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German tradition: The Abitur – More than just taking annoying examinations (pt. 2) Posted by Sandra Rösner on Nov 30, 2011
The Abizeitung and Abi-Shirts In order to remember the time of the Abitur, German students usually make a journal and T-shirts. My schoolfellows and I made an Abi-journal under the motto “imprisonment”. We treated each student as an inmate of a prison (our school) and drew up ‘psychological profiles’ which revealed the particular characteristics and interests of students as…
German tradition: The Abitur – More than just taking annoying examinations (pt. 1) Posted by Sandra Rösner on Nov 28, 2011
I’m quite sure that you cover the topic “German school system” at an early stage when you learn German as a foreign language in school. Thus, you may already know that the Abitur is the secondary school leaving examination in Germany, which allows you to apply for university. But I’m not sure if any of…
Tradition: How Germans celebrate the adolescence of young people Posted by Sandra Rösner on Nov 24, 2011
In the years of the separation of Germany (1949-1989/90), the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic) refused to nominate a state religion and propagated a non-religious Weltbild (worldview), instead. Thus, the East German government neither supported Christian ceremonies that celebrate the reception of a child or adolescent into a society, e.g. communion and confirmation, nor…
Tradition: How Germans celebrate a child’s first day at school – Einschulung Posted by Sandra Rösner on Nov 22, 2011
A friend of mine, who studies French, is currently in France, where she teaches French students German. In one of her first lessons she wanted to find out to what extend the students were able to communicate in German, so she showed them a picture and asked them to describe what they could see. Although…
German cooking: “Grünkohl” – Kale Posted by Sandra Rösner on Nov 17, 2011
Grünkohl (kale) is a very popular dish for the Adventszeit (Advent Season) and Weihnachten (Christmas) in Germany. And I also like it very much. It is one of my favorite dishes. As someone of you asked how to prepare it, I’d like to address myself to this topic. First of all, you need to…
Das Wiener Gemüseorchester – The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra Posted by Sandra Rösner on Nov 15, 2011
Do you play an instrument? Maybe the carrot? The cucumber? The pepper? The celeriac? Leek? Or parsley? What sounds like a vegetarian shopping list are, for some people, indeed tools to make music. How can music be fresher and healthier than that? The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra was founded in 1998 and consists of twelve…
German ordinal numbers in use: Choosing the proper gender, grammatical case, and number (pt. II) Posted by Sandra Rösner on Nov 11, 2011
In my last post I discussed what adjectival endings you have to use when you use a noun with a definite article. Remember that ordinal numbers are grammatically nothing else than adjectives. That is, when you embed an ordinal in your sentence you have to modify it like any other adjectives. In this post I…