Yo,
on Wed, 06 Sep 2000 09:11:13 +0000, Dirk Wright wrote:
>Man, I can't get used to a pruebred German speaking like a damned 'murican! <
>g>
Gee, I'm sorry to upset you. Can't help it - that's the way I speak. The
advantage is that it's a good camouflage when I'm abroad - all the mischief
I do anywhere will be attributed to "that darned 'murican". That way,
Germany's international reputation doesn't get stained. ;-)
> Can you like throw some germanic americanisms in your emails so's I don't
>think yur emailing from down the hall or something??? <gg>
Hm, I'll try to think of something. Can't promise, though. :-)
> How long did you
>live in the 'states anyway? You've got the lingo down pat.
Went to grad school at The USC, Columbia, SC, for 2 years (Department of
Linguistics). Lived in a nice trailer park out in West Columbia. Before I
went to the US, while being an anglistics/romanistics/linguistics student at
the university here in Bamberg I taught "Headstart" (the mandatory 2-week
crash course German program for G.I.s beginning their tour in Germany),
first working for the local post's education center and later for Big Bend
Community College, for a few years. Also, I've always had good contact to
some of the 'murican soldiers and employees stationed here, due partly to
participation in some partnership programs during my own 4 years in the
German army, partly to quite a few of them living in my neighborhood. So I
din't have any language problems when I got to SC, which allowed me to
relatively quickly adapt to the local lingo (when you're in Rome.... :-) )
Only problem I have is that my Southern accent is not perfect yet, so when
I'm in the South, people tend to think I'm from somewhere further North, and
when I'm in the North they place me further South - but I guess I can live
with that for now (oddest thing that happened was last year when we (the
Bamberg University English Drama Group) were at a festival of
English-speaking university drama groups in Leipzig and performed Sam
Shepard's "Simpatico" - an American member of one of the other groups told
me after the performance that he'd thought I was Canadian. I've never been
close to Canada - now go figure).
MtFbwy,
Volkhart
--
Volkhart Baumgaertner email: kyu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
MausNet: @MGN
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