Names are important everywhere--names of places, persons, families. German extends this even further by capitalizing the names of everything from moods to social trends, thus making them seem more like names. But we are all used to capitalizing personal names (I can think of two famous exceptions: e.e.cummings and bell hooks); it's a measure of how important they are to us. The first question asked new parents is: what is her/his name? And what celebrities name their children has long been the stuff of gossip columns and magazines. Most parents feel that it's nobody's business but their own what they name their children. But in Germany, that's not true. It's the business of the local registry (Standesamt).
When parents go to register the name they've chosen for their new-born, they are subject to governmental approval. If the Standesamt doesn't approve, the couple must appeal the decision, and even then may be denied the right to name their child whatever they want to. How the bureau makes its decision isn't entirely arbitrary: the name must reflect the sex of the baby and not subject the child to shame or embarrassment. There are other restrictors: last names cannot be hyphenated (on the grounds that a child with a hyphenated name might grow up to marry a person who also has a hyphenated last name, and so on, into infinity...), first names can be foreign but must be in current use in the country of origin, and brand names are generally rejected (like McDonald or Chanel, although the name Pepsi-Carola was approved, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal). Many parents use the services of the Language Society to back up their choices. Through its 20 branches in other countries, the Language Society renders a yay or nay in several thousand cases a year. That is not to say that Germans cannot use foreign names; in fact, the Uwes, Hedwigs, Klauses and Edeltrauts are fast giving way to the Leonis, Luises, Emilys and Pauls. (See popular German names in german.about.com.)
Germany is not the only country that regulates names. But this practice is so alien to Americans, it smacks of totalitarianism. Yet when you consider some of the names that are out there, it begins to sound like a good idea. How about LaPimp for a little girl in honor of her imprisoned daddy? It's not so much that the child will be ridiculed or even reviled (consider the name Adolph) but that we should be thinking about our kids, not ourselves. The child is going to have to live with the moniker for the rest of her life, unless she goes to the trouble of changing it. But it takes a lot of determination, money, and government consent to do that. Why not give your child a fighting chance from the start?
I know it's not that simple: I wanted to give my daughters names that were really different--so I named them Kristen, Carrie, and Kelli. Needless to say, I didn't realize that the names were just beginning to be wildly popular. I learned my lesson by daughter number four: her name is Dori, but I'm beginning to hear that name more often...ah, well. I was the only Ellen I knew growing up; now I'm seeing my name everywhere--and I hate that! Yet how could my parents have known what was going to be popular fifty years into the future? It can happen to any of us.
Although I sincerely doubt that it will happen to Pilot Inspektor.
[For a discussion on naming, see the Baby Name Wizard.]
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Friday, July 21, 2006
German Penpals
Discover the World Through Letters -- Die Welt per Brief entdecken
Is traditional letter-writing via "snail mail" a lost art? Are envelopes and stamps obsolete? The German post office, Deutsche Post AG, doesn't think so, and they have Letternet—with over 250,000 members in more than 100 countries—to prove it! Deutsche Post would like you to "discover the world through letters" and they've set up a Letternet Web site (in German and English) to help you do that. According to the Letternet Web site, Letternet is the largest free pen pal club in the world.
I was recently surprised to learn that Letternet has been around since 1997. Membership is free and open to just about anyone in the world. All Letternet members receive a quarterly magazine called Lettermag (in German and English).
Letternet doesn't use email, but you can still use your computer to register online (see links below). You provide some info about yourself and a computer then selects your first "ideal" penpal (Brieffreundin in German). But you can also look through Letternet's registered members to select someone with whom you'd like to exchange letters. After you register, you'll receive a small package from Letternet with a welcome letter and the contact info for your first pen pal.
Although Letternet is sponsored by the German post office, your penpal(s) can be anywhere in the world. The Pinnwand (notice board) in a recent edition of Lettermag featured four pages of "classifieds" (Kleinanzeigen) for members in France, South Africa, Germany, the USA, Finland, Belarus, Turkey, Sweden, most of the German-speaking Europe, and several other countries. Although the main languages for corresponding are German and English, other languages (French, Italian, Russian, Turkish, etc.) are also possible. You can also place your own free ad in the magazine.
