AMD 2, Breanna Ghostone

Facebook in German

For the AMD2 I decided to change my Facebook language settings to German. I use to spend a lot of time on Facebook but for the past month or two I have not been on as often. I thought it would be a good idea to go back on since I am not as familiar with the site as I use to be.

I thought this would be very difficult and that I would have no idea what was going on. However, it wasn't too bad. Changing the settings does not change every single thing to German like I thought it would. For instance everything that people post stays in English  and everything that I post stays in English as well. However, anything controlled specifically by Facebook was changed to German. Like the layout and the categories of News feeds/Neuigkeiten, Messages/Nachrichten, Photos/Fotos, and the Calandar/Veranstaltungen.  It also took me a while to figure out where the home button which was has always been in the same place on Facebook. But the word "Startseit" was so unfamiliar to me that it took forever for me to figure out that the "Startseit" button would bring me back to the home page.

I was proud that I was able to recognize things like dates, times, and locations. For example when I saw "vor 17 Minuten in der Nähe von Bloodmingdale Illinois" under a photo, I knew that it meant 17 minutes ago in Bloomingdale, Illinois. At the top of the news feeds Facebook also asks"Was machst du gerade". Which means "What are you thinking about" but instead of me remembering that, I took the time to break down each word. I knew "Was" means "what" and that "macht" roughly means "to bring about/to make" and "du" means "you". It was not hard to make a guess about gerade since I already knew the rest of the sentence.

I was also able to recognize words like "Familie & Beziehungen" and "Gesunheit & Wellness". However, I was unfamiliar with phrases like "Arbeit & Ausbildung" and "Reisen & Erfahrungen". The only reason I was able to figure out that this meant "Work and Training" and the latter one meant "Travel and Experiences" was by clicking on the tabs.


Overall, this adventure was not too hard. It was a mixture of German and English and there were plenty of clues to help me figure things out. The small icons were helpful and the small amount of German that I know, helped me from time to time. The only challenging part were the notifications and then trying to find my way around with the different titles and categories now changed to
German. Other than that it was not as hard as I thought it would be and was kind of fun. I might try to change other social networking sites to German as well just to see if it would be a bit more challenging.