Musik auflegen

I have been putzing around at home listening to German music and wanted to share it with you all. Today's phrase means "to put some music on." One of my goals for my time in Germany is to attend Rock am Ring, an enormous concert on the Nürburgring.

And this brings me to my first real taste of German culture: Music! It all began with a mixtape (doesn't it always?)

Julia, an exchange student at my high school, made me this CD and it is still solid gold! To this day 1 in 10 songs on my iPod is in German. Credit should also be given to my first German teacher who forced us to translate songs in class. I hated it. I should also mention that my high school German teacher was...well he's dead, and my tiny sense of decency tells me not to speak ill of the dead, so I'll stop right there, but he taught me that I'm really not into dissecting a song for 5 hours. I'd rather enjoy my music.

As far as learning German goes, listening to the music has helped me learn how to pronounce the words, where the stress falls in a word, how the sentences are strung together and lots of other stuff that you don't really cover in class. Strangely, the vocabulary of a gansta rapper and the vocabulary of a high school German teacher don't have much overlap. I thought it was weird too.

Now before you snub your nose at German music with its unshaven women and lyrics that sound like a angry badger coughing, you should know that Germany has a banging music scene. I'm always collecting new music, so if you know of any German bands you like or if you want a recommendation, hit me up in the comments. Also check out some of the songs listed above. A handful are English songs by German bands, the Beatsteaks for example.

An astute blog reader of mine (my mom) also pointed out that teaching German words is next to useless if people don't know how to say them. Luckily, German words are pronounced almost always like they are spelled. I found a pretty good explanation of the rules, including how to pronounce the Ü and Ö.