To learn more about Letternet and how it works, visit the Web site and other Web links below.
WEB > Letternet.de - About the pen pal organization
WEB > Letterfun.de - About the Lettermag magazine
WEB > Letternet in English from Deutsche Post AG
Is traditional letter-writing via "snail mail" a lost art? Are envelopes and stamps obsolete? The German post office, Deutsche Post AG, doesn't think so, and they have Letternet—with over 250,000 members in more than 100 countries—to prove it! Deutsche Post would like you to "discover the world through letters" and they've set up a Letternet Web site (in German and English) to help you do that. According to the Letternet Web site, Letternet is the largest free pen pal club in the world.
I was recently surprised to learn that Letternet has been around since 1997. Membership is free and open to just about anyone in the world. All Letternet members receive a quarterly magazine called Lettermag (in German and English).
Letternet doesn't use email, but you can still use your computer to register online (see links below). You provide some info about yourself and a computer then selects your first "ideal" penpal (Brieffreundin in German). But you can also look through Letternet's registered members to select someone with whom you'd like to exchange letters. After you register, you'll receive a small package from Letternet with a welcome letter and the contact info for your first pen pal.
Although Letternet is sponsored by the German post office, your penpal(s) can be anywhere in the world. The Pinnwand (notice board) in a recent edition of Lettermag featured four pages of "classifieds" (Kleinanzeigen) for members in France, South Africa, Germany, the USA, Finland, Belarus, Turkey, Sweden, most of the German-speaking Europe, and several other countries. Although the main languages for corresponding are German and English, other languages (French, Italian, Russian, Turkish, etc.) are also possible. You can also place your own free ad in the magazine.
To learn more about Letternet and how it works, visit the Web site and other Web links below.
WEB > Letternet.de - About the pen pal organization
WEB > Letterfun.de - About the Lettermag magazine
WEB > Letternet in English from Deutsche Post AG
Friday, July 07, 2006
Learning the Language
I know one thing about you: you have an interest in things that are German. Clever of me, eh? Why else would you be reading this blog? You want to learn about the country, its people, its culture, and its influence on your own country. What I don’t know---what I can’t take for granted---is whether you also want to learn its language (if you don’t already know it). I can’t take your interest for granted because many people want to know something about the language, but don’t particularly want to learn how to understand and to speak it.
Some of you were raised in German-speaking homes or neighborhoods, but even that doesn’t mean that you know the language. You might understand it when you hear it, and even be able to speak it well enough to get by. But you can’t read it very well, let alone write it, and you don’t know beans about its grammar (for good reason, you’ve been told!).
Then there are those of you who don’t know the language at all, even though you love Germany. You would love to visit, but you hesitate because you don’t know the language. Or maybe you have been there and found that, while it might have been nice to know the language, it really wasn’t necessary, especially not with a good phrasebook or pocket dictionary.
Excuse me, but that’s like thinking that wading in the baby pool is as satisfying as swimming in the big pool. You can get wet, maybe even cool off a little, but you’ll never know the joy of immersing yourself in the water, to feel its flow, its life, and its buoyancy.
So do I think it is important to learn the language? What do you think? Das stimmt! Definitely, yes! Even if you never actually visit the country, or know a native, I don’t believe that you can ever really understand a country's people, culture, even history unless you know at least the basics of its language
Please don’t misunderstand me: I didn’t have such a noble philosophy or motivation when I started “dabbling” in German. In fact, I wasn’t really interested in learning any language, let alone German, which I had always heard was very difficult.
It could have easily been any number of languages which caught my interest, but I had met someone through an Internet mailing list who just happened to be German. I didn’t even have to learn German, because his English was excellent. But I felt bad that the burden of communicating in another language fell exclusively on him. And I was embarrassed that the only foreign language I had ever tried to learn was high school French, and that badly, and because I was required to.
