Vier, Drei, Zwo!

Clubsound - Mein Himmel

Second week of classes in swing!  Today is rainy again, but Monday was sunny and cold.  I had my Word Building Patterns class at 9:20 am, which isn't too early for me.  I find the class really interesting too.  We learn a lot of cool German words (eg. Warentrennbalken - the plastic grocery separators in the checkout outline.)  We talked about basic linguistic concepts too, and scientific words seem to be about the same in German and English so I didn't have any problems following along.  Just to be safe, I like to check the presentations online beforehand for any big words I don't know.

The teacher likes having foreign students in her class too.  From what I've seen, there's also a Spanish girl who speaks Catalan and a guy from Czech Republic.  We learned the idiom for heavy rain, "Es gießt aus Kannen." (literally, "It's pouring from the water can.")  Then the professor asked Jason and I what we say in English, and we said, "It's raining cats and dogs" which the class found pretty funny of course because that phrase doesn't make any sense at all.  Then she asked the Spanish speaker, who said that they also say "It's pouring from the water can" as their idiom.  So maybe these phrases are more regional than lingual?

My Teaching English class was also yesterday, and while I enjoyed the topic (and being able to take notes in English, let's be honest), the class is rather big and disruptive.  The professor had a bad cold and couldn't speak too loudly, and although he kept asking the class to pay attention and stop whispering and giggling, they weren't too obedient.  I found it really annoying, but I've seen plenty of that in American lecture halls too.  That's just what comes with a larger class I suppose.  Half of me was hoping for him to break away from his passive English "If you have any questions, just please ask me" to some angry German like, "Geht ihr aus!" (Get out of here!)  Sorry for playing up on stereotypes...

I was surprised to learn that by 4th grade, 90% of students in German schools are excited to learn foreign languages.  This is the year that they start learning English and/or French, and 85% reported having a high interest in that.  (By comparison only 59% had interest in studying German.)  This is pretty different from what I've seen in American schools.  Kids don't have to start learning foreign languages until high school or so, and then the most of them just complain about it all the time.  Even at college, the language requirement is relatively low for most majors (only 2 semesters for Communications students.)

My guess is that is has to do with media exposure and the necessity of the foreign language.  German kids are exposed to a lot of American movies, TV shows, toys, etc and want to learn about them, but in America the most cultural exposure we get is maybe one or two channels in Spanish, if you have cable.  Even then what are you going to watch?  The telenovelas and game shows?  Not exactly the most exiting entertainment out there.  Plus Americans just don't have much motivation to learn foreign languages.  Even if they do want to travel, it seems like everywhere they go these days they can get by using English.

It's really no one's fault; it's just the way the world is right now.  English has become a Lingua Franca, and whether that is beneficial or detrimental to English speakers depends on the speaker himself.  Personally I wish I had been exposed to more foreign languages and cultures growing up, but that's what comes from growing up on a farm outside of a small, monolingual, completely white town.  Spanish wasn't even offered to me until 7th grade, and even then only for a semester.  I'm lucky that I have these opportunities now, and I'm attending a large university where plenty of languages are offered.  (Sign Language next spring!)

This morning was my first Aerobics Class here.  Even though it was in German, I knew pretty much all of the routines already from America (V-step, Step Touch, Grape Vine, etc.)  I was really surprised at how similar it was to American classes actually.  Maybe AFAA runs workshops in Germany too?  I heard some girls commenting afterwards how the class was "American style," so maybe that explains it.  I wonder what "German style" is then.

The class was all women and relatively large.  I'm not too worried though because if there's anything I know about fitness classes, it's that after the first day usually only half the class still comes back.  Plus this class is at 8 am when it's arschkalt (butt cold) outside, so we'll see how attendance goes.  The workout itself was pretty easy, not nearly as much high intensity as Turbo Jam.  That's what I expected though.  I just want to get more of a feel for aerobics class structure in case I ended up teaching my own class at Fitrec in the spring.  The music was also surprisingly good!  Quite a few club hits and even some Lady Gaga to sing along too!  I got German numbers drilled into my head, although this is Dresden so everyone says "zwo" for two instead of the High German "zwei."  I gotta admit, I had to suppress an inappropriate giggle when we were all marching in place counting in German.  Looks a little bit like some movies I've seen lol.