I have decided not to do the next term of the class this year. I am definitely not giving up learning German, however I have decided for the remainder of the year to focus on conversation practice and vocabulary expansion.

Of course I have the trip to Germany in September, but I have reached a point in my everyday life where I now have a growing number of German friends, locally and online as well as the meet-up group to practice with. It is not unrealistic for me to say that if I applied myself I could have conversation practice 3 to 5 times per week. Towards the end of the year I plan to do a couple of refresher sessions with a tutor on the grammar. Then come 2009 I will enrol to continue with classroom learning.

I came to this decision because it is clear to me that the class is not a useful vehicle for me to learn to converse. In saying that I am not laying the blame for that failure on anyone other than myself and my style of learning. Interestingly, some of my German friends have encouraged me to take a rest from the class and concentrate on conversations. For me the class has become an intellectual exercise, something like learning to break a code. I do that in English and never really get the feeling for the language necessary to speak it. Nevertheless the grammar is important and I will definitely return to it next year.

My real name is Volker Jaeckel but I am foremost known as VJ (which actually is much more easier to pronounce for the "english" tongue) and as you may already assumed a German native. I am since over 20 years now in Marketing and Sales and will share my daily findings and ideas about Marketing the old and the new way. I am specializing myself more into the digital arena from a sales person perspective and will give hand-on approaches about "how to" get sales messages across on the web, advertising and all the other media out there.

Can you believe it I wrote my first entry in my own blog, and I plan for many more to come. I hope you are enjoying my future tips and my points of view how I think digital marketing and advertising will change the approach of "telling a story" and selling yourself and the goods you might distribute.

Thank you all for "clicking" in. Talk to you soon.

VJ

From the country that brought the world sauerkraut comes the return of "Smell-O-Vision":

"A company called Cinescent is giving marketers the chance to pump out the scent of their brands in German theaters, where it first tested the technology for Beiersdorf's Nivea. For the test, a specially made 60-second spot showed a typical sunny beach scene, with people lying around on deck chairs or sunbathing on towels while waves crashed and seagulls cried in the background.

As people wondered what the ad was for, the scent of Nivea sun cream permeated the cinema, and a Nivea logo appeared on screen along with the words "Nivea. The scent of summer." (via)

It's bad enough that, after paying $12, I am bombarded with close to 30 minutes of commercials before I get to see my movie of choice.  Now they want to attack my olefactory glands?!  As if we needed another reason to stay home and pirate a movie or two off of mininova.

Si pentru ca postul e in legatura cu Rammstein, am hotarat sa pun niste poze de grup cu ei.

RoboCop Tribute

Kroenen Tribute, featuring "Evil Angel" by Breaking Benjamin

That was Sen. Obama on July 8th.  Here is his speech from earlier in Berlin, Germany:

"Vielen Dank zu den Bürgern von Berlin und zu den Leuten von Deutschland. Lassen Sie mich Kanzler Merkel und Außenminister Steinmeier für Heißen willkommen mich früher heute danken. Vielen Dank Bürgermeister Wowereit, der Berlin Senat, die Polizei, und am meisten von allen vielen Dank für diesen Empfang . . . "

Oh, wait.  Obama doesn't speak a foreign language.  He delivered this address in English in a foreign land.  I don't think there was even a merci beaucoup in there.  How embarrassing.

Check out the always enjoyable Michelle Malkin for a look at how Obama really is a dummkopf.

UPDATE: In response to the kind comments from KC:  Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.  When I said Obama doesn't speak a foreign language, I was referring to Obama's own statement: “I don't speak a foreign language. It's embarrassing!” My mistake for taking Sen. Obama at his word.

My criticism of Obama not speaking German in Germany was a response to his silly quote above, not because I would have been able to orate in German.  (Although after three years of studying German and visiting that beautiful country, I could have.)  Which, of course, brings us to German grammar.  In German, all nouns are still capitalized, as they once were in English.  The key phrase: IN GERMAN.

UPDATE II: Thanks for the link, Indigo Red.  Read about his further adventures here.

Ruffini alledges that the event is an Obama campaign rally despite the fact that Obama said the word "president" only once and that was to say that "I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world." and that he never said the phrase commander in chief.  Ruffini goes on to argue that it isn't a "high-minded foreign policy speech" despite the fact that the focus of the speech was the fact that we need to work together in order to create a more hopeful world and defend freedom by doing things such as ending the Iraq war.

Was ist gut mit Hahn?  Das ist eine gute Frage.  Ich liebe Hahn mit Reis.  Oder ein Gross Kartoffel.  Ich esse das Hahn mit meine Jungefreunde, er sagt "Ja, das ist ein gut Hahn.  Ich will mehr Hahn...kannst ich?"

