TV licensing in Germany

I was surprised to learn that in Germany you have to pay for a fee for every TV and radio receiver. The licence fee is paid monthly and not annually as in Britain. There has also been some uncertainty about whether to include PCs and smartphones capable of receiving broadcasts. It's all going to change in 2013 - Die Rundfunkgebühr in Deutschland soll auf eine neue Basis gestellt werden - according to a report I read today Ein Haushalt, eine Rundfunkgebühr You can also see a video report on the same subject.

You may come across the initials GEZ in relation to the licence fee. This is explained fully on http://www.gez.de/

Die Gebühreneinzugszentrale der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten ist eine Gemeinschaftseinrichtung der ARD-Landesrundfunkanstalten, des Zweiten Deutschen Fernsehen (ZDF) und des Deutschlandradio. Ihre Aufgabe besteht darin, die Rundfunkgebühren einzuziehen.

Football and more

Die deutsche Nationalmannschaft ist bei ihrem ersten Spiel erfolgreich in die Fußball-WM in Südafrika gestartet.

To read more and for an interview with the German team's trainer Joachim “Jogi” Löw visit Deutschland Online This online magazine offers much more than football. For instance there is a conversation with the president of the Goethe-Institut Professor Klaus-Dieter Lehmann about language and identity "und warum es sich lohnt, Deutsch als Fremdsprache zu lernen."  Some video material is available and also information about courses for learning German.

Treasures of the World

Schätze der Welt tells the stories of world heritage sites protected by UNESCO. As well as text there are plenty of pictures and videos for which you'll need RealPlayer. The website lets users make choices on the basis of Kontinent - A-Z Länder - A-Z Denkmäler or by keyword Stichwortsuche. Each Denkmal appears to have associated links for further information.

Eyes

When I had my eyes examined in February my optician was a little concerned about the readings she got when testing for Glaucoma so I had to book another test. That was today and all is well. I'm much relieved but realised there are some limits to my ability to discuss this in German. Glaucoma has a very similar name in German - das Glaukom - and this is also know as der grüne Star. Der graue Star is the cataract, also called der Katarakt.

Last week I was watching some videos about training for jobs from the series Ich mach's and two had some relevance to the subject - Augenarzthelferin 30.03.2009 and Augenoptiker 14.09.2009.  If you want to watch or download these go to BR-alpha Ich mach's and look down the list for the download you want. To start the download: Right click on the down-arrow button and choose Save Target As ... if you are using MS Internet Explorer or Save link as ... if you are using Google Chrome. The guidance in German is: Download starten: Rechte Maustaste und "Ziel speichern unter ..." wählen.

Here's some German vocabulary to look up:

• der ophthalmologische Prüfplatz - der Phoropter - das Ophthalmometer - das Augenrefraktometer - der Sehzeichenprojektor - der Probiergläserkasten
• die Brille - die Brillenfassung, das Brillengestell - der Brillenrand - die Brücke, der Steg - der Nasensteg, der Seitensteg - das Brillenglas - das Brillenetui - der Bügel - das Bügelscharnier
• die harten/weichen Kontaktlinsen - die Aufbewahrungsbehälter - das Pflegemittel, das Reinigungsmittel
• das Auge - das Oberlid - das Unterlid - die Augenbraue - die Pupille - die Iris, die Regenbogenhaut - der Augapfel - die Hornhaut - die Netzhaut - die Wimper

Maifeiertag - May Day

Heute ist Feiertag, aber nicht in Großbritannien. Wir müssen bis zum Montag warten. In Deutschland, Österreich, Teilen der Schweiz und vielen anderen Staaten ist der Maifeiertag ein gesetzlicher Feiertag.

There's a big difference between the May bank holiday on Monday in Britain where most large shops and some smaller ones remain open and the Maifeiertag in Germany today. The shops will not have opened in Germany today - Feiertage sind für Beschäftigte grundsätzlich arbeitsfrei - and there will have been no lorries on the move.

The origins of the May Day holiday are not easy to determine. Some sources refer to the seventeenth century but I have my doubts. Kalendarblatt suggests origins in the US in the nineteenth century and the German start coming in 1890 - 1.5.1890 Tag der Arbeit

May Day is still a popular time for protest marches and demonstrations. Reports from today include Zehntausende protestieren gegen Neonazi-Aufmärsche and Blockierer zwingen Neonazis zum Umdrehen. Unfortunately left and right both end up behaving violently toward the police. Demos gegen Neonazis - Steine gegen Polizisten gives more reportage and there's a video to watch.

