"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. 

Irish Easter

First of all, welcome back after the easter break.

I am sure we all enjoyed the days off and most of us have spent the holidays with their familys celebrating easter with many traditions.

In Austria there are a number of different traditions connected to easter. Some of them are the same but of course every family has a couple additional traditions just for themselves. In Ireland I am pretty sure it is the same. Curious about Irish easter traditions here is a short overview about what we have in comon and what is different in Austria and Ireland.

As we all know easter already starts 40 days before Easter Sunday. This period is called Lent. In the traditional way one should not eat meat during this time (many people try thesedays to go without something else they really like, for example chocolate). What I did not know is, that Irish people usually eat fish every friday in Lent in some kind of fish soup and they also do not eat eggs until Easter Sunday. In both countries eggs are a symbol for easter and the will get painted in different colours.

Of course the most important week in Lent is the last week also known as Holly week starting with Palm Sunday. On Friday, Good Friday, just like in Austria people try not to do any outside work and prepare themselves for Easter. Then comes Easter Saturday with the Easter Vigil in the evening. Which is the same in both countries again. Apparently we Austrians are the more unpatient folks and so we already have our easter Dinner on Saturday. It usually consists of homemade white bread, smoked meat, horseradish, vegetables, wine and off course eggs. All this food will previously be blessed by the priest. Irish people wait patiently until easter sunday for their special Easter meal. In Ireland this would usually includes potatoes, vegetables, meat, stuffing, bread and anything else that makes up a good proper Irish feast. All together the Irish Easter is not that different from the Austrian.

I hope you all had a Happy Easter. :-)

Brits vs. Austrians

Inspired by our lesson about stereotypes I started to browse through the internet a little bit. Here is my result:

 Daily routine of a common Brit:

He/she get’s up in the morning and after the first cup of tea he/she leaves the house. At the bus stop is everybody waiting in a queue until it is his/her turn. Then finally in the office he/she is having the second cup of tea and starts working. At lunch time he/she goes to the nearest pub to have fish and chips and a third cup of tea before it goes back to work. In the afternoon he/she either just has a fourth cup of tea or goes to a local tearoom to have a traditional English tea party with cucumber sandwiches and cake and tea of course. On his/her way back home he/she chats politely with his/her neighbor about the weather (usually the rain or drizzle that occurred during the day) before he/she enters the terraced house and has a nice roast for dinner. Afterwards he/she either goes to the local pub to have some beers or they stay at home to watch a nice Monty Python film. In the weekend they go out to the local pub and drink until the barkeeper calls last round at around 11 and then they lurch home. On Sunday they watch or take part in traditional cricket or football games before in the evening right before they go to sleep they have their fifth cup of tea just to fall sound asleep and dream from Marry Poppins.

An ordinary day for a Homo Austriacus: 

First of all everybody is called Maria, Heidi, Lisl, Rolf or Friedrich. He/she get’s up and first thing in the morning:  he/she climbs into th e Lederhosen/Dirndl. Afterwards he/she goes out to the pasture to milk the cows. During that work he/she either listens to Mozart or starts off yodelling. At a later time he/she starts his/her job which usually is skiing-instructor or hiking guid. At lunchtime he/she enters the local Inn also known as “Wirtshaus” and while having his/her beloved Wiener Schnitzel they complain together with everybody else in the room about everything and everybody. In the Afternoon after a view more hours of hiking or skiing he/she enters a cafè and orders a “Melange” – a typical Austrian coffee with milk – and a Newspaper. The waiter of course is particularly grumpy. In the Evening he/she goes out to dance Waltz and the men are giving the women kisses on the hand before everybody climbs back up his/her mountain. Later in the bed we are all dreaming from Maria and 'raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens'.