Learning German through music
Music makes many things easier, including learning a foreign language. The reasons are obvious: Rhythm and melody help to remember words and phrases. Music reminds us of the situation in which an expression was used - even more, it conveys the history and culture of the country in which a song was created. The German hit „Die da!“ by the music group „Die Fantastischen Vier“ is a good example of how you can expand your German vocabulary in a fun way.
The lyrics of “Die da!” consist of a conversation between the two rappers Smudo and Thomas D., in which they realize that they are going out with the same woman, just on different days. At the end of the song, they discover that there is a third admirer because she is never free on Fridays.
Everybody can immediately sing the two-syllable chorus. The cheerful melody puts you in a good mood, the rhythm gets you moving and the vocabulary used is simple everyday German.
In the following, we will explain special expressions, give you cultural insights and explain linguistic and grammatical means using specific examples from the lyrics.
German idioms
The greeting “Alles klar?” which they both repeat at the beginning of the song, is a colloquial expression for “How are you?” In Germany, we use the informal form only with good friends. This also applies to the question “Was geht?” (“What’s up?”), which is mainly found in youth language. Young people typically use this question to find out if there is anything new.
The lyrics also consist of many established expressions that are widely used in Germany. For example, the phrase „jemanden den Kopf verdrehen“(literally “to turn someone's head”) stands for “to fall in love”, or generally “to be enchanted”. “Die Korken knallen lassen” (literally “popping the corks”) is an image for celebrating. In Germany, people toast with champagne or sparkling wine on special occasions. Both drinks involve a loud opening (= popping) of the bottle.
Insight into German culture
The first two verses in the lyrics give an insight into what flirting in Germany is all about: spending time together, going to the club or the cinema, taking someone out for dinner, laughing together and letting your charm play out. The song explains these flirting situations, which are typical in many Western countries, by simple phrases.
The rhyme pattern of the song
The rhymes in the lyrics are very simple and thus easy to remember: The rhyme syllables after stressed vowels (a, e, i, o, u) sound the same. The song “Die da!” often uses so called ‘pure rhymes” which means that the same letters very often rhyme with each other in the same order:
- „wir haben uns unterhalten, …, denn sie hat sich so verhalten“
- „Und ich wollt' mit ihr ins Kino gehen, stattdessen war'n wir essen, denn sie hatte den Film schon gesehen; ich hielt's für angemessen.“
In order to follow the rhyme pattern, the song additionally uses colloquial speech by shortening expressions with an apostrophe („war’n“ instead of „waren“, „hielt’s“ instead of „hielt es“).
German grammar
As the rappers tell each other what they have experienced, their stories take place in the past. The verses are therefore ideal for practicing the perfect tense. In German, you form the perfect tense with an auxiliary verb (“sein” or ‘haben’) and the past participle. As already explained above, the rappers use short forms in the lyrics to follow the rhyme pattern: “wir hab'n uns unterhalten, und ich hab' sie eingeladen, denn sie hat sich so verhalten” (“hab'n” instead of ‘haben’, “hab'” instead of “habe”).
In addition to the perfect tense, you frequently find the present tense in the lyrics. In German, you uses the present tense when talking about present or future situations. In the song “Die da!”, the rappers only use the present tense in the first person (singular and plural): „wir reden und verabreden, Jetzt seh' ich die Zukunft positiv…“.
The chorus permanently repeats the title of the song, almost like in a children's song. In fact, you can use this two-syllable chorus to learn a lot about sentence elements and word types. The song plays with grammatical ambiguity: “die” is a sentence element, namely the subject (questioned by “Who or what is doing something?”) and a pronoun as a word type (replaces a noun in the sentence).
German song lyrics are the perfect way to immerse yourself in the culture of the country and learn special German expressions or idioms. At the same time, you can expand your grammar skills through specific examples in the songs. Finally, you can talk about a topic that interests everyone: Music.