Offline - Web 0.0

On Sunday the 3Sat programme neues included reportage from their presenter after spending almost a week offline. I've always enjoyed watching the videos (a little under 30 minutes) which help keep me up to date on consumer electronics in Germany and usually has some amusing elements and a nice light touch in the way information is presented. How did she get on? You can read Yve offline ... oder Web 0.0 or go to neues im Mediathek to access the video.

I'm going to take time out as well. No blogging for the rest of the month! I need to go back to basics with vocabulary and grammar. I'm taking some time off work, have some other plans but also want to make sure I work steadily on some of the material I already have instead of spending quite so much time online looking for something new.

Please be patient. I'll be back online on the first of May.

Volcanic ash stops flights

Der isländische Vulkan schleudert weiter Asche in die Luft, allerdings mit etwas weniger Kraft. Man kann die Aschwolke nicht sehen, aber viele Flughäfen sind geschlossen. Die Aschepartikel sind eine Gefahr für Flugzeuge, weil sie sich auf den Triebwerksschaufeln festsetzen kann.

If you want to discover more about volcanoes then you might like Der Quarks Vulkan which has a simulation of a volcano and answers questions such as:

Warum sind manche Vulkane explosiv und andere kaum?
Was hat die Zusammensetzung des Magmas mit der Explosivität zu tun?
Welchen Einfluss haben die vulkanischen Gase?
Was ist ein Schild- und Schichtvulkan?

You can also watch the video of the whole Quarks broadcast about volcanoes and test your knowledge  with the 8 questions in the Quarks-Vulkane-Quiz

Interviews

Cornelias DaF-Blog has some useful suggestions about using the interviews from the series Euromaxx Fragebogen. They all follow a similar structure and that makes them particularly useful as a medium for learning German. Structures like this give you a framework for note taking and note making. What I mean by note making is noting down your reactions to or questions about what you've heard alongside any notes you take to record content. The more ways you can find to engage with material the greater your ability to recall information and express opinions later on.

Cornelia's article is, of course, in German and would itself be useful as an exercise for translation into English. You'll find it at http://cornelia.siteware.ch/blog/wordpress/2010/04/03/interviews complete with a demonstration video.

Tongue Twisters - Zungenbrecher

Playing with words is great fun and what better than a tongue twister. The Austrian schools site that I recommended for material about spring flowers also led me to some useful sources for tongue twisters in many languages. I was particularly pleased to find a wiki with a page devoted to Zungenbrecher

This also pointed to a couple of videos on YouTube.Here's one of them

Record German TV

Thanks to The German Professor for blogging about the OnlineTVRecorder. A free "Beginner" account allows up to 260GB of recorded television in your account. You can choose 15 programmes each month on the free account - from more than 60 channels. Downloads are only possible between 2300 and 0700 GMT which might be a bit of a pain. You also need to download a decoder program to get started.  For a fuller report see Free German TV with OnlineTVRecorder

First student in the family?

Being the first in your family to go to university can be difficult. Not that I know personally because I didn't get to be a student. Statistics certainly show that if you come from a working class background then you are less likely to read for a degree. I certainly had encouragement from my family but that came from the realm of wishful thinking. They wanted the best for me but had no idea how to help me get there. And I never really knew what I wanted to achieve. Lack of clear goals coupled with the naturally laziness of a teenage boy would never get me anywhere. I certainly would not have thought I'd be learning German as an adult. I only just scraped a pass in the exams (GCE O-level back in those days) and was encouraged to take science subjects because those had given me better results.

Why am I blogging about something so far back in my past? Only because I watched an interesting video report from 3Sat about a support organisation set up to support and advise would be students from a working class background. Arbeiterkind.de is an internet portal for anyone trying to be the first from their family to get through higher education.

Als Arbeiterkind an die Hochschule

Die Initiative "ArbeiterKind." ermutigt Abiturienten zu studieren, auch wenn die Eltern dies nicht getan haben. Die Idee stammt von Katja Urbatsch. Sie ist auch ein sogenanntes Arbeiterkind.

