|
 |
Can someone help me with this German line | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6436 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 1 of 7 11 February 2010 at 1:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
In the Rammstein song "Sonne," there is a line that says:
"Die Sonne scheint mir aus den Händen" I know what all those words mean, but there is something about the grammar/word order that I don't understand. I see it translated as: "The sun is shining out of my hands" How is that "my hands?" Wouldn't that be "meine Hände"? I've only studied German casually, and it was years ago, but I would see that and think something like "the sun is shining on me, out of my hands" but that doesn't make sense (not that song lyrics do). Would it be wrong to say, in German, "Die Sonne scheint aus meine Hände?" How does "mir" become "my"? Or is that just one of those weird German things like how you have to say "mir ist kalt" (because I heard saying "ich bin kalt" means "I am impotent" or something like that). That line is in the song twice. It also has "die Sonne scheint mir aus den Augen" which is "the sun is shining out of my eyes." Same word order/grammar thing, I guess. Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5734 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 7 11 February 2010 at 2:06am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
That's correct
"Den Haenden" = "the hands". "meine Haende" would be "my haends". But since you're talking about from where the sun is shining, you have to say "aus den Haenden". It's something about those 'case' thingies..
The translation is right, but I can't help you with what they're trying to say :)
Yep, would be wrong
Someone with better knowledge of German grammar will be able to give you details, but in the end it'll boil down to: Sometimes you have to have a 'mir' in there ;). You could also say "Die Sonne scheint dir aus den Haenden", in which case it would mean "The sun is shining out of your hands"
Yeah, I guess. I don't know if kalt might mean impotent (I've never heard that), but the difference is: If you say "Ich bin kalt", you state the fact, that you are literally cold. