AMD5

I didn't do one particular activity for this AMD, instead choosing to speak German with a couple friends during the course of St. Patricks day, for about 3 hours total. The people I was speaking with were native speakers, so it was a little difficult for me to always understand what was being said, but I was almost always able to get the main idea of what was being said and follow along. I also was able to speak pretty well in the present tense, without being corrected too often, however I had some difficulty speaking in the past tense, in particular remembering the past participle of verbs. This led to some confusion, as no one could understand what I was saying, and had to ask them how to say certain things in German. It was really interesting to hear the different dialects/accents of different German speakers. One of them was a native Austrian, one a native (northern) German , and one was an upper level German student here at Michigan. The person from northern Germany was the hardest to understand because of his accent, quick speaking, and his interesting choice in describing some things. The final thing I took from this was that American slang and German slang do not translate well to each other. Common slang would be pretty interesting to learn, although I'm sure it would be hard to teach as it could vary greatly.