Die Nummer sind ein Wunder/ Another rambling post and minor update

(Google translate suggests that Zahlen sind ein Wunder is closer to the “Numbers are a miracle” that I want to say here, but I have only mild confidence in this.)

Man this hasn’t been a great couple of days of me versus technology and the world. (Whining to come, but first, most of our original message!)

My first fairly recent experience of actually sort of understanding something being said in German* and not designed for language learners happened in early December, while watching a not-very-good, otherwise mostly English-language movie, and someone in the background of a scene started saying numbers in German. And I recognized the actor was saying numbers in German. And it was cool, to actually understand something that was being said in a “live” context.

(I mean, okay, there were some words I already sort of knew before, partially due to random sporadic and fairly minimal exposure growing up where I did, where there was some not totally insignificant ancestral sort-of German demographics, and thanks also in part to Hollywood films, I think we can all work out which type – and because… these languages are siblings. Siblings that were separated well over a thousand years ago, and have been living more or less on opposite sides of a mirror since then, but still siblings.)

*Does German and English sharing between 40 and 60% of their vocabularies, depending on what information source you look at, help in the learning process for a native English speaker? Well, yes, it clearly must, and I assume it also helps going the other way too, but I also want to point out that while the languages share some base vocabulary, thanks to their shared ancestral language, the same sort of “core word” is often spelled and pronounced differently. Also there sometimes seems to be some French influence on German that I did not expect although perhaps it’s not actually a French influence but a Latin influence, thanks to ancient Romans. Also German grammar is different. And an almost complete mystery to me at the moment.

I’m not sure if I should blame Hollywood films or U2 for me having the vague feeling that there’s a song out there with a line out there that goes “Achtung Baby, baby, achtung, yeah!” to a rhythm that resembles that of Love Shack.

This may just be a me problem.

Anyway, after a couple of months of trying to actively learn German for a couple of hours a week, sometimes study sessions are quite frustrating and it’s really hard for me to tell if I’m making any progress.

For example today I tried to read an e-book and I was only getting one out of every five or six words and for some reason it was about a travelling knight taking strengthening potions and I have no idea why I am doing this to myself.

But I’m going off topic a bit. What I was going to say is that earlier this month I decided I would take a song from a band that I’ve relatively recently been introduced to – German rock band AnnenMayKantereit – a song which is not my favourite song of theirs but which has wonderfully easy to identify numbers in the lyrics. And I then recorded my attempt at “translation” or interpretation of the lyrics. (Here, which was a bad idea.) And my plan is to return to the song in a couple of months, and see if I can improve my translation-interpretation attempt.
I could of course just look up the lyrics, and/or get the music video to play with subtitles, but that wouldn’t be particularly useful as a progress marker, now would it? I am even resisting looking at the lyrics in German, at this point.

(I initially was going to include my attempt at translation here in this post but than I was reminded that copyright can get really weird with music lyrics and I decided it would just be boring for other people anyway so now I’ve taken it back out of this post. (Although I thought I’d saved it in another post cleverly hidden from the public!) You can just imagine me doing a terrible attempt at dancing around my bedroom/office while singing along to the number parts of the song instead.)
Here is a link to the song: 21, 22, 23

(Note: I assume this song doesn’t include any particularly weird or rude lyrics, but since I am only sort of confident of understanding maybe a quarter of the lyrics at the moment, uh, yeah, sorry if it does but I dunno.)

Whining time! As I’ve tried to hurriedly adjust this post before it’s previously scheduled publishing, I’ve just some how lost my attempt at translation, which took me nearly an hour, because I am bad at German, and it seems it was vanished as I edited this post! It seems like I did NOT save it cleverly in a hidden post! And now I’ll have to do it again.

Also, in the whining about digital tools not doing what I want them to do for today, my mouse is doing odd things, and my new digital audio player does not actually shut down when I’ve set it on a sleep timer, and instead keeps going until it’s battery dies. And I don’t notice until I want to use it again and then I have to wait for it to recharge. (Yeah, I know, rich person problems.)

In the further general whining but also update camp:

I have completed my mini-poems-inspired-by-films collection, as well as a longer essay/review comparing two films. I was pretty focused on the essay over the end of last week/this past weekend, trying to get it done in time to write a flash fiction as well before a soft deadline.

I did not have time to get the flash fiction done, but I was feeling pretty satisfied with the essay, which I wrote with a specific magazine in mind.

And then, having finished writing and editing and cutting and polishing the essay – I re-read the magazine’s “wants” in film review-essays, and while I can understand why I thought I was doing what they wanted, when I read their wants now, it’s suddenly clear to me that I previously read it the way I wanted it to read rather than the way it actually reads – and they’re likely actually looking for reviews of works with a speculative bent, and that is not what I reviewed. So, yeah, basically, I’ve wasted some time.

But I have been writing! And studying!

Just… not all that usefully, it seems.

And I’ve just had a look around and I can only see two or three magazines that might maybe want to use some of the little poems from my micro-collection.

I shall hopefully be more in line with the world with the little flash fiction piece I should still try and write, next.

But first, I really need a loud music break!

How much does music entertain you in your life? Are you a “music person” or do you go whole days without listening to any songs? Do you come up with your own songs sometimes? Have you used songs to help you learn another language? Did you find it useful, or did you find it a distraction?