少人数制で楽しく身につく英会話教室・英会話スクールなら「アミックインターナショナル」

アミックのブログを除いてくださりありがとうございます  (^^♪

今日は、英語ではなく、ドイツ語の豆知識です！

実はみなさんの身近にもたくさんドイツ語が隠れています

みなさんよくご存じ

”バームクーヘン”

こちら、ドイツ語です！ご存じの方もいらっしゃると思いますが、ドイツ菓子で、昭和初期から日本でも人気のお菓子です。

年輪のような形から、日本ではお祝い品として贈られることも多くあったそうです。

そう、年輪！！バームとよく記載されているのを見ますが、ドイツ語により近いのは”バウム”です。

“Baum”…..der Baum、ドイツ語で”木”のことを言います。

”kuchen”…der Kuchen、クーヘンと読む、こちらクーヘンは日本語でいう”ケーキ”のことです。

が！ケーキにもたくさん種類がありますね。

ケーキと言えば、生クリームの乗ったものから、パイのようなもの、シフォンケーキ、パウンドケーキ等ありますが、クーヘンは、焼いたケーキのことです。生クリームののたものや、冷やす製法のものは、”Torte”…トルテと呼ばれます。

“バームクーヘン”、直訳して”木のケーキ”、あっという間にドイツ語2つ覚えましたね♪

ちなみにこのバウムクーヘン、ドイツは本場でありながら日本ほど有名ではありません。

ケーキ屋さんにいったらたくさんあるんだろうな～！と思っていたのに、

食べたくてもなかなか見つからないのです。

老舗のショッピングセンターなどに行ったり、専門店までいかないと見当たりません。

日本では抹茶や、苺、チーズ味など、たくさん種類もあり豊富ですよね。

ドイツのお菓子なのになぁ～と不思議に思いました。

が、1年に一度そんなレアなバウムクーヘンをドイツのスーパーでもお見掛けすることがあります♪

クリスマスの時期です！クリスマスマーケットでに賑わう頃、バームクーヘンにスーパーでも

出会えちゃうのです！が！なんと。

チョコのコーティングがしてあります。肝心な年輪が見えないくらい、チョコ！！！

しかも、２、３段はあたりまえなのです@.@!!!!!!

日本で知られているバウムクーヘンは、本場ではなかなか出会えないということです。

チョココーティングのバウムクーヘンも美味ですよ！！

是非機会があれば試してみてください♪

You can find a vending machine on nearly every street corner in Japan. These vending machines sell all sorts of refreshing beverages and some even sell soup! But…what do you do after you’ve bought and consumed your drink? Trash cans aren’t quite as easy to find to throw your garbage away. You might feel tempted to leave your plastic bottle on the sidewalk and simply walk away, but that action can have dire consequences for our environment!

According to an article on National Geographic, “[m]ass production of plastics, which began just six decades ago, has accelerated so rapidly that it has created 8.3 billion metric tons—most of it in disposable products that end up as trash.” Wow! Did you know that 91% of the world’s plastic doesn’t get recycled? Plastic ends up in landfills and even in the ocean! It has a devastating effect on wildlife. Scientists have predicted that by 2050, the ocean will have more plastic waste than fish. It’s up to us to help keep our home planet free of pollutants.

If you’d like to learn more, please read this very eye-openning article about the dangers of plastic. 

Hard

As an adjective, hard can mean: 

The opposite of soft:

• Wood is hard.

The opposite of easy:

• The exam was hard.

Something involving effort:

• Running a marathon is hard.

As an adverb, hard can mean:

Doing something with energy:

• She works hard.

To use force:

• He hit the ball hard.

One of my favorite things about English (or any language) is how small differences in pronunciation, speech pattern, and vocabularly can you tell you where a person is from without even having to ask!

The United States is riddled with different accents and the way people speak can vary drastically just by travelling a few hundred miles into a new state or even within the same state (e.g. those in southern Texas sound a little different than those in the northern part of the state). 

I think accents and dialects are fascinating, so at home I often try to speak in different ones (even though I’m terrible at it). Here are a few of the more unique ones to be found in America, with a few (stereotypical) words and phrases you can try out:

Boston Accent: Instead of pronouncing the r’s in “Where did you park the car?” change them to an ‘eh’ sound, which becomes “Wheh’d you pehk the keh?” 

North-Central (Minnesota, upper Michigan, the Dakotas):  This accent sounds very friendly and similar to some Canadian dialects. It often makes ‘o’ sounds longer and rounder than they are in other American accents. For instance, Minn-uh-sota (Minnesota) sounds more like Minn-uh-sohda, with the lips taking on a rounder shape at the ‘oh’ part of the word. Likewise, ‘Don’t you know?’ becomes ‘Dontcha noh?”

Southern: Although the southern accent varies greatly from state to state and even city to city, most of them employ what is called a vowel shift. Where ‘standard English’ words with ‘i’ in the middle sometimes result in an /ay/ or ‘eye’ sound, in the south this becomes more of an /ah/. For instance, the word ‘hide’ becomes ‘hahd’ and ‘rice’ becomes ‘rahs’. 

To hear some of these southern accents in action, check out actor and comedian Fred Armisen in this bit on The Tonight Show:

So my trip to Kyoto last weekend was great: I enjoyed a long walk through shrines and parks in the rain and I went to see one of my favorite artists live and we ended up going to Ginkakuji together the next day. Pretty cool.

The one downside of the trip was my capsule hotel experience. I won’t say the name of this capsule hotel because I’ve had good stays before, but this time I woke up sweaty around 6 am and couldn’t get back to sleep. The air was suffocating and I couldn’t find a fan or air conditioning button so I forced myself out of the tube to get fresh air and a shower just to cool down. I ended up checking out after that because I would have rather been sleep deprived than climbing into that furnace again.

I’m not trying to dissuade people from staying in a capsule hotel. On the contrary, I usually recommend them because of how cheap and conveniently located they are. I will warn you though to find a way to ventilate your capsule before falling asleep!

Joe