Weekly Recommendation: Der Postillon
Hey there!
Here’s your weekly German media recommendation from Monoglot Anxiety. This time, it's the satirical news site Der Postillon.
But first, a quick note from me:
Want to share your language journey on my blog? I'm looking for normal folks at all stages of language learning to share their stories on my blog this summer and beyond. Specifically, I want to share your stories with the first foreign language(s) you learned because you wanted to, and not just for school.
If you're interested in writing a guest post, just shoot me an email!
Der Postillon
Have you ever been fooled by an article from The Onion? You know, that satirical news site that runs stories that are sometimes almost believable? I have. And let me tell you, it just gets harder to tell satire from the real stuff when you're reading a foreign language.
Der Postillon is a German satirical news website running stories of the sort you'd expect to see in The Onion. But Der Postillon has been in the good-kind-of-fake-news business just a bit longer — since 1845! Even given such a long run, people still to get confused by Postillon articles, though. The first entry in their FAQ makes that clear:
1. Stimmt das, was im Postillon steht?
Nein, alles, was im Postillon steht, ist Satire und somit dreist zusammengelogen. Alle auftauchenden Charaktere sind fiktional, Ähnlichkeiten mit lebenden Personen sind rein zufällig. Das sollte eigentlich offensichtlich sein, obwohl zahlreiche Kommentare darauf hinweisen, dass vieles hier für bare Münze genommen wird.
Video, too!
Der Postillon produces video "news" too. Check out this one about how an unknown person hacked the Deutsche Bahn to make the trains run on time: https://www.der-postillon.com/2022/05/bahn-hack-video.html
And yes, that's right — trains running on time in Germany is satire. Don't believe what you've heard about German punctuality extending to train timetables, the Deutsche Bahn is notorious for its delays.
Get in touch!
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That's all for this week,
Elise from Monoglot Anxiety