You can watch the video featuring Katja Urbatsch - it's just 3mins27secs.

Do you think it's more difficult for kids to get to university if no-one from their family has been?

VLC Media Player and 3Sat Mediathek

I use VLC Media Player to watch videos and listen to audio podcasts. It will play just about anything you throw at it, including HD, and the great thing is it is a free download.
A neat trick I recently discovered is that if you have a link to a video stream on your clipboard you can get VLC to play it either from the Media menu >Open location from clipboard or by using the Ctrl-V combination when VLC has the focus. I find this particularly useful when looking at the 3Sat media offerings.

I take an RSS feed from 3Sat http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/rss/mediathek.xml which offers more than I can possibly view. Some of the videos are very short trailers, less than a minute, so they offer a brief taster of German language without you needing to get too serious. Then there are full programmes.

My favourite is nano and I've just watched yesterday's broadcast. The link to put on your clip board is http://hstreaming.zdf.de/3sat/veryhigh/100217_sendung_nano.mov If your internet connection cannot handle this stream go http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/?obj=16974 and you can then choose a lower connection speed - sellect Einstellungen towards the bottom right of the window and change the settings.

Another programme I watched recently was  hitec: Die Wettermacher - Lässt sich unser Klima kontrollieren? with spectacular images like the picture above. Highly recommended. The link for your clipboard is http://hstreaming.zdf.de/3sat/veryhigh/090713_wettermacher_hitec.mov Strangely this is billed as the complete programme from 21.02.2010 - We do time travel on this blog.

Wine

What distinguishes a quality wine?


Was zeichnet einen Qualitätswein aus?


Click on the link above and find the answers in a short German language video (4:20) from ZDF

Is there anybody out there?

Not a question about why there's been no comments but that age-old speculation about whether extra-terrestrial life might one day be discovered. I tend to be open minded on this question but I am fascinated about how modern telescopes are beginning to find planets outside our solar system. This is well covered in the latest episode of Quarks & Co

Mit immer leistungsstärkeren Teleskopen blicken Wissenschaftler in den Himmel – getrieben von der großen Frage: Gibt es eine „zweite Erde“, gibt es vielleicht sogar Leben im All? Inzwischen haben sie über 400 Exoplaneten entdeckt – Planeten außerhalb unseres Sonnensystems. Quarks & Co begibt sich auf eine faszinierende Reise ins Universum und erklärt, wie man die Wahrscheinlichkeit von fernen Zivilisationen „berechnen“ kann.

You can access all the Quarks videos here - the one I'm talking about is Exoplaneten – Die Suche nach der zweiten Erde and to download the accompanying PDF click here

Computers - love them, hate them

Sitting alongside a novice while they got started with a new laptop today reminded me how confusing things must be if your knowledge is very limited. The first instruction in the very brief manual told them to go to the start menu. Fine if you are still using XP because there's a big button at the bottom left that has the Windows logo and the word start but on Windows 7 there's a big round button with no words. How does anyone know to go there rather than anywhere else on the screen?

But this site is about learning German so where might you go for computer and information technology language. I've already mentioned the TV series neues (see my post Computers, Internet and Politics) but if you're after a website to keep up to date then try heise online I have also come across NetComputer Lernen (NCL) which is an association of senior citizens offering advice and training. Perhaps we need more like that in the UK.

For free online videos on computer issues go to PC User Video This really is a significant video portal offering access to hundreds of videos. Why didn't I look at the video on Windows 7 before now?

You could also try some of the online stores for more vocabulary e.g. pc-superstore.de or http://www.dell.de/

A source I quite like is the online presence of a magazine CD_Austria because you can use there archive to view magazine articles in full. They also have some tutorial material that you can download. An example is Microsoft Word für Einsteiger and you can download it as a PDF file Step by step instructions are always a useful language learning aid.

Painting with watercolours

Yesterday it was work during the day and watercolours in the evening - so no blogging yesterday. I also realised I need to learn more German so I can speak about painting and arts & crafts. So I fished out 5 language visual dictionary (Dorling Kindersley) and reminded myself of the basics.

