My Fair Lady

or Pronunciation Post II

Gliding, whistling and exploding through different British pronunciation videos made me feel very funny throughout the last couple of days. I had a very strange feeling that I could not quit detect until half way through “RP British Accent” – a quit good RP online lesson – I stumbled across this sentence:

“In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire hurricanes hardly ever happen.”

Finally I knew why I felt so special: I felt just like My Fair Lady. If you are as big an Audrey Hepburn fan as I am, I am sure you will recognize this sentence. For all of my fellow classmates who do not know Audrey Hepburn and are a little late with their Pronunciation practise or simply looking for an easy and funny way to do this here is my tip: Watch the musical film adaptation from George Bernard Shaw’s My Fair Lady, which was produced in 1964. In addition to a marvellous Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison you will find lots of possibilities to practise together with the main characters. Basically, this movie is about the arrogant and snobbish Professor Higgins (Rex Harrison), who is a teacher of phonetics. He strongly believes that a person’s accent determines his or her place in society. He states that he could teach any woman to speak so “properly” she could be passed off as a duchess. In order to prove his theory he selects the young flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) whose strong Cockney accent is keeping her from realizing her dream to work at a flower shop. Throughout the story he not only changes her pronunciation but also falls in love with her. But I have said enough already. See for yourself.

PS: Should you not know how to get access to this movie, write me: ailuj.seemann@gmail.com

Culture Presentations

Wow! I really have to say, I was impressed by the vaste range of topics we carried together for our culture presentations. Listening to my colleagues I learned plenty new stuff.

Anita Bhatti introduced me to the art of Newgrange, the oldest artwork in the world.
From Diana Skof I got some shocking facts about Psychiatry in Ireland in the middle of the last century.
Irish Dance is no longer this big secret to me, thanks to Katharina Luttenberger.
I was stunned by the story Bianca Brandtner told about Donal Walsh's fight against suicide in Ireland.
Thanks to Carmen Loderer, I'm now jeallous of Irish students for their opportunity to do a transition year.
The stories Katja Wallner told about animal symbolism in Irish Mythology captivated me.
Until Verena Praschs presentation about Whiskey I didn't even know there is such a thing like Austrian Whiskey.
Next time I'm in Dublin I will pay the Dublin Docklands a visite, beeing curious about them since Sowannry Em introtuced them to me.
I do now have a deeper knowledge about the GAA, thanks Alexandra Perfler.
Me and my sisters will send our 40-years old single cuisine to Willie Daly, hoping he can help. Natalie Riedl
Next time I'm invited to a Dinner party in one of the southern states of the US I will bring a cake. Thanks to Julia Rauch for giving me all this information about Southern Hospitality.
Should I ever get arrested in the US, at least because of Livia Pershy I do now know which society threat group I have to become a member of, in order to not get beat up.
And the San Francisco bay arrea is no longer a stranger to me, after heaving heard Marina Margeta's presentation.

All in all it was a really fun afternoon with lots of fun new facts to learn.

The presentations which most ceptured me, which I'm really curious about and which I'm choosing to be tested on in the KGP are:


Irish Dance
Transition year.
Animal symbolism in Irish Mytholog
Whiskey
The GAA

"The Awful German Language" by Mark Twain

Just in case you don't know who Mark Twain is/was:
Whoever heard about Tom Sawyer and Huckleyberry Finn, has heard about Mark Twain too. Samuel Langhorn Clemens, how Mark Twain is actually called, is the author of this two fabulous books. He lived in the second half of 19th century and is an important American Author. So important that William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature" once.

Maybe you already knew who Mark Twain is. Maybe you even know all this information already. But I am pretty sure that there are not so many people out there to know this about this great man:

somewhen between is birth in 1838 and the publishing date of his book “A Tramp Abroad” in 1880 Mark Twain payed Heidelberg a visit. Staying in Germany for several months he took the effort to learn our complicated language. After wards he wrote about it in his book mentioned above. He wrote about all the little quirks of German.

