Where East Meets West (Berlin)

Hallo und guten tag aus Kreuzberg, Berlin! A little about myself: my name is Rebecca Shapey. I’m a lifeguard and I love to swim. I’ve been drawing and painting all my life and always carry a sketchbook. The last leisure book I read was Geek Love and it was horrifying, fascinating, and amazing. I was born and raised in Northern New Jersey (very different from the South, I promise) and have spent short periods of time abroad in Paris and Switzerland. I’m a first semester junior with a concentration in Language and Communication. As we know, there is always a back-story behind every concentration. I also would like to introduce you to languages (lowercase l) and Language (capital L), the difference between them forming the core of my concentration. The studies of written and spoken language structures, the systematic ways in which sounds and writing symbols are combined, and the ways these symbols form a coherent system of comprehension and production is generally called Linguistics. To my knowledge, it can also be split into several even more specific categories: neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics. This leads us straight into interdisciplinary, individualized fields of study. That is how I define Language, capital-L, in my concentration. Languages, plural-lowercase-l, is much more straightforward: French, German, Spanish, & English as obvious examples. These four are the only languages I have or am studying formally. I’m also familiar with Korean because my mom is from Seoul. I could devote another whole post to how much I love American Sign Language and can’t wait to do my minor, so I won’t go into it. German is a beautiful language although not the most endearing. It is systematic, straightforward, and reliable – all of which English is not, although they share common roots. At the Berliner Dom near Humboldt Universität One of my goals this semester is to become conversant in German. I’m a language nerd (if this hasn’t become apparent) and love to collect factoids on languages, so I also hope to pick up bits and pieces even if I can’t speak it. In addition to German, I’m also taking 20th Century History of Germany and a course called Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. Berlin is one of the leading cities in the entire world for contemporary and street art, both of which I absolutely love. Expect photos soon from the East Side Gallery, which is a piece of the Berlin Wall that has been commissioned to various artists and devoted to the public. I’ll end on this note here. Until next post, tchüss!

Location