Since 1971, German children and adults alike have been enjoying the fantastic program Die Sendung mit der Maus (The Show with the Mouse) on the station Das Erste (available here), and I think you should too, especially if you're studying German (but honestly, even if you're not). I've already talked a little bit about the benefits of using children's television as a language learning tool here, and this show does many of those points very well.
Each episode consists of generally three short segments with animated shorts in between that natürlich feature the titular mouse and his sidekick elephant. The introduction of each show introduces all of the episode's segments, with the announcer previewing each in German. But then the introduction starts up again, only this time in a different language that changes each week. One week it might be Japanese, and the next Irish. At the end of the sequence, the announcer says "Das war..." (That was...) and tells you what the language of the week was. So already right there, it's earning points with me because it exposes the viewer to multiple languages.
The first segment usually seems to be some sort of educational video, often showing how something is made or how things work. Some of them are genuinely interesting, even for adults. Last week, for instance, they demonstrated the prototype of technology that could be placed on top of a cellphone and would be able to tell exactly what you're saying based solely on the movement of your face muscles (you can imagine the applications for this if you had to be quiet in the library, were at a loud rock concert, or had to say something secretive like a PIN code). If you look at the site now (meaning May 8th) you can see other ones that demonstrate how wind turbines work, or what it's like to have diabetes. Again, since the segments rely so heavily on visuals, it is fairly easy to follow even without knowing German. For those are trying to learn it though, the language is simple enough for young children, so it's a good place for beginners. (And if you don't believe me that watching children's television is easier, try watching another one of the programs on the site's player, like the nightly news or a soap opera like Sturm die Liebe and see how well you do).
The rest of the segments seem to be geared more toward a younger audience, like Ringelgasse 19 where the children who have imaginative fantasies, or the giant blue bear Käpt'n Blaubär. There's sometimes even an episode of Shaun das Schaf (Shawn the Sheep), which is exactly the same as in English in that it contains no dialogue.
What I particularly like about watching the show online is that new episodes frequently have the option to watch them with subtitles, or untertitel (abbreviated "UT" on the player). These subtitles are of course in German, not in English. This allows me to try and watch a segment once and try and figure everything out. Then I go back with the subtitles and find words I don't know in a dictionary (the online Wörterbuch from Beolingus is excellent). After studying the words, I can go back and watch it again, and see how much better I can understand it without the subtitles. (It should be noted that the archive contains individual clips from previous shows, but none of them are subtitled).
Of course, this is all especially great if you have young children and want to expose them to different languages. My four-year old knows a couple of words from German now because of it. Of course, here refers to the main character not as "Die Maus" but as "Mitder Maus" (as though "mitder" were his first name).
Die Sendung mit der Maus is available for free and without the need of a VPN from Das Erste's website (here is the link one more time). New episodes are uploaded on Sundays. Subtitles are usually added a few days after. The show also has an interactive website that children might enjoy, found here.
No comments:
Post a Comment