And it wasn’t long before I became fascinated with the language all on its own merit. After a year and a half of trying to teach myself German with every tool I could find, I was finally able to visit Germany, and I fell in love with it and its people. But I think I had already developed a “crush” just from becoming acquainted with its language.
I had never thought about it before, but I found that one can learn an awful lot about a people by the language they speak. Not only do people shape their language, but their language shapes them by helping to develop their thinking patterns and reinforcing their society’s rules and conventions.
It fascinates me, for instance, that Germans have formal and informal forms of “you”, with rigid rules that govern their usage (and that these are becoming more flexible with the newer generations). Americans have no such distinction, which may make us seem more open, or democratic, but which also makes it possible for us to forget concepts like respect and not taking relationships for granted. I also thought it interesting that while Germans use “Sie” for those they don’t know well, and for authority figures, and “du” for our most intimate relationships, or for children, they use the “du” form when they refer to God. What does that mean? What does that say about them as a people?
When I learned how Germans count, I was struck by the kind of thinking that has to develop to be able to grasp the relative size of a number until you’ve heard the whole thing. “How many eggs do you want to buy? Three? Oh, excuse me, thirteen? Oh, okay! Ninety-three!” (German counting goes like this: “drei” (three), “dreizehn” (thirteen---”zehn” means ten) and ”dreiundneunzig” means ninety-three ---”neun” means nine.) When I complained about how hard it was to “hear” their numbers, my German friend remarked, “But we don’t think about it; it comes naturally. It’s just something that we pick up, along with everything else, just like you did when you learned English.” I know he’s right, but I still maintain that German brains have to be “trained” a little differently than ours.
Has it been hard to learn German? Of course! But not at all impossible. I would never have been able to do it, though, if I had held on to my usual perfectionist standards.
When I took my first trip to Germany, I only had a year of self-instruction under my belt, and I felt totally incapable of understanding, let alone speaking the language. I walked around mute, reluctant to fall back on speaking English, but terrified of trying to speak German. And the “words” that everyone was supposedly speaking might as well have been unheard by my “deaf” ears.
But when I resumed my studying when I got home, I experienced a kind of break-through. It was as if the application of the spoken word on my deaf ears had restored part of my hearing. Unexpectedly, the tapes I listened to in the car began to make sense. I recognized a lot more words, and they definitely didn’t sound as weird as they had before. My vocabulary increased rapidly. Grammar, however, might as well have been a black hole.
When I returned to Germany seven months later, I found that I could actually understand some conversations by recognizing key words and guessing the rest from by body language and tone. And I broke my personal sound barrier, and tried to carry on conversations of my own. Of course, I was an abysmal failure, at least to my ears, but I still felt that I was making progress.
Which was why I was surprised when I tried to pick up my studies back home: I just kept going around in circles. Oh, I was able to pick up some more words, and I made some progress with the past tense, but other than that, I seemed to be going nowhere.
This explains how I came to be sitting in a classroom, for two hours a week, for eight weeks. After two years of trying to learn German on my own, I finally decided to “go legit”, and signed up for Conversational German II through a continuing education program.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
Some of you were raised in German-speaking homes or neighborhoods, but even that doesn’t mean that you know the language. You might understand it when you hear it, and even be able to speak it well enough to get by. But you can’t read it very well, let alone write it, and you don’t know beans about its grammar (for good reason, you’ve been told!).
Then there are those of you who don’t know the language at all, even though you love Germany. You would love to visit, but you hesitate because you don’t know the language. Or maybe you have been there and found that, while it might have been nice to know the language, it really wasn’t necessary, especially not with a good phrasebook or pocket dictionary.
Excuse me, but that’s like thinking that wading in the baby pool is as satisfying as swimming in the big pool. You can get wet, maybe even cool off a little, but you’ll never know the joy of immersing yourself in the water, to feel its flow, its life, and its buoyancy.
