Sahmilat wrote:A few questions just occurred to me. I am planning to study in Germany, either next year as a study abroad year (I am starting my second year of university this year) or for my master's if my German is good enough by then. Possibly both. I had a couple of German-related questions I was hoping some of the experts here could answer:
1) Is there a particular university/city that you personally think I should try to experience in my study abroad? My main options are FU Berlin, Humboldt, and Leipzig, but I'm pretty sure I could study abroad at pretty much any major university I chose. Obviously depending on what I decide to do for my master's my decision will be very different, but if I am just studying for a year in my bachelors program I just want to learn more about German language and literature. Does any university have a particularly good reputation for that, or are all the big unis good choices?
2) What should I expect in terms of dialect? Obviously it depends on where I study, but if I went to, say, LMU München, would the professors and all the students speak Bayrisch, would there be a mix because of the diverse student population, or would official university things like lectures mostly be held in Hochdeutsch? If I want to live in Germany, which I do, I would likely need to learn a dialect, but I don't have a good idea of how the diglossia functions in universities.
Don't know if it is of any use to you, but according to the
World University Rankings, the German universities with the highest scores are LMU Munich, Technical University of Munich, Heidelberg University, Humboldt University Berlin and Freiburg University.
At least historically, Freiburg has had a strong position in the humanities, several great historical linguists were from there I believe.
Does the city itself have any bearing on your decision? It is very different living in a big city like Berlin compared to living in Freiburg or Heidelberg, both rather "modest" in size. It is of course a personal thing, but from my own student days at least I had the experience that socialising and getting to know other (native) students was easlier in a small university town than in a big city (Madrid), where i would more easily end up with other expat students rather than with the natives.