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| INTRODUCTION |
| Chuck: This is Intermediate Series Lesson 10. |
| Judith: Willkommen zurück. |
| Chuck: Welcome back. We’re really already on lesson 10? |
| Judith: Amazing! |
| Chuck: But you know what? The song that we have today, they almost reach the number ten just don’t quite get there. |
| Judith: But lift the secret, what’s today’s song? |
| CULTURAL INSIGHTS |
| Chuck: Today’s song is by Rammstein. |
| Judith: And we all know how much you love them. Woo! Aren’t you happy? |
| Chuck: And we know how much you “du hasst” them. |
| Judith: I don’t hate them. I just don’t think they’re particularly brilliant. And very often they’re vulgar, but I found one song that’s not vulgar and it’s actually the one that you’ve heard every single time you listen to GermanPod because it’s in our jingle. |
| Chuck: So it’s something about something brilliant? The sun? |
| Judith: Yes. |
| Chuck: Die Sonne. |
| Judith: Die Sonne, that’s the title of the song. And the beginning of the song they count, actually in the middle and at the end too. They count all the time and… |
| Chuck: Eins, zwei, drei, vier. |
| Judith: Yeah, just like that. And that’s what we used in our jingle, similar counting. So I guess I don’t have to remind you that you can listen to this song online if you follow the link in the lesson description or you can also just find it on your Rammstein album. It’s one of the most popular songs. |
| Chuck: Yeah, actually I was reading today they, I think it was since 2001, they played it every live concert they’ve ever performed. |
| Judith: Yeah, I can only imagine that the fans must be demanding it too. |
| Chuck: I think our fans are demanding that we go ahead and translate this song for them. |
| Judith: Ok. Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, aus. |
| Chuck: Let’s see. “One, two,” that means “dry”? Is that right? |
| Judith: “Three”. |
| Chuck: “Three”, ok. |
| Judith: My God, here with, in this. |
| Chuck: I knew I didn’t get enough sleep last night. |
| Judith: Yeah. Probably dancing to Rammstein all last night, right? |
| Chuck: That’s what they call it. |
| Judith: Please, just translate. This part is really, really easy. |
| Chuck: Ok. “Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.” |
| Judith: And then aus. |
| Chuck: “Out”. |
| Judith: Yeah, or “over”. Alle warten auf das Licht. |
| Chuck: “Everyone’s waiting for the light”. |
| Judith: Fürchtet euch, fürchtet euch nicht. |
| Chuck: Fürchtet I actually should know. |
| Judith: Fürchten is “to fear”. |
| Chuck: Ah. |
| Judith: Can you translate it now? |
| Chuck: “I'm not afraid of all of you”? |
| Judith: Well, it’s two sentences. Fürchtet euch, fürchtet euch nicht or maybe it’s a repetition. “Fear” or “be afraid”, “don’t be afraid”. Die Sonne scheint mir aus den Augen. |
| Chuck: “The sun is shining in my eyes”. |
| Judith: “From my eyes”. |
| Chuck: “From my eyes”. |
| Judith: As in “my eyes are shining the sun on you”. |
| Chuck: Uh, sounds scary. Should I be afraid or should I not be afraid? |
| Judith: Sie wird heut Nacht nicht untergehen. |
| Chuck: “They...” |
| Judith: No, “it”. “The sun”, sie. |
| Chuck: Sie. |
| Judith: Sie wird. Sie could be plural, you’re right, but sie wird together can only be singular. |
| Chuck: I see, ok. |
| Judith: “She the sun”. |
| Chuck: “She”, “she, the sun, it will not go down tonight”. |
| Judith: Yes. Und die Welt zählt laut bis zehn. |
| Chuck: “And the world counts out loud until ten” or “counts out loud to ten”. |
| Judith: Yes, the world does but Rammstein doesn’t. Eins, hier kommt die Sonne. |
| Chuck: Hier kommt die Sonne. “Here comes the son.” |
| Judith: Zwei, hier kommt die Sonne. |
| Chuck: Hier kommt die Sonne. |
| Judith: Ok, now, you get the picture. |
| Chuck: “Here comes the sun.” |
| Judith: Sie ist der hellste Stern von allen. |
| Chuck: “It’s the brightest star of all.” |
| Judith: At least when seen from earth. |
| Chuck: So I guess if you’re standing on the sun it might not be? Is that what you’re trying to say? |
| Judith: No, I mean objectively it’s not the brightest. There are stars that are producing a lot more energy. |
| Chuck: Ah, so Rammstein didn’t quite do their scientific research here. |
| Judith: I don’t expect them to know any kind of science. Vier, hier kommt die Sonne. Translate already. |