So do I think it is important to learn the language? What do you think? Das stimmt! Definitely, yes! Even if you never actually visit the country, or know a native, I don’t believe that you can ever really understand a country's people, culture, even history unless you know at least the basics of its language
Please don’t misunderstand me: I didn’t have such a noble philosophy or motivation when I started “dabbling” in German. In fact, I wasn’t really interested in learning any language, let alone German, which I had always heard was very difficult.
It could have easily been any number of languages which caught my interest, but I had met someone through an Internet mailing list who just happened to be German. I didn’t even have to learn German, because his English was excellent. But I felt bad that the burden of communicating in another language fell exclusively on him. And I was embarrassed that the only foreign language I had ever tried to learn was high school French, and that badly, and because I was required to.
And it wasn’t long before I became fascinated with the language all on its own merit. After a year and a half of trying to teach myself German with every tool I could find, I was finally able to visit Germany, and I fell in love with it and its people. But I think I had already developed a “crush” just from becoming acquainted with its language.
I had never thought about it before, but I found that one can learn an awful lot about a people by the language they speak. Not only do people shape their language, but their language shapes them by helping to develop their thinking patterns and reinforcing their society’s rules and conventions.
It fascinates me, for instance, that Germans have formal and informal forms of “you”, with rigid rules that govern their usage (and that these are becoming more flexible with the newer generations). Americans have no such distinction, which may make us seem more open, or democratic, but which also makes it possible for us to forget concepts like respect and not taking relationships for granted. I also thought it interesting that while Germans use “Sie” for those they don’t know well, and for authority figures, and “du” for our most intimate relationships, or for children, they use the “du” form when they refer to God. What does that mean? What does that say about them as a people?
When I learned how Germans count, I was struck by the kind of thinking that has to develop to be able to grasp the relative size of a number until you’ve heard the whole thing. “How many eggs do you want to buy? Three? Oh, excuse me, thirteen? Oh, okay! Ninety-three!” (German counting goes like this: “drei” (three), “dreizehn” (thirteen---”zehn” means ten) and ”dreiundneunzig” means ninety-three ---”neun” means nine.) When I complained about how hard it was to “hear” their numbers, my German friend remarked, “But we don’t think about it; it comes naturally. It’s just something that we pick up, along with everything else, just like you did when you learned English.” I know he’s right, but I still maintain that German brains have to be “trained” a little differently than ours.
Has it been hard to learn German? Of course! But not at all impossible. I would never have been able to do it, though, if I had held on to my usual perfectionist standards.
When I took my first trip to Germany, I only had a year of self-instruction under my belt, and I felt totally incapable of understanding, let alone speaking the language. I walked around mute, reluctant to fall back on speaking English, but terrified of trying to speak German. And the “words” that everyone was supposedly speaking might as well have been unheard by my “deaf” ears.
But when I resumed my studying when I got home, I experienced a kind of break-through. It was as if the application of the spoken word on my deaf ears had restored part of my hearing. Unexpectedly, the tapes I listened to in the car began to make sense. I recognized a lot more words, and they definitely didn’t sound as weird as they had before. My vocabulary increased rapidly. Grammar, however, might as well have been a black hole.
When I returned to Germany seven months later, I found that I could actually understand some conversations by recognizing key words and guessing the rest from by body language and tone. And I broke my personal sound barrier, and tried to carry on conversations of my own. Of course, I was an abysmal failure, at least to my ears, but I still felt that I was making progress.
Which was why I was surprised when I tried to pick up my studies back home: I just kept going around in circles. Oh, I was able to pick up some more words, and I made some progress with the past tense, but other than that, I seemed to be going nowhere.
This explains how I came to be sitting in a classroom, for two hours a week, for eight weeks. After two years of trying to learn German on my own, I finally decided to “go legit”, and signed up for Conversational German II through a continuing education program.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
Sunday, June 25, 2006
World Cup
Germans are investing a lot in the World Cup this year. Not only are they sponsoring it (which puts all eyes on Germany) they are also competing in it. The hope is that both will bring Germany into the limelight, something that Germans have been hesitant to do ever since WWII. Not since the "miracle of Berlin" in 1953, which many think ushered in a new era of economic prosperity, has there been such an emphasis on the country and what it has to offer.