Und ich sagt,"Ja, ja, du kannst mehr essen!"

Ah, Hahn.  Es ist sehr schmeckt im mein Mund.  Meine Mutter sagt dann, "Hahn?  Hahn...ist das ein Teil?"

"Was Teil?"

"Das Teil.  Das Teil ist fur geschlecht."

"Was?!  Nein, nein, Hahn ist immer für essen.  Du kennst nichts."

The Saints Helen and Constantine Greek Orthodox church is where Mike's mom grew up, along with all the Greek family on her side. Her father (my husband's "papouli" or Greek grandfather) and mother (Mike's "yiayia" or Greek grandmother) were members, and volunteered every year for the festival before yiayia passed away.

There was Greek dancing (the zorba dance among others was performed and plates were broken -OPA!) and gyros, athenian chicken, and the ouzo was flowing like water. I got a little choked up watching everyone from middle aged ladies to cassocked priests to toddlers putting arms around each others shoulders and performing the step-oriented dances while smiling and laughing.

It was beautiful to see traditions and customs from a culture so old to be carried out and celebrated in the American midwest by people so far removed from their origins. It wrenches my heart a little to realize that I had no such enrichment as a child. My father, when prompted to answer about our ancestors or heritage, would respond "we're Americans" and huff off to smoke his pipe and watch Rush Limbaugh.

My mother would tell me about her family's names, and what country they came from, but that was about all the information I could get from either of them.

I longed for that sort of information to be passed on to me, as a kid. Somehow it seemed that knowing where your ancestors came here from, essentially where you came from, made a person special. The world is a fascinating place, and the different cultures that have sprung up all over the globe really do fascinate me. But living in a place where so many of those cultures have come together and been re-written, disenfranchised, or smothered with non-regional dialect and behavior gets depressing sometimes. I feel, as an American, that whatever culture we do have (hotdogs? baseball? apple pie?) is so vague and commecialized that it lacks that ancient feel, that sacredness of tradition most of the time.

Sure, I wipe away a tear when I can afford to go to a live sporting event where the anthem is sung. Every fourth of July I think of my father and his father and the veterans and soldiers and philosophers who made this country what it is by their thinking and common sense and bloodshed. But every single one of those nostalgic experiences is tempered by the knowledge that this country we live in, that allows us the freedoms we have and the quality of life we expect these days, wasn't always ours. Someone in my family, many someones, at some point decided that America sounded like a great place to be. Somebody made the journey from wherever they were to here, and toughed it out as an immigrant with a family. Whoever those someone's were, they had traditions from somewhere else ingrained into them. They knew a place that was before America, before capitalism, and before multi-media centers and $8.00 bottles of water and $26 folding chairs on the lawn at an outdoor rock concert.

I want to know what those traditions were. What blood flows in my veins, and why do I fight a lump in my throat every time I hear a bagpipe blowing? How in the hell did I start to crave sauerkraut on my bratwurst?

America is beautiful, and there are really only a handful of other places I'd be willing to live at this point in my life... but I'm going to do my best to teach my boys about the rich cultures of their ancestors, even if I have to treat it like a research assignment.

plus im doing german classes now. teacher was a bit mad - she constantly threw her right hand on the desk. threw. like it wasn't part of her body. fumf, but the u is umlauted. fumf is a great word.

[ german | deutsch ]

ROCKSTAH - JIMI BLUE IST MEIN FICKER!

---JIMI BLUE DISS---

DER GLAMROCKRAPPER IST ZURÜCK!!

DAS GLAMROCKRAPPER MIXTAPE!!
KOSTENLOS ZUM DOWNLOAD
ab dem 1.8.2008 auf www.rockstah.de (rockstah de)
myspace.com/rockstizzey (myspace com/rockstizzey)
u.a. mit den songs "verbuddelt" "schon wieder was verbuddelt" "gimme rohr" "Sie hat geschurzt"

So der Auftritt bei Youtube..! Naja.. dieser Style ist nicht mein Musikstil.. aber immerhin.. Die Energie die dahinter steht, die PR-Strategie.. des könnte hinhauen..!

 ROCKSTAH - JIMI BLUE IST MEIN FICKER!

Entgegen der Ankündigung gibt es das Album schon jetzt zum kostenlosen Download auf der Homepage.. Hat so knapp 80 MB..  Mehr kann ich dazu noch nicht sagen.. Hab mal um Presse-Info´s angeklopft..

Also bis dahin.. N-JoY!

