We decided to watch the German casting show “Germanys next topmodel” and the famous Finnish cartoon series “Moomins”. When watching Germanys next topmodel, many little German words appeared (eben, echt, krass), which are mostly used in spoken language. It was difficult to explain and distinguish those to the German learners, as native speakers don’t think about these words when applying them. It was very interesting to hear about the learning process of the German learners, when we paused the episode during the commercial break, as they understood a lot of the dialogues in the show, even without subtitles. It was also interesting, that “Germanys next topmodel” is known not only in Germany (although this might not be so cool, as the show represents very unrealistic body images and stereotyped gender roles).
I appreciated the way of watching Moomins with a little explanation of the happenings from our Finnish friend, as it was hard to follow along, because I only know a few Finnish words and sentences so far. However, I think that learning the language with cartoons might be a good way, as the language is spoken very slowly and not many unusual or complicated words are being used in cartoons. We were provided with a word list of the used words in the cartoon, which was very helpful, and it was nice to recognize some of those words when watching the episode – small success moment! It was a very cute cartoon and I definitely got the vibe, why Moomins are so iconic. Some words and sayings I want to memorize from that meeting are:
aurinko = the sun
aurinko paistaa = the sun shines
kevät = spring
tarina = story
käskeä = to order someone to do something
hauskaa = something is fun (as an expression, after something funny happened)
musta = black
ihana = lovely
haaveilla = to dream
kirjoittaa = to write
Mitä ihmettä puuhaat? = What on earth are you doing?
Comments