Index > Why Study German?

WHY STUDY GERMAN?

While munching  HERSHEY kisses, you listen to a MP3, on which the song AUTOBAHN from KRAFTWERK is played. For breakfast you had some MUESLI and a toast with KRAFT cheese. KINDER chocolat and NIMM 2 (Yi Bo) or RITTER SPORT are favourite snacks. Teenager like to buy German shoes like, PUMA, ADIDAS, BIRKENSTOCK or military clothings as well as LEVIS jeans or RUCKSACK to carry their belongings. EDELWEISS, HEIDI, STEFFI, CLAUDIA, ERIKA are sweet names for chinese girls, too. Comuting in Hong Kong they ride in trains from Germany or built with German technologie from SIEMENS, ADTRANS, LIEBHERRR, HOCHTIEF, they see the beautiful bank of China with the German built aluminium fassade, sit in the Airport on chairs and enjoy their food in German style kitchens. Back home they like to watch German FUSSBALLBUNDSLIGA and SCHUMACHERS Formular One races. German pianos like Mueller, Steinway, Bechstein are known and the music of Mozart, Mendelssohn,Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss, Haendel, Liszt is famous. Films like LOLA RUN, RED JACKET, GOODBYE LENIN find an audience in Hong Kong as well as German bread and cake in A1 bakery or P`N Shop. The OKTOBERFEST is a hit with thousands of chinese, dancing on tables, drinking BIER and eating WURST. HEINZ ketchup, BREZEL, BAGEL, BERLINER doughnuts and PABST, BUDWEISER or BECKS beer are known by many.

Do you realize that all of these proper names are of German or part-German origin. In Asian, American and European industry and business, art and science, there are many such distighuished names. This is not surprising, since Germans settled in Asia and America from the earliest times.  Zaiton, Shanghai, Tsingtao, in China, and Jamestown, Ohio, Texas, Philadelphia, Chicago and Dakota in America were their destinations. They constitute the largest non-British element in tourism and business in China and Hongkong and in the last census in America, there were about 60 million of the polulation of the United states of German origin.