| Chuck: “Four, here comes the sun.” |
| Judith: Yes. You’ll be amazed how often they can say hier kommt die Sonne. |
| Chuck: You just say this is the least educational of our intermediate series? |
| Judith: Well, the song is not very educational but then, I don’t know, the Dschingis Khan wasn’t very educational either. |
| Chuck: Yeah. We’re giving you all a bit of a break here. Does that mean next week we’ll give them some philosophical treaties from some musician? |
| Judith: No, actually next week is special because next week the German national holiday is coming up. |
| Chuck: Uh, we don’t have to work. |
| Judith: No… |
| Chuck: You said national holiday. |
| Judith: We produce before the national holiday and we will treat the German National Anthem. |
| Chuck: And then you have to drink the German national beer, right? |
| Judith: I would if there was one, but fortunately Germans can’t decide which beer should be the best. |
| Chuck: Every store has their beer that says Oktoberfest Bier. |
| Judith: That’s not German, that’s Bavarian at best. Come on, let’s get back to the song. |
| Chuck: Alright. |
| Judith: Die Sonne scheint mir aus den Händen. |
| Chuck: “The sun is shining out of my hands, out of the hands.” |
| Judith: Yes, so that’s already two parts of the body that the sun is shining from. One is the eyes and one is the hands. |
| Chuck: So why is it mir? That would be “to me”? |
| Judith: No, “from me”. |
| Chuck: Oh, right, ok. |
| Judith: Kann verbrennen, kann euch blenden. |
| Chuck: “It can burn, it can mix you all up”? |
| Judith: “Blind you”. Blenden means “to blind”. |
| Chuck: Ok. |
| Judith: So “the song can burn you, can…” |
| Chuck: “Can blind you”. |
| Judith: Yeah. |
| Chuck: Ok. |
| Judith: Wenn sie aus den Fäusten bricht. |
| Chuck: “When it shines”? |
| Judith: No. Bricht, brechen. |
| Chuck: “Breaks, breaks out of the Faust”? |
| Judith: “Out of the fists”. Faust, the singular, Faust, die Faust “the fist”. Fäuste is plural. |
| Chuck: Ok. |
| Judith: “Fists”. And you see this is a really weird song. So far I can’t make sense of it but we’ll see. |
| Chuck: I guess you could call this postmodern, right? |
| Judith: Legt sich heiß auf das Gesicht. |
| Chuck: “It lays itself hot from the face”? |
| Judith: “On your face.” |
| Chuck: “On your face.” |
| Judith: So this thing sounds a bit like a fist fight. Sie wird heut Nacht nicht untergehen. Und die Welt zählt laut bis zehn. We already had that. |
| Chuck: “You won’t go down tonight…” |
| Judith: “It”. |
| Chuck: “It”. |
| Judith: Or rather “she”, the sun. |
| Chuck: Alright. And then we have the chorus again, except this time it looks like they go up to six, no? |
| Judith: Yes, it’s similar. It’s always similar but different, so I wouldn’t say chorus. Eins, hier kommt die Sonne. Zwei, hier kommt die Sonne. Drei, sie ist der hellste Stern von allen. Remind us. |
| Chuck: “It’s the brightest star of all.” |
| Judith: Yeah. Vier, hier kommt die Sonne. Fünf, hier kommt die Sonne. Sechs, hier kommt die Sonne. Have I mentioned how boring this song is? Sieben, sie ist der hellste Stern von allen. Neun, hier kommt die Sonne. |
| Chuck: Yay! |
| Judith: And then they repeat this part about die Sonne scheint mir aus den Händen. “The sun is shining from my hands.” And then again they have this counting part, eins, hier kommt die Sonne. Zwei, hier kommt die Sonne. |
| Chuck: Yeah, I think we just did this. |
| Judith: Drei, sie ist der hellste Stern von allen. No, there is a change. Vier, und wird nie vom Himmel fallen. |
| Chuck: Ah. “and will never fall from Heaven.” |
| Judith: Or “from the sky”. Himmel in German has two meanings, either “Heaven” or “sky”. |
| Chuck: Right. |
| Judith: Fünf, hier kommt die Sonne. Sechs, hier kommt die Sonne. Sieben, sie ist der hellste Stern von allen. Acht, neun, hier kommt die Sonne. |
| Chuck: So don’t blame me because it’s boring cause I told you to do Du hast. |
| Judith: Du hast is boring and vulgar. This is just boring. Anyway, we translated the whole song now and I still don’t know what it’s about. Enlighten me. |
| Chuck: You know, in an article I was reading today I saw that it was about a boxer. |
| Judith: A boxer? What boxer? |
| Chuck: Vitali Klitschko. |
| Judith: Ah, he’s a very famous boxer here, in Germany. He and his brother, Wladimir Klitschko, I'm not sure if they still are but they used to be very popular. |
