I've been here long enough that I suppose it's time I wrote a bit about the most obvious difference between Germany and the US - namely, the language. Although I wouldn't say I'm fluent, I definitely get along and usually don't have to ask about words very often. I guess I qualify then, to some extent, as being able to speak German. So here are some of the interesting things so far.
First, the immediately noticable aspect of German for any English speaker is that, although Germany has a very formal culture, the least formal aspects of English come from German. The scientific word the Germans use for 'matter' for example is the apparent origin of the English term 'stuff.' The word that is used for 'calculate' seems to be a relative of the English verb 'to reckon.' Scholarly and formal English terms tend to be taken more from romance languages like French, directly from Latin, or in some cases from Greek. There are interesting historical reasons for this but I'm not really too familiar with them. It just comes as an amusement to me that English would be divided in such an initially non-apparent way.
I suppose I should also talk about learning the language. German is considered to be fairly difficult to learn from English - moreso than any of the Romance languages but less so than Russian, Arabic, or eastern Asian languages. Luckily I had some prior experience, through Latin, with the noun cases, so some of it came more easily to me with a relatively small amount of classroom learning amounting to two years. Despite this, I found that when I got to Germany, I couldn't get a single word of what anyone said. It's not that my class had been taught a strange dialect or anything, just that we had focused on getting the grammar and speaking down with less focus on understanding. When we did listen to things by native German speakers, they were fairly short and we generally didn't understand more than a couple words.
This would seem a disadvantage, but actually I rather prefer this method. Two years is enough time to get a basic feel for word order and how the language is spoken and set up, plus a basic vocabulary. It's very difficult, on the other hand, to learn to understand native speakers with only forty five minutes a day of lesson. So you're better off learning the basics, equivalent to two or three years of high school lessons, and then spending some time in the actual country. I did have the advantage, however, of an in-country language course to fill in the grammatical gaps.
It does surprise me how quickly the language starts to come out. A foreigner has to be careful speaking German initially, as it's possible to almost literally choke on the words if you're not used to rolling Rs in the back of your throat, for example. However, my rate of formulation and of speaking have both drastically improved at incredible paces. Using the language seems to make it stick in a weird way - it's hard to explain exactly how, but stuff starts forming itself after a while.
Language is a particular academic interest of mine, and learning German is only making me more curious. I'll probably return to this topic later.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
A posting comes across the blog
Yes, I know it has been a while. I am sorry that I have been too busy partying, going to concerts, grilling and chilling with german people to write things on the blog, but such is the burden that one bears during an exchange year I guess.
More seriously, it has been really cool so far for the first month in my year host family. I barely even believe how much better my German is (mind you, I still have a LONG way to go) and I have managed to make friends with some of the kids at school as well. I don't really have any central topic to write about today, but I figure I might as well make it a bit comprehensive, so here goes.
School: An important topic for any kid my age. I'm at a Gymnasium, which is like a high school except that it goes down to fifth grade, and it's more or less for college-bound kids. The courseload is fairly heavy because the most you have of any class in a given week is four forty-five-minute hours; the schedule changes from day to day. The classes themselves are more intensive than your average US high school to prepare for the german Abitur (equivalent to the British A-Levels or the IB program in the US) but for the most part they're not too different from classes you might take in the States. There's German class, sport (gym), physics, chem, bio, math, social studies, econ, art, geography, and history, but there's also two required foreign languages (English and either Latin or French), Ethics or Religion, and Astronomy. Yes, I take all of these classes in a single week. In German. Yeah. Luckily the average school day here is about five hours long. That gives me more time to sleep.
Oh yes, sleeping. From what I hear, my bedtime is fairly late when it comes to exchange students; I'm going to bed every night between about 8:30 and 9:00 because I have to get up at 6:15 for school. One of the girls I talked to who had been in Croatia for an exchange year said for her first week there she slept every day from 5:00 PM until 8 the next morning.
