Hier sprechen wir Deutsch

Von Poltu

Die lustige Seite des Deutschlernens. Ein Comicstrip auf Englisch und gebrochenes Deutsch.
A comic strip on the funny side of learning German as second language. In English and broken German!

Two cool dudes set out to learn German...

Vics and Sids sign up for a German course at a well-known German institute, and get more than they bargained for. Join the linguistic adventures of the laid-back duo as they grapple with hairy German grammar, their irascible teacher Thelma Snax, and a slightly batty fellow student, Malini, with whom Vics proceeds to fall hopelessly in love, German style.

This is an adaption into German of an original Anglo-French cartoon strip. In 2015, the French speaking cartoonist Poltu was invited by Alliance Française de Bangalore to draw an in-house comic strip. The result was ‘Ici, on parle français’, which quickly gained a cult following with the various Alliance regional centers worldwide.

Since Poltu also happens to speak German, he adapted the comic strip into the Deutsche Sprache. Extensive changes were required: gags based on French grammar and French culture had to be replaced with German ones, French icons like Victor Hugo and Yves St Laurent had to be replaced with German celebrities like Goethe and Schumacher. But eventually it got done. The result is this book.

For inspiration, Poltu drew on his experiences studying German at a well-known language institute, plus oodles of comic imagination. If you have ever learnt German as second language, this strip should revive fond memories.

The original French version is also available as a separate book on this website.

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: Poltu
• Erscheinungsdatum: 27. Juli 2017
• ISBN: 9781370930937

Poltu

Pashupati “Poltu” Chatterji is a humor novelist, cartoonist and songwriter. “Poltu” is his pen-name. Poltu describes himself as an overgrown teenager and an incurable Wodehouse addict. He spent the early part of his childhood in Africa, and later in Rajasthan, India. He also lived some years in Munich, Germany. For most of the past decade he had lived in Bangalore, and most of his novels are based out of that city. He is currently based in Lyon, France, with his French wife. Before turning a full time novelist in 2006, Poltu worked in software. He was senior manager in leading tech MNC’s (Siemens, Infineon, Intel). He speaks English, German, French, Hindi, Bengali and smatterings of Kannada, Marathi and Swahili. Poltu has written a number of humorous books, both novels and non-fiction. More information is available on his website www.poltusworld.com. His novels are what he calls ‘musical novels’ – they are accompanied by songs, which can be downloaded from his website. He has won an international songwriting competition in France. In 2014, he was the Cartoonist-in-Residence at Alliance Française de Lyon. In 2015 he drew a weekly comic strip in French for Alliance Française de Bangalore which was displayed in all the classrooms. He publishes numerous weekly cartoon strips on his humor blog: Good God! Blandine’s Farm, Naresh NGO, Searching for Godot, and others, in English, French and German.

Buchvorschau

FOREWORD

This is a German adaption of ‘Ici on parle française’, a project I had done for Alliance Française de Bangalore in 2015. As a French-speaking Indian cartoonist and a former student, they had invited me to do a series of cartoons on life at the institute. The result was a cartoon strip on the fictional adventures of two cool dudes, Vics and Sids, learning French at the Alliance Française. It ran a full year at the institute, developing a cult fan-following, and was eventually published as a book.

Since I happen to speak German too, I had the bright idea of adapting the strip into that language. It was a something of a challenge, since the original strip had jokes on the peculiarities of the French language and references to French culture, all of which I had to re-create for Deutsch and Deutsche Kultur. But, after a bit of struggle, I managed it.

Enjoy the humor. If you, like me, are a student of the German language, I’m sure it’ll give you a good laugh and revive a few old memories of grappling with adjective declination and modal verbs and whatnot. This is a free e-book. I urge you to share it widely. Forward it to all your fellow students of the German language.

Since the original French version was meant for students in Bangalore, it made frequent references to the city,