First is frustrated by the many exceptions to every rule. Next he is completely lost in the cases-jungle. Later tells about him being taken aback by the, to english ears/eys, unusually long sentences. And at somepoint he talks about the very strange habit of us german speakers to talke about little girls in the neutra.

Should you now be as curious about looking at our language from the perspective of this great American Author. Please be my guest and check this out.


Have fun!

ASL - American Sign Language

For many, many years I thought, like many, many other people, that Sign Language is an international the same. By now, I know that's a ridiculous idea. When my friend started to work at a kindergarten for children with hearing disabilities, I first got in touch with signing. Together with her I started to learn some useful signs and it got very funny pretty quickly. When we were on a night out we would start to signin in discos. I acutally thought about taking sign language as my second language. But it was not until last week that I really dug in deeper into this matter.

I discovered this new TV-series "switched at birth" where many deaf and hard of hearing people act. One of those Actresses caught my attention and I started researching. Marlee Matlin lost her hearing nearly completley when she was 18 months old. Nonetheless, did she manage to start an acting career. Today she is the first and only deaf Actress to have recieved the Acadamy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Moreover, she acted in more than 15 movies and several Television productions. In her book "I'll scream later" she writes about her interesting life.

Thanks to this TV-series I now found out that in the US there is actually the world wide first, and unfortunately onliest, University for deaf and hard of hearing students. The Gallaudet University in Washington offers both undergraduate and graduate programms. I also tried to find out something about the educational situation for deaf and hard of hearing people in Austria and Germany. But all I could find, was that people in Germany try now already for several years to start a similar University in Bad Kreuznach. Unfornuately they still didn't manage to do that. 

Russian How I Met Your Mother

This post is for all How I Met Your Mother fans and my fellow russian students. For those of you who are not that into HIMYM it is fun too.

First of all I am pretty sure everybody at least knows what HIMYM is... And now I am happy to announce that a small russian TV-Channel has made a hilarious low-budget remake from our favourite TV-Series. In the russian version our five friends Ted, Marshall, Lilly, Robin and Barney turned into Dmitri, Pawel, Lucy, Katja und Jura who no longer live in New York but in Moskau. The Bar they spent most of their time in and the upstairs apartment look a lot like the original. Even the camera angles seem similar if not the same. The script follows an exact translation from the english version with a few jokes that had to be addapted. Thanks to working together very closely with the producer of the original series the costumes, accessoires and furniture look very alike. All in all, even without speaking russian fluently it is possible to follow "kak ya vstretil vaschu mamu" if you know the original. And more than anything else it is great fun. See yourself!


For those who would like to have a closer look on this, here is a link where you can watch "kak ya vstretil vaschu mamu" online. Have fun!

New York City

Some people - actually quite a lot - think of "the big Apple" as the best city in the whole world. To me it is just another place I'm on war with. Last spring when I went to Honduras I had to change planes at JFK Airport. A six hour stay was scheduled and after some research my plan was fixed. 

Being stranded in the city that never sleeps between 8 pm and 2 am has to offer me something. I had found out, that with no form of transportation I will need more than an hour from the airport to the Empire-State-Building. I had already booked an online special VIP-ticket so it would not take me more than twenty minutes to reach the roof top. In total this whole exursion would not have last longer than three, maximum four hours what would have left two hours for all the other stuff. 

We landed half an hour earlier than scheduled and leaving the plane I was really enthusiastic about the next view hours. This enthusiasm only lasted until I saw the long, long, long cew at the customs service. Together with all the other passengers of our flight and of three different I had to wait for two hours until I could pass the customs service. Just to find out that against several affirmation from the check-in staff, the cabin crew and even the pilot my luggage was not beeing transfered automatically to my next plane. I had to take it, cary it threw customs services and find my next check-in counter to get rid of it again. At the check-in counter the next surprise was waiting for me: not only that it didn't open until 45 minutes before take off, no there were not any sitting possibilities too. All I wanted was have one great trip to the roof top of the Empire-State-Building and all I got was one really anoying and uncomfortable night on the floor of the JFK Airport.

I have to addmit, maybe I don't like NYC anymore because we got off on the wrong foot but I am sure I will not go back that quickly.