That is not for lack of trying. Germany, despite being the great force that it is in the European and world economy, has not received that attention that it deserves. But Germans themselves have contributed to this state of affairs: for instance, they don't even feel comfortable flying their own flag! The fact that the German flag has been in evidence during the World Cup has been explained as being "just for fun." There is no room for national chauvinism in the German mentality.
Of course this is a reaction to the events of WWII. It is doubtful that Germany will ever be allowed to forget the insanity that was the Third Reich. But many in Germany (and other places) think that it is time for Germany to be allowed to heal. Is this possible if the world will not forgive it? Is it enough that Germany forgives itself? That remains to be seen. And right now, all eyes are watching.
That is not for lack of trying. Germany, despite being the great force that it is in the European and world economy, has not received that attention that it deserves. But Germans themselves have contributed to this state of affairs: for instance, they don't even feel comfortable flying their own flag! The fact that the German flag has been in evidence during the World Cup has been explained as being "just for fun." There is no room for national chauvinism in the German mentality.
Of course this is a reaction to the events of WWII. It is doubtful that Germany will ever be allowed to forget the insanity that was the Third Reich. But many in Germany (and other places) think that it is time for Germany to be allowed to heal. Is this possible if the world will not forgive it? Is it enough that Germany forgives itself? That remains to be seen. And right now, all eyes are watching.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Business Sense
According to "Reasons for Studying German" which used to be on the imsa.edu website (I copied it in April of 2001), the main reason appears to be economic, which ought to concern those who are in business or taking business courses. While German ranks only 12th in terms of the number of people who speak it, it ranks third when considering all countries' GNP's. (German ranks behind only English and Japanese.) The United States in particular is in a reciprocal financial relationship with Germany: the majority of each country's foreign investments go to the other. This implies that while the U.S. has a mutual trade relationship with many countries, it looks to Germany for the largest share and exchange of monies. And Germany takes first place in world exports. It obviously has a huge part to play in international economics.
If countries stand to gain much from interaction with one another, it only makes sense to shoot for the highest level of communication. It is not enough for one country -- or one person, for that matter -- to learn the language of the other, while the recipient passively accepts what it is given. Would you want to leave it up to chance if you were trying to communicate with a potential business partner? The learner of a second language, no matter how proficient she or he is, is never going to approximate the knowledge of a native speaker, especially when idiomatic phrases are being used, which is almost always. Unless one has spent years in a foreign country speaking primarily with native speakers, it is extremely difficult to ensure that communication will go smoothly and without errors. Imagine how much more difficult it is when the speaker has only a rudimentary knowledge of the other language.
[See "Seven Reasons to Study German".]
If countries stand to gain much from interaction with one another, it only makes sense to shoot for the highest level of communication. It is not enough for one country -- or one person, for that matter -- to learn the language of the other, while the recipient passively accepts what it is given. Would you want to leave it up to chance if you were trying to communicate with a potential business partner? The learner of a second language, no matter how proficient she or he is, is never going to approximate the knowledge of a native speaker, especially when idiomatic phrases are being used, which is almost always. Unless one has spent years in a foreign country speaking primarily with native speakers, it is extremely difficult to ensure that communication will go smoothly and without errors. Imagine how much more difficult it is when the speaker has only a rudimentary knowledge of the other language.
[See "Seven Reasons to Study German".]