| Chuck: Ok. |
| Judith: But I’ve heard a lot of speculations about this song, what it’s about. Some say, like in YouTube, they say it’s about Hiroshima. |
| Chuck: Well, I read that on Wikipedia so my source has to be right. |
| Judith: Or judging by the video it could also be about drugs. The video, have you seen it? It’s about Snow White and the seven dwarfs. It’s a really weird video to go with this song, to cause even more confusion as if the song wasn’t enough. |
| Chuck: You sure you weren’t seeing an anime version on YouTube that someone made? |
| Judith: No, it was official video. |
| Chuck: Alright. |
| Judith: Ok, let’s draw something good from this. So since they’re counting all this time, eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf and so on, I think we might want to look at what they mean for school. |
| Chuck: But what do you mean? You have A through F. |
| Judith: In German it is 1 to 6. |
| Chuck: What? |
| Judith: 1 is the best mark you can get and 6 is the very worst. I can give you the names of the marks. 1 is sehr gut, and zwei is gut, drei is befriedigend, can you understand that? |
| Chuck: Not sure, no. Looks like something like zufrieden, “content”? |
| Judith: Befriedigend is a participle, it means “satisfying”. You wouldn’t hear it in any other occasion, just for school marks. It’s a very old word. |
| Chuck: Alright. |
| Judith: 4 is ausreichend. |
| Chuck: That’s something about “reaching”. |
| Judith: It’s “enough”, “being enough”. Ausreichen, es reicht aus is “it’s enough”. |
| Chuck: Ok, es reicht, yeah. |
| Judith: Es reicht aus. You have to put the aus. |
| Chuck: You have to? |
| Judith: Yeah. Well, es reicht, I guess it’s… if you want to say it fast that’s enough. |
| Chuck: Es reicht. |
| Judith: Es reicht, like when you’re singing at the beginning of this song. I have to cut you off before our listeners receive some damage to their ears. |
| Chuck: Hey, I think our listeners like it when I sing. |
| Judith: Do they? Well, they haven’t written much about it. |
| Chuck: Everyone write in the comments about how much more you want to hear me sing. |
| Judith: Ok, I’ll be waiting for that. I think it will be a cold day in whatever place they were singing about. |
| Chuck: They were singing about the sun. Oh wait, the sun is shining and it’s bright and warm. |
| Judith: Yeah, it will be a cool day there before we hear them that they want to hear you sing. |
| Chuck: Hier kommt die Sonne. |
| Judith: Please! Fünf, mangelhaft. |
| Chuck: Hier kommt die Sonne. |
| Judith: Hey, mangelhaft. |
| Chuck: Ok. |
| Judith: You understand that? |
| Chuck: No. |
| Judith: It’s “deficient”. |
| Chuck: Ok. |
| Judith: Mangel is like “a deficiency” and mangelhaft is “having a deficiency”. |
| Chuck: Aha. |
| Judith: And ungenügend is 6, the worst mark. Ungenügend. |
| Chuck: Genug is “enough” so ungenügend would be “not enough”? |
| Judith: “Insufficient”, yeah. And, just like in the States, teachers can add plus or minus to the mark so that they can evaluate you more finely. Typically you need at least a 4 in a subject to pass. If you’re marker paper, at the end of the year, contains one 6 or several 5s, then you have to repeat the year. |
| Chuck: You know that’s weird because when you have the GPA system in the States, 4 is… you know, the highest number is the best. |
| Judith: Yeah, well did I say that USA is not always logical? But that reminds me, because in Switzerland it’s just like that. Well, not four is the best, in Switzerland 6 is the best. It’s always a joke among little kids here, they say, “Oh I got a 5 in math, I'm going to go to Switzerland and I'm going to be the star.” |
| Chuck: Nice. |
| Judith: But in Austria the marks are very much like in Germany, except they don’t have mark 6. |
| Chuck: They don’t want anyone to be a failure there. It’s very nice of them. |
| Judith: Anyway, in Germany you’re always striving to get the mark 1, sehr gut. |
| Chuck: So you all can give me a mark on my singing in the comments below. And after you write it I can determine whether it’s the Swiss or the German system. |
| Judith: Better write it. |
| Chuck: Just the number, that’s all you need to write. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Judith: Ok, let’s do some grammar and numbers. Obviously you know how to count in German. At least I very much hope so. With Chuck I had some doubts earlier… |
