German | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

Markenblog and China-Guide pointed out this funny video about Chinese using English names:

It’s really like that. I had the pleasure to meet some interestingly named people as well. Eagle, Success and a friend’s facebook friend is called Ente, German for Duck. And do you know Bayreuth?

Or this waitress at a café:

Ubuntu 8.04 brought me Firefox 3 Beta 5 which is not yet supported by one of my crucial add-ons. Chinese Perapera-kun translates Chinese words by hovering over them. Very useful.

Now I have to get along with these:

• Chinaboard: Translates whole expressions
• Google Translate: Not very accurate but provides a rough overview
• dict.leo.org: German/Chinese and Pinyin
• Dict.cn: English/Chinese

What would it look like if you’d try to write German pronunciation in pinyin?

To all Chinese that think it’s a great idea: Germans most likely won’t understand.

I was asked to give a little presentation at the Deutschkolleg. Didn’t know that they wanted to record it. Well, now “München in Bildern - Eindrücke der bayerischen Landeshauptstadt” may be used in some classes.

According to teachers many Chinese learn their presentations by heart instead of speaking freely. The video should give a good example. I hope it will.

Two Chinese girls wanted to take me along but the teacher said he’ll only speak Chinese. They think he might have been afraid his German wasn’t as good as mine. ;-)

A Chinese friend wants to learn German. I’ll help her and so I spent about an hour looking for a good textbook. Most of them teach German that might be spoken in China but certainly not in Germany.

I finally found two good ones and chose the latter because it also features a workbook and another one for listening comprehension.

Here’s a text from a German exam in China. It explains why Germans like women with darker skin while Chinese prefere those with a lighter tone.

But my favorite is still this dialog from a textbook:

A: Hello, Mr. Muller. B: Hello, Mrs. Krug. A: How are you? B: Good, thank you. A: Really? B: Yes, everything’s ok. A: Really? B: Yes, I am very well. A: Aha. B: Wonderful. A: Aaah. B: Yes, life is so beautiful.

If you’d create a product, let’s say a website, wouldn’t you at least check the meaning of your name in the top ten languages? Well, doof didn’t.