Außerdem war dieses Praktikum meine erste Arbeit in einem Büro – früher habe ich nur in Schule und Geschäfte gearbeitet. Deswegen war es mir sehr interessant zu sehen, wie ein Büro funktioniert und wie es mit der Post und der Bank ist.

Zum Schluss mein Praktikum hat mir sehr viel gefallen und ich bin sehr dankbar für die Gelegenheit.

Bis bald (ich hoffe!)

Jess

Zum Beispiel setzt sich die Académie française – eine Institution, die im Jahre 1655 gegründet wurde – für die Vereinheitlichung und Pflege der französischen Sprache ein. Aber es scheint, als ob Deutschland die Anglisierung gerne annimmt: auf der Straße hört man oft „sorry“ statt „Entschuldigung“, das Kleidergeschäft in der Mecklenburg Straße hat „new arrivals“ und klassische Fahrzeuge sind „Oldtimers“.

Auf Spiegel Online habe ich letzte Woche über „ein Happening auf der Straße“ gelesen (Anmerkung: Ein Engländer würde nie „a happening“ sagen!). Auf dieser Website ist auch ein Artikel über „Denglische Werbung“ zu finden. Darin ist zu lesen, dass, obwohl viele Firmen die englische Sprache in ihren Werbungen benutzen, sie meistens nicht wirklich sagen können, was ihr Werbespruch auf Deutsch überhaupt bedeutet. Das erklärt, warum ich als Muttersprachlerin nicht immer mit den denglischen Werbungen klarkomme!

Den Artikel finden Sie hier:

http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/berufsleben/0,1518,760476,00.html

Wenn Sie ein bisschen Zeit haben, probieren Sie das „Denglisch Quiz – Lost in Translation“ – es ist gar nicht so einfach!

Was denken Sie von Denglisch und Anglisierung? Für oder „against“?

Bis bald

Jess

Learning a foreign language makes us see our own language in a completely different light, we start to think about sentence structures, verb tenses and idioms. We look for similarities and differences between our own mother tongue and the new language that we are trying to master. This being a small, small world, there are often lots of similarities that can give us a helping hand when we’re trying to learn and understand new vocabulary, for example: 

Simple, huh? If only…

Along with all these helpful similarities, there are also lots of pesky ‘false friends’ who seek to trip up language learners wherever they can. They may look like a word in your own language, they may even sound like a word in your own language, but they mean something completely different! Here’s five interesting examples that caught my eye today:

Of course the best way to discover these false friends is to embarass yourself by using them incorrectly, much to the amusement of others around you; or failing that, just don’t be too trusting of seemingly identical words and look them up in a dictionary to make sure. If it seems too easy to be true, it often is!

Do you have any ‘false friends’ to warn us about?

Bis bald

Jess

The article tells us that whilst nodding your head means “ja” in Germany, it means exactly the opposite in Greece; forming a circle your thumb and your forefinger to signal that everything is ok could get you in trouble in Spain where it has a more vulgar meaning and lazily lying your foot across your knee would cause great offence in Asian and Arabic cultures.

With this in mind, I decided to trawl the net to see which other common gestures have different meanings in different cultures. Here are my most important findings:

• The ‘ok’ sign also means that something is worthless in France and signifies money in Japan – interestingly enough, various websites quote Germany as being one of the countries where this hand gesture has a rude   meaning, however, my German friends, colleagues and the Schweriner Volkszeitung disagree
• A thumbs up gesture is not at all positive in the Middle East or West Africa where it is a vulgar insult
• What an English person would perceive as an offensive hand gesture (index and middle fingers up, palm facing outwards), is the peace sign in North America or simply just a way of indicating that you’d like two of something
• Crossing your fingers à la the United Kingdom’s National Lottery logo won’t bring you any luck in Vietnam, where it is seen as the ultimate obscene gesture
• Beckoning someone to come towards you with your index finger actually signifies death in Singapore, and could get you arrested in the Philippines!

There are many more examples of body language that is interpreted differently in different countries and, as well as being fascinating, it’s a little disheartening. Nobody (that I know of) can speak all the languages of the world, but there is always the presumption that even if you don’t share a common spoken language with someone, you could manage to communicate a simple message using gestures. As it happens, you could communicate a simple message – but it may not be the one you intended!

Until I attend some foreign body language classes, I will be keeping my arms firmly by my side and hoping that that doesn’t have some unfortunate double meaning either.

Bis bald

Jess

I’m not pretending to be an expert on the fine art of punctuation, my formal English Language education finished at GCSE-level when I was 16. However, that was enough to give me a good grasp of  how to use an apostrophe and also, I must admit, to begin my transformation into a punctuation pedant. It’s still early days but give me another 20 years and I’ll be correcting supermarket signs with a permanent marker / Tipp-Ex with the best of them! At least I won’t be alone in my quest, research for this article led me to discover the existence of The Apostrophe Protection Society, an official organisation based in the UK.

The many websites I found dedicated to ending apostrophe abuse, along with  a few sporadic lessons from my English teachers, have helped me to split the use of apostrophes into three simple categories:

1. Use to replace missing letters in contractions:
1. will not becomes won’t
2. do not becomes don’t
3. he is becomes he’s
2. Use to indicate possession:
1. Ellen’s brother
2. My mother’s car
3. The children’s books
3. Use for the plurals of lower case letters:
1. There are two i’s and two o’s in ‘dignotion’
2. Dot the i’s and cross the t’s

I had never really thought about the third rule before I started reading lots of grammar websites, but it stops the plurals of lower case letters being read as other words. For example, without any apostrophes in 3a, we would have the complete words ‘is’ and ‘os’ instead of the plurals of the letters. For upper case letters, numbers and acronyms, however, apostrophes are not necessary:

1. When she moved house, Chloe realised that she had 45 CDs, 200 DVDs and 3 VCRs.
2. In his exams he got 4 As, 3 Bs and 5 Cs.
3. The tradition began in the 1900s.

For some people, using an apostrophe correctly is as natural as breathing; for others it requires a bit more effort. I’m sure that even those who have mastered it sometimes stop, look at what they’ve written and think, “Hmm, is that right?”.

Among the dozens of newspaper articles I’ve read about apostrophes – some begging for it to be used properly, some calling for it to be scrapped – this light-hearted article from 1994 is my favourite:

 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/creativity-an-excess-of-apostrophes-1373772.html

Bis bald

Jess