Then I thought let's put some of these words into a search engine and see what I come up with. Product catalogues are sometimes better than visual dictionaries. Aquarellefarbe was my first entry and right near the top of the list was Aquarellmalerei - Bilder mit Aquarellfarbe malen von Martin Mißfeldt.  Working with an online article like this should help me develop more vocabulary and feed my interest in watercolour painting.  But there's more to this site than watercolours so take a look at Gouache Bilder malen Tutorial and Zeichnungen - Die Kunst, Zeichnen zu lernen and his blog and whatever else takes your fancy.



I also found several videos on You Tube which demonstrate watercolour techniques and some have German commentaries. Here's an example about painting cumulus clouds -

Computers, Internet and Politics

I still have my first computer bought in 1980 and stored in the attic. With only 16KB of RAM (yes, KB) and the only storage a built in cassette tape recorder it took ages to do anything. There really wasn't much software around and I ended up writing my own programs. Try writing a compiler in just 16K! Things have moved on amazingly and I can barely keep track of progress, though I do try.

Sometimes I manage to link my interest in computers with learning German. One source of information is 3Sat neues and I subscribe to the RSS feed so I can watch their video podcasts Das Computermagazin. There's also the neues.blog

I've only just caught up with the last two episodes. The first of the year included an interview with a blogger called Markus Beckedahl. This is a really massive blog that can help you keep up with what's happening on the internet and political responses to the net. I'm now following netzpolitik.org and the quote below is from its Über dieses Blog page

netzpolitik.org ist ein Blog und eine politische Plattform für Freiheit und Offenheit im digitalen Zeitalter. Thema sind die wichtigen Fragestellungen der digitalen Welt und wir zeigen Wege auf, wie man sich selbst mit Hilfes des Netzes für digitale Freiheiten engagieren kann. netzpolitik.org wurde in einer Vorläuferversion 2002 gestartet und ist seit 2004 in der jetzigen Form online. Alles andere erschliesst sich aus dem Inhalt.

Cold Weather

The snow is beginning to go and I took the car out for the first time in 10 days - started at a touch, much to my great relief.

Having published posts on weather and climate change, I noticed that WDR are showing Fit für die Kälte this week - Quarks & Co (Tuesday and Saturday). I've seen this one before and recommend you download it. You can also download an accompanying PDF file with text and pictures covering the same ground as the video - useful if you need to look up some of the vocabulary used. Look for the words PDF zur Sendung in the sidebar on the right. A little further down you'll also find a link to a related PDF file on Das Wetter.

Save the world

Enough energy for half Europe - that’s what’s claimed for a new type of energy production, a hydroelectric scheme based on osmosis.

The driving force comes from the difference in the salinity (salt content) of river and sea water. In one container you have river water and in another sea water. They’re separated by a membrane. The river water penetrates the membrane to even out the salinity. That causes the water level in the second container to rise. The difference can be used to drive a water turbine. An advantage, if this proves commercially viable, is that it is not dependent on weather (Witterung).

I learnt about this in a short video downloaded from Projekt Zukunft: Das Wissenschaftsmagazin. You’ll find some details about it if you visit http://rss.dw-world.de/xml/podcast_projekt-zukunft and look at the video podcasts for 3 January 2010.

Another video you’ll find under the same date deals with a pilot project which uses micro-algae to bind with CO2 from the waste gases (Abgasen) of a brown coal fired power station.
 
For steps you can take to make your life more environmentally friendly (umweltfreunlich)  I recommend more video - this time podcasts from Quarks & Co which has  three episodes of Die Welt Retten in kleinen Schritten - Save the world in small steps - originally broadcast between 17.11.2009 and 01.12.2009.
 
Now let's have your ideas about saving the world.

Jobs

Listening to Germans speak is a great way to tune your ear to the language. I find this easier if speech is set in a visual context so I like to download and watch videos.

One of my favourite series has 15 minute videos intended for young people thinking about what sort of job they want and how they can train for it.
The series is called "Ich mach's". You'll find the video podcasts if you follow this link.

Each podcast listing has some information in German and at the bottom of the listing you'll see three button controls. The middle one (a down arrow) is for downloading. To start downloading: Right click on it and then choose "Save Target As..."

There is also some accompanying material available from http://www.ichmachs.com/. Just go to the foot of that page and click on Weiter mit: Berufe in Überblick to bring up an A-Z index of jobs. There is text, more video and Die wichtigsten Infos zum Beruf (the most important info about the job or profession)