Only Lovers Left Alive – A Stroll Down Eternal Lovers’ Lane

By Maryann Henck

only_lovers_left_alive_poster After a three-year respite, iconic independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch is back with a quietly intriguing new film: Only Lovers Left Alive – a tale of two lovers and of two cities. Although lovers Adam and Eve (Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton) – not the biblical couple but nevertheless, a couple in the biblical sense – live in cities continents apart, they have been together forever. Literally forever since both of them happen to be vampires.

Yet, they’re not the type of vampires you might be expecting for they have little in common with either the shape-shifting, black-caped Dracula types or the momentarily in vogue vampires from the likes of Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, and True Blood. This is, after all, the quirky cinematic world according to Jarmusch who is known for his refusal to cater to any one specific audience. His primary objective is to make films that “tell stories, but somehow in a new way, not in a predictable form, not in the usual manipulative way.”

15 September 2014Access Americaadmin

Obama’s Clean Air Act

An Interview with David Goldfield

The German daily newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, recently featured an article on President Obama’s policy for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. President Obama’s environmental stance was a contributing factor to his election and re-election campaigns. Nonetheless, he has faced difficulties in implementing his reforms. We interviewed David Goldfield, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, to discuss the President’s plans. Read more »

15 September 2014Access AmericaAccents, American English, Americans, Dialects, Leuphana, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, United Statesadmin

How Do Americans Really Talk?

By Grant Helle

We know that not all American English is the same: Southerners love to talk about sipping ‘coke’ while drinking a sprite; New Yorkers talk about their pie while eating at a pizzeria; and Bostonians love talking about plenty, but no one has understood them since the 1800s.

Surely these are the only three dialects in America, right?

Not quite.

Even though these dialects might not be as distinct as those of the British Isles, American English still has plenty of differences that are – as with almost every language – increasing. In fact, these variations are not always noticeable right away. An Iowan might not realize that newscasters are from somewhere else until they keep referring to ‘law-yers’ and not ‘loy-yers’.

So how do Americans really talk? In 2002, Professors Bert Vaux and Scott Golder set out to answer this question and developed a survey of over 120 questions in order to determine who pronounces what, how, and where.

But why just read about it? Take The New York Times’ dialect challenge yourself.