One thing that I love about this place is that you can walk everywhere. My school is fifteen or twenty minutes away by foot. If I'm meeting someone in the city, I can get there in five to ten minutes with a bus for 2 Euros or I can take forty minutes to walk it, which being a cheap sort of person I do somewhat often. Unfortunately that is not possible when it rains, which it does all winter long in Germany, but it's great nonetheless. I'm considering going into the market for a bike, but most people here can get along fine without them.
I miss water fountains. They don't have them here and I'm always thirsty :(
I think there are a lot of stories about gross german food out there, but most of the stuff I've had is great and even some of the gross sounding stuff like Leberkäse ('liver cheese,' think SPAM with liver in it) goes alright on some of the awesome german bread. There are only a couple of things that I really can't go along with. There's Blutwurst, yes, blood sausage, which comes in a can and is in fact made out of blood and fat. A lot of my friends like the stuff and we have in around but it's not my thing - it's this black paste with white lumps in it where you sort of go ''eeew, that's... oh god.'' There's also this soft cheese we have in our fridge called Creme Royale. It brags on the outside about its 'blau und grun Schimmel' which, yes, means blue and green mold. It smells about how you think it would; the stuff is straight up rotten. I don't really know how they get the mold inside the stuff though... it grows within the block of cheese. Yum.
This was a fairly fragmented post because it was just random thoughts from the past month. I can give more specific stuff later.
More seriously, it has been really cool so far for the first month in my year host family. I barely even believe how much better my German is (mind you, I still have a LONG way to go) and I have managed to make friends with some of the kids at school as well. I don't really have any central topic to write about today, but I figure I might as well make it a bit comprehensive, so here goes.
School: An important topic for any kid my age. I'm at a Gymnasium, which is like a high school except that it goes down to fifth grade, and it's more or less for college-bound kids. The courseload is fairly heavy because the most you have of any class in a given week is four forty-five-minute hours; the schedule changes from day to day. The classes themselves are more intensive than your average US high school to prepare for the german Abitur (equivalent to the British A-Levels or the IB program in the US) but for the most part they're not too different from classes you might take in the States. There's German class, sport (gym), physics, chem, bio, math, social studies, econ, art, geography, and history, but there's also two required foreign languages (English and either Latin or French), Ethics or Religion, and Astronomy. Yes, I take all of these classes in a single week. In German. Yeah. Luckily the average school day here is about five hours long. That gives me more time to sleep.
Oh yes, sleeping. From what I hear, my bedtime is fairly late when it comes to exchange students; I'm going to bed every night between about 8:30 and 9:00 because I have to get up at 6:15 for school. One of the girls I talked to who had been in Croatia for an exchange year said for her first week there she slept every day from 5:00 PM until 8 the next morning.
One thing that I love about this place is that you can walk everywhere. My school is fifteen or twenty minutes away by foot. If I'm meeting someone in the city, I can get there in five to ten minutes with a bus for 2 Euros or I can take forty minutes to walk it, which being a cheap sort of person I do somewhat often. Unfortunately that is not possible when it rains, which it does all winter long in Germany, but it's great nonetheless. I'm considering going into the market for a bike, but most people here can get along fine without them.
I miss water fountains. They don't have them here and I'm always thirsty :(
I think there are a lot of stories about gross german food out there, but most of the stuff I've had is great and even some of the gross sounding stuff like Leberkäse ('liver cheese,' think SPAM with liver in it) goes alright on some of the awesome german bread. There are only a couple of things that I really can't go along with. There's Blutwurst, yes, blood sausage, which comes in a can and is in fact made out of blood and fat. A lot of my friends like the stuff and we have in around but it's not my thing - it's this black paste with white lumps in it where you sort of go ''eeew, that's... oh god.'' There's also this soft cheese we have in our fridge called Creme Royale. It brags on the outside about its 'blau und grun Schimmel' which, yes, means blue and green mold. It smells about how you think it would; the stuff is straight up rotten. I don't really know how they get the mold inside the stuff though... it grows within the block of cheese. Yum.
This was a fairly fragmented post because it was just random thoughts from the past month. I can give more specific stuff later.
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