Observing the Culture's Language
Sunday, June 12, 2011 at 9:00 We've been watching The Big Bang Theory on DVD lately (great show, if you haven't seen it!!). The basic premise is geeky young scientists befriending (and in one's case, dating) the hot girl across the hall - and all the funny misadventures that ensue.
In the first season's sixth episode, the boys attend Penny's Halloween party and have trouble interacting with the other guests. As they sit together on the couch amid a room of beautiful people socializing, the follow conversation ocurrs:
Leonard: I want to get to know Penny's friends...I just don't know how to talk to these people.
Sheldon: Actually, I might be able to help.
Leonard: How so?
Sheldon: Like Jane Goodall observing the apes, I initially saw their interactions as confusing and unstructured. But patterns emerged. They have their own..."language," if you will.
Leonard: Go on.
Sheldon: Well, it seems that the newcomer approaches the existing group with the greeting, "How wasted am I?" Which is met with an approving chorus of, "Duuude.
It struck us that standing in Marienplatz or outside the Hofbrauhaus is a great place for a similar experiement. Seemingly overnight - as May turned into June - the predominant language in these areas switched from German/Italian to English. Listening to the young American tourists and groups kicking off their summer study abroad, we found ourselves making a similar observation.
The standard interaction?
Dude, how many beers did I have last night?
The beer here is, like, so good.
Yeah, but they're, like, sooo big!
Have you been to the Hofbrauhaus yet?
Ahhh...Munich in summer, from the point of view of the under-21s!
Frau A ... 2 Comments 
Reader Comments (2)
Where do I get one of these cameras??????? Cool pics!
@Heather: the key to this photo is not the camera, but the post processing. Frau A took 5 exposure bracketed photos (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2) and brought them into software called Photomatix. Photomatix merges the photos and allows you to adjust parameters that can increase the intensity of the tone (tonemapping). Set your camera to do exposure bracketing (and be very stable through all exposures), drop $100 on Photomatix at http://www.hdrsoft.com/ and go to it! Cheers, HerrJ