Friday 26 June 2009

Christiane F: Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo

"Wir, Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" by "Christiane F", memoir of a teenage heroin addict and prostitute, was a massive bestseller in Europe and is now a set text in German schools.

Bahnhof Zoo was, until recently, Berlin's central railway station. A kind of equivalent (in more ways than one) to London's King's Cross...

Of course my local library doesn't have it. So I'm going to have to order it through a bookshop and plough through the text in German. I asked my druggieworker Maple Syrup, who is Italiana how she learned English and she said reading books is the best way.

For some reason every section except Part 1 is ENGLISH SUBTITLED ~ wahey!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW2fvE4aJmQ&feature=PlayList&p=E081BB3E116C56C0&index=0&playnext=1

Some kindly German has posted up all 13 parts of the movie ...

TRAILER:



Überblick of the film, with music: Mad World





Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5



Part 6



Part 7



Part 8



Part 9



Part 10



Part 11



Part 12



Part 12B Tut mir leid, aber keine Untertitel from here on. Watch this from the end, it makes up the gap between 12 and 13 as posted here
The overlap comes in at about 9 and a half minutes, just before the end, when she's whipping Stotter Max with the flyswatter:



Part 13



Deutscher Fernsehbericht ueber der echter Christiane F
German TV report on the life of Christiane F







Wednesday 17 June 2009

Esperanto!

I came across Esperanto "many years ago" in the 1980s and even learned a bit. Here's a documentary on the scattered numbers around the world who speak Esperanto fluently:



This "Esperanto TV" broadcast comes from Poland, homeland of Esperanto's creator. The language sounds a lot more natural in this East European accent:



Esperanto is supposed to be spoken with an "Italian accent"; that is, the 5 vowels have the same values as in Italian and word stress is on the penultimate syllable in polysyllabic words or the first syllable in two-syllable words.
This lady really does speak it naturalistically and fluently. This class is about "how to talk on the telephone in Esperanto"