exact opposite due to the ease of farming in the plains in opposed to forests as the Germans would've had to cut down all those woods. I also learned that Amish had Germanic Swiss origin. I've always thought Amish was a weird group of people who moved to the Americas because they were being bullied by others due to their weird fashion.

German immigration to the Americas was very fascination. However, compared to other ethic groups, Germans don't have much pride in their nationalities. You don't often see German town as opposed to China town, little Italy, or Korean town. Perhaps nationalism movements in Germans, particularly the Nazis, influenced the way Germans thought of their country. Despite less people identifying themselves as Germans, Germanic culture have definitely influenced the American culture, like how the Italians, the French, the African Americans, Asian Americans, and other ethnicities have influenced. This reading reminded how America is very diverse with multiple cultures to make this country very special.