Doc GermaniCus,  24/07/08

Link: Homepage & Download: http://www.rockstah.de/

---

มีรูปใหญ่ๆให้เซฟด้วยลองกดๆดูละกัน

ที่นี่

ตีกินมาจาก FFFFOUND

ปล. นึกออกละว่า เลข9 โรมันมันเขียนยังงี๊ ==> IX

While living here in Stockholm for the summer, I signed up for a 1-month intensive Swedish class in July with Folkuniversitetet (difficult to pronounce in itself)....

As my ambitious class nears its end, here are a few lessons I've learned along the way.

1. No matter how much or far out I purse my lips, correctly pronouncing anything with - sjå , sjö, sjä, skå , skö, skä - seems impossible at the moment.
2. Many words sound exactly the same for no reason. The key is to listen for the 1 second versus 1.5 second drawn out pronunciation of the vowel.
3. Two hours of progress in class instantly gets negated when I try to practice with my classmates the minute we leave the room.
4. "Hunh?" (pronounced with pursed lips) will be added temporarily to the Swedish dictionary for the next few months.
5. I'm actually digging the challenge of a new language.

Its been awhile since I've flipped through language books larger than a simple travel phrasebook. Intermittently for the last two years, I was studying German only to realize a year or so later why it seemed so difficult.

The harsh "h" sound does not exist in my native language, Yorùbá. We pronounce "h" like "in". No heavy "h" sounds.

So in German, "Ich bin" is "Ick bin".

In English, "House" is "owl-se".

Nightmare sentence for me? - "The hot house has had happy houseguests!"

On a side note, Transparent Language recently started an excellent (practical) Swedish blog which I have been following.

If you liked this post, please it.

Ich bin super, aber ungesund -- Ich esse Ramen, es ist schlecht.  Zu salzig.  ich muss zu gym gehen.  Komme mit aus?  Ich will rennen gehen, denn ich bin dick.  Ich höre das Musik von Rammstein wenn ich renne.  Guten Musik!  Ich soooo liebe Till.  Mmm, ja.

Okay, das ist alle.  Habe eine guten Tag!

Feuer & Wasser (Fire & Water)

Moises, a magna cum laude student, is of mixed-race heritage, being Mexican, Chinese, Thai, German, and French.   Moises is no stranger to hardship.  His Mexican-Chinese-Thai father was almost deported when the local councilman mistook him for a gardener at his own five-million-dollar, 7,000 square-foot home in Greenwich, Connecticut.  Luckily, Moises’s German-French mother, an accomplished lawyer and quite the stone-cold blonde, blue-eyed recessive gene fox, successfully litigated his father’s deportation hearing.  The long nights together, huddled over legal arcana, sparked an intense romance.  Moises’s mother fondly recalled her spouse’s “exotic Joan Miró collection,” while Moises’s father, wiping a tear, wistfully remembered falling in love with her “well-starched J. Crew shirts.”

Though he was elected to the prestigious position of Articles Editor, Moises privately lamented his loss:  “With the way things are going now, when I run for president [of the United States] in 2032 I’ll likely go up against Harold Kwon-Smith-Schlossberg-Tomoko-Mbekwe-Jenkins, the outgoing President [of the Harvard Law Review], and I just won’t be able to compete with that.”  Crying the first bitter tears of disappointment in a wildly successful young life since that debacle five years ago when he only received a Marshall Scholarship instead of a Rhodes, Moises worried that he’ll “have to settle for Governor of New York.”  “You know—I have worked so hard to be President of the Harvard Law Review.  Really, academic excellence is like armed combat.  You have to go out there and beat everyone else.  You have to win.  Do you know how many countless nights I spent in the law library studying Evidence instead of putting the moves on floozy Boston University girls at bars?  It’s a war out there.  I’m a soldier!”

John McCain, the Republican candidate for President of the United States in 2008, who was standing on a fighter jet when it and several other planes on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Forrestal detonated, killing 34 sailors and injuring 161; who ejected from his 4-AE Skyhawk after it was hit by a missile, breaking both arms and a leg; and who was tortured by his captors as a P.O.W., was unavailable for comment.

After graduation, Moises will work as an associate for the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in Manhattan, with the starting annual salary of $320,000.

~

[ german | deutsch ]

Das schmutzige Geschäft mit den Nazis
- Das 3.Reich und die US-Industrie

 Doku über die umfassende Zusammenarbeit zwischen Nazis und US-Industriellen, ohne die der Krieg und der sogenannte Holocaust nicht möglich gewesen wäre.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=1730442568367720561] 

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Weiterlesen: Read More!

Weiterlesen: Read More!

Weiterlesen: Read More!

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