so his friend goes to Germany to study abroad for 3 months, right? and she’s studied German in school, but she certainly isn’t fluent, and she never put a ton of effort into it, just a normal amount. And when she gets to Germany, her host family doesn’t speak English. at all. not a word. two adults and four children and none of them are speaking english. it’s absolute hell to get by, she’s constantly gesturing and enunciating and having to speak perfect German (they weren’t very good at understanding her unless it was perfect) and it’s three tiring months of nonstop German action. and on the last day they’re sitting at the dinner table and the father turns to her and says in wonderfully fluent english, “so I’d say your German’s improved quite a bit since you got here.”
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Angela Merkel just said she’ll offer Donald Trump cooperation, on the basis that he respects people’s dignity no matter the place of birth, colour of their skin, beliefs, their sex, sexuality or their political convictions.
So….I guess germany and the us just broke up?
Merkel basically said “Cut your racist and sexist bullshit and then maybe I’ll talk to you”.
She’s doing more than that. In the German original she speaks of the Würde des Menschen - The dignity of man. That’s the first line of the German constitution:
Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar- The dignity of man is inviolable.
She’s literally throwing the book at him and reminding him she’ll only work with him on the terms of the constitution.
I mean, I disagree with her on quite a few things, but I’m very happy with her response.
You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing.
Remember that time Steve roundhouse kicked a god in the head because he reminded him of Hitler? Good times.
stares directly @ the people in charge of the new captain america comic
Why do Germans use smilies like this :) or this:0 If they already got Ü oh Ö?
I just texted my German friend about this and she replied:
WE DO NOT SMILE IN GERMANY
Did you know? Lesbians and male homosexuals would marry each other in Nazi Germany just to escape persecution?
Queer history tho like
I honestly am learning things everyday that shape my knowledge of what it means to be LGBT? Like did you know Malcolm X was bisexual? Did you know the Nazis persecuting homosexuals said they were protecting “traditional family values,” the same arguments used today by Republicans? Washington in the 1780s expelled several soldiers for engaging in consensual same-sex acts? FDR launched a plan in the 1920s where he forced young sailors to try and trap other sailors into sex? I think schools need to stop erasing queer history from social studies and queer literature from English classes. And also start teaching children to respect gay people at a young age, like grade five. That’s the only way I can see any change coming about…
Did you know that FDR’s plan actually backfired because the men that were hired to trap them starting having sex with each other and then ended up protecting them so that they could keep having sex with each other
History teacher here- I would LOVE to be able to work in more queer history and things like that. It’s what I did my undergrad minor on. It’s just a shame the American education system is not set up in a way that makes this feasible without huge sweeping national reform.
Social studies standards in general are really behind the times. There are still tons of states, mainly southern, that basically ignore everything to do with slavery and civil rights or even deliberately de-emphasize slavery. African history is COMPLETELY left out of world history standards. And don’t get me started on notable women in history. Out of the *63* named individuals whose contributions I’m explicitly compelled to teach, only 6 are women: Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Stanton, Anne Hutchinson, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, and Lucretia Mott. 3 of them are all part of one standard- the one covering the women’s rights movement.
So yeah not to soapbox, but when people wonder why America is ass-backwards I firmly believe it’s because the history every American child is taught DELIBERATELY erases the contributions of basically everyone who isn’t a white man.
in 7th grade we had this german teacher who immigrated to america from Germany about 23 years ago and one guy in my class thought it would be funny to ask him “Hey, because you’re german does that make you a Nazi?” and in a very thick german accent he replies “Hey, because you’re a white american boy, does that make you a slaveholder?” and the kid never tried to be funny in that class again