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
The Premise of This Blog
I ostensibly started this blog as a venue for describing my experiences with and thoughts about the German language and culture. I still intend to use it for that. But that doesn't explain the title I chose for the blog. The meaning might be somewhat obscure, so I'll attempt to clarify it now. It was meeting my now-husband that triggered my interest in Germany but only after I dealt with the fact that he was German. When I first met him, I had no idea that he was from Germany. I didn't even think that he was foreign. His writing was a little stiff and formal but I assumed that he was some kind of stuffy middle-aged professor. Oh, did I say that I met Guenther on the Internet? (More about that later.) When I found out that he was German, I was nonplussed. I'm a little bit German myself, but not so you'd notice, except that I do have looks that correspond to the stereotype (blonde hair, blue eyes). But I'd never been particularly interested in things German. In fact, other than what most people know, which is about World War II, the Nazis and the Holocaust, I didn't know a whole lot about Germany. I was familiar with German beer and traditional foods and Martin Luther and Wittenberg (I also happen to be Lutheran and went to Wittenberg University--in Springfield, Ohio) and I knew a few German words and phrases, the same ones that most other people know. But I knew practically nothing about its history and I certainly knew nothing about its people.
I have to be honest however and admit that my ideas about Germany were mainly negative, as are many people's, because of both World Wars and the Holocaust. So when I found out that my email partner was actually German, my heart sank. How was I going to reconcile my feelings about Germans with what I was beginning to know about this one German? He was anything but a monster, nor did he conform to any stereotypes I'd been introduced to. If anything, he is an aberration to some extent: he's actually half Spanish. Still, he was born and raised in Germany. And I was falling in love with him. What was I going to do? How would we ever be able to talk frankly about that dark period in Germany's history? Would the way that I felt forever be an obstacle in our relationship?
These questions will be answered as I add to this blog. But this brings me to the point I want to make about my title and subject. I have come to believe that Germany deserves a better deal than it has been given by most people, including historians and politicians. I intend to show that things German are actually germane to the historical and the personal, and not only human but also humane. I know that this is not a popular point of view, which is why I want to address it. I will show how I came to develop a much different attitude toward Germany than the one I grew up with, a process that did not come easily, but which has been born not only from my relationship with Guenther and his family, but also from a great deal of study. (For instance, I went back to school and earned a degree in history, specifically German history.) For these reasons, I believe I have the credentials to write about this topic. I hope that my readers will come to agree. I may not be able to change anyone's mind--and I know that I will also find many who already agree with my thesis--but I cannot help but write about this. It has become too important to me not to.
I have to be honest however and admit that my ideas about Germany were mainly negative, as are many people's, because of both World Wars and the Holocaust. So when I found out that my email partner was actually German, my heart sank. How was I going to reconcile my feelings about Germans with what I was beginning to know about this one German? He was anything but a monster, nor did he conform to any stereotypes I'd been introduced to. If anything, he is an aberration to some extent: he's actually half Spanish. Still, he was born and raised in Germany. And I was falling in love with him. What was I going to do? How would we ever be able to talk frankly about that dark period in Germany's history? Would the way that I felt forever be an obstacle in our relationship?
These questions will be answered as I add to this blog. But this brings me to the point I want to make about my title and subject. I have come to believe that Germany deserves a better deal than it has been given by most people, including historians and politicians. I intend to show that things German are actually germane to the historical and the personal, and not only human but also humane. I know that this is not a popular point of view, which is why I want to address it. I will show how I came to develop a much different attitude toward Germany than the one I grew up with, a process that did not come easily, but which has been born not only from my relationship with Guenther and his family, but also from a great deal of study. (For instance, I went back to school and earned a degree in history, specifically German history.) For these reasons, I believe I have the credentials to write about this topic. I hope that my readers will come to agree. I may not be able to change anyone's mind--and I know that I will also find many who already agree with my thesis--but I cannot help but write about this. It has become too important to me not to.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Here I go again
I'm giving it another try. Next quarter I've signed up for German 104. But I'm only going to audit so I don't freak out about my grades. I'm hoping that will actually help me to learn more easily. When I get stressed I clutch, and don't retain as much. I swear I can't remember hardly anything I learned when I took 103.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
I sat in on Guenther's first German class last night. 15 people signed up for it and many of them mentioned that they've been wanting something like this for a long time but haven't been able to find anyone teaching German outside of high school or college. I still can't figure out why "they" don't think that anyone wants to learn German. It's almost as if there's this unspoken agreement to not do anything extra to promote German culture, in the positive sense, that is. But these people seemed really excited about it.
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