| Chuck: Eins, zwei, drei. |
| Judith: And then? |
| Chuck: Then, let’s see… |
| Judith: Ok, Chuck doesn’t know how to count but you certainly do or otherwise you should be going back to the newbie or beginner series where we taught just that, in depth. Or you can just listen to this song over and over. Eventually the numbers will stick too. |
| Chuck: I have a bit of fear what the next number could be… |
| Judith: Yeah, vier. Anyway, just want to add one thing to what we already said about numbers that is when numbers are used as a noun, they’re all feminine. So, for example, the grades at school that we talked about, you’d say eine Eins. Ich habe eine Eins in Mathematik. |
| Chuck: “I had a 1 in math”. |
| Judith: Yeah, actually people would say Mathe, not Mathematik. So you already know the regular numbers and now you know that they’re always female. Let’s talk about ordinal numbers. |
| Chuck: What are ordinal numbers? |
| Judith: Ordinal numbers are used to indicate the order of things. For example, the orders of the players in the Formula One racing. |
| Chuck: Could you put that in English? |
| Judith: Well, like “first, second, he did third place…” |
| Chuck: Ah, ok. |
| Judith: “Fourth, fifth” and so on. |
| Chuck: Alright. |
| Judith: In English writing you have to put the two last letters of the word next to the number, like you write 1st to mean first. And 2nd for second, and that’s very irregular because for 3 you would put rd and for fourth you would put th, and it’s very hard to learn. In Germany, it’s much easier. You just put a dot after the number. |
| Chuck: So you say like eins punkt? |
| Judith: Yes. Eins punkt, zwei punkt, drei punkt. But you don’t pronounce it like that, it’s just how you write it. 1., 2., 3. |
| Chuck: So how do you pronounce it? |
| Judith: In speaking you have to add ter to the numbers. For example, Zweiter, 2nd. |
| Chuck: Like Vierter? |
| Judith: Yes. |
| Chuck: Ah, Fünfter. |
| Judith: Yes. |
| Chuck: Sechster. Siebter or Siebenter? |
| Judith: Siebter. |
| Chuck: Siebter, ok. |
| Judith: The rest would sound too weird. |
| Chuck: It did sound weird when I tried to say Siebenter. |
| Judith: And Achter. |
| Chuck: I was like, “This doesn’t sound right”. |
| Judith: Ok. So this is ter normally, but when you’re talking about a feminine word then you have to use te. So these behave like an adjective and ok, we had fourth is Vierter and zwei is Zweiter and so on. There’re just two exceptions to this rule. 1st is Erster and 3rd is Dritter. So you go Erster, Zweiter, Dritter, Vierter, Fünfter, Sechster, Siebter, Achter and so on, just regular from then on. |
| Chuck: Even Zehnter? |
| Judith: Yes. |
| Chuck: Ok. Elfter, Zwölfter. Ok. Cool. |
| Judith: Now, when might you use ordinal numbers? I think they’re particularly useful when you’re telling the date, like erster Juli. |
| Chuck: Or like dritter August? |
| Judith: Yes, or fünfter Mai. |
| Chuck: Cool. And now I can actually say them correctly. I’ve been saying them wrong for two and a half years now. |
| Judith: But remember that they are still adjectives, so in some cases you still need to change them. Erster Platz is “first place”, it doesn’t change, it’s ter, but das zweite Lied. |
| Chuck: “The second song”. |
| Judith: And in very strange cases you may even see these in the plural, like dritte. That would be “thirds”, people in third. It means third parties. For example, on German websites you might see Wir geben Ihre Daten nicht an Dritte weiter. |
| Chuck: So “We don’t pass your data on to third parties”. |
| Judith: Yes, so Dritte in that case is “third parties”, but literally it’s just “people in third”. And one thing more, in English, when you’re making an argument you could say “First, I don’t like you, and second, you’re really bad, and third…” I don't know. In German, you have to use slightly modified versions of the ordinal numbers. You have to use versions that end in tens. Erstens - "firstly”, zweitens, drittens, viertens and so on. |
Outro |
| Chuck: So let’s see, let me try something. Erstens habe ich Durst, zweitens will ich ein Bier und drittens war diese Lektion schon lang genug. |
| Judith: Ok, ok. Hör auf zu klagen. Stop complaining. Let me just mention… |
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