How Rammstein accidentally taught me German

[tenlittlebullets]

Just told this story on Abaissé, am not sure if I've ever properly posted it to LJ, so here it is for posterity.

I have a sort of hyper-verbal brain that's unusually adept at picking up language structures, which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing for obvious reasons, a curse because other things like math and music get routed through the verbal parts of my brain too, and so I can't, say, read/write (or even surf the internet) while listening to music or my wires get hopelessly crossed. It wasn't always this way. Once upon a time I could do text/music multitasking (and once upon a time I saw music in color, but that's another story). Then around adolescence it started slowly disappearing. There was a point around when I was fourteen when I could read while listening to music, but only as long as there were no lyrics I could understand.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

Being fourteen and really into music that made my parents flinch, I was SO DELIGHTED to find Rammstein because it was awesome and I didn't speak a word of German so I could listen to it while I wrote. This continued for... a few weeks maybe? Then I started picking out words that were suspiciously close to English words, and I started getting curious about what was going on in between, so I took the plunge. I looked up the lyrics and the translations of a few of my favorite songs.

German is close enough to English that once I had a translation it was easy to tell which words corresponded to what. This meant all I had to do was go back and listen to those songs some more, and I had a ready-made lesson on pronunciation and a small but useful vocabulary to work with--a handful of nouns and verbs, and most of the common prepositions and pronouns. Then I unofficially got the hang of the word order. Then I started noticing verb conjugations. Then I started noticing that the articles and pronouns changed if they went with a subject, a direct object, or an indirect object. Then I noticed that they seemed to do it irregularly oh my god this does not make sense sometimes they even do different things with the same preposition and went to german.about.com to clear up this URGENT AND LIFE-CHANGING MYSTERY. And it all went downhill from there.

Suffice to say that when I walked into my first day of high school German class, I could no longer multitask while listening to Rammstein, and I could chatter fluently about fire, death, blood, crosses, churchyards, BDSM, and frozen undead children with music boxes in the place of hearts, but I had no idea how to say "Hello, my name is 10littlebullets."

Comments

[collectingbees.livejournal.com]

FUNNY RELATED STORY: German is actually my first language. I didn't speak English until I was.. 3, when I started teaching myself how to read. During high school, all of my friends were very much into Rammstein, and would ask me what they were talking about. I had to explain to them that the German I knew was spoken until I was 14 to my grandmother, which included conversations about food and fluffy animals I liked, not undead children.

Suffice it to say, my English is still a bit, er, interesting sometimes because of it.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Bahaha, that is hilarious. And it's always super-awkward when someone requests a translation of Rammstein lyrics and there's someone in the room who isn't entertained by horrifying things.

[lucieandco.livejournal.com]

Ohh, articles and pronouns. I wasn't even consciously aware of all the exciting adventures they have on the Great German Grammar Ground until I had to learn the medieval equivalents (which aren't brutally different, though), and ... wow, how does anyone ever manage to learn this language? I mean, apart from 'with the assistance of spieluhrbeherzten Kinderleichen and the like' (are you implying that's not perfectly useful conversation material?).

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

I appreciate German grammar, though! As soon as I got it through my head that some of the articles/pronouns can serve double/triple/octuple duty in various genders and cases, it was a kinder, gentler introduction to cases than, say, Latin. Because most of the nouns themselves do not decline, and nominative/accusative/dative corresponds so nicely to subject/direct/indirect object that I pretty much learned them before I knew what the fuck a case was, and still thought dative was an exotic fruit or an adjective meaning "of or relating to various calendar systems" or something. So there was no moment of "WHAT THE FUCK IS AN ABLATIVE AND WHAT DID I EVER DO TO DESERVE THIS."

My vocabulary is completely useless if you are
1. Trying to buy things from soundofmusic.de
2. Having a conversation with normal people, or
3. Being a tourist at Neuschwanstein.
BUT since those are not things I really want to do ever again if I can avoid it, I will note that it is HIGHLY useful if you are
1. Having a halfway interesting conversation
2. Trying to learn Romantic Lieder

[hazellwood.livejournal.com]

Ohhh German.

(I have nothing useful to add except that this story amuses me, and that the same thing is happening to me with French.)

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

But the ability to sing Lovely Ladies in French will get you so far in life, you have no idea! Add some abîmes and sépulchres and coups de foudre in there and you are all set for life forever.

[collectingbees.livejournal.com]

Elles touchent mon pompon et je monte au ciel!

My life has been changed knowing Lovely Ladies in French, let me tell you! ;p

(Who knows, it MAY come in handy someday! ;p )

[coloneldespard.livejournal.com]

I am the ANTI YOU when it comes to language! Although repeated listenings to the OFC mean that I can sing along with it. But I only understand it because I read the translations and puzzled it out.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Ha! I'm the same way about math--I like it, but it doesn't come easily to me, and I need lots of reinforcement and explicit explanations to really get it. In any case, it seems that music is invaluable no matter how you approach languages--the reinforcement, the repetition, the memorization, and especially the comparing foreign-language texts to translations. I don't think it's a coincidence that the only languages I retain any semblance of competence in (French, German, and Latin) are the ones where I was exposed to a LOT of media in that language. I may be quick on the uptake, but I need something to fall back on or I'll forget everything.

[miserable-rose.livejournal.com]

What a great story! On a similar note, I am AWFUL at picking up languages, BUT I do have a strange love of Brecht and Weill. So I can understand stuff about sharks and murder and rape and general evilness.

[digne.livejournal.com]

In high school I took Spanish and because I learn most subjects visually I assumed the same would be true for Spanish. Also the way languages are taught in school tends to be largely out of context. They give you a list of rooms in your house or different foods and then tell you to memorize them.

This never worked for me.

It wasn't until after high school that I started collecting non-English Les Mis albums. And suddenly I was figuring out things in languages I'd previously known almost nothing about. It's amazing how much of the language you soak in without really trying to learn it.

My German is intermediate. And while I *mostly* understand case, gender throws me and messes up my case.

Lately I've been listening to French and it's messing with my brain. Not only am I catching more words but I keep think I'm understanding words only to realize I'm finding words that sound like German words while thinking I'm finding French words. I realize my mistake right away but still ... oy!

I often sing along to Les Mis at home. Even if I'm listening to it in English there are few songs that I'm more prone to sing in other language. There is one line of Javert's that -- I have no idea why -- my impulse is to sing the first half of it in French and the second half in German. I've tried to remember the whole line in either language and I can't so it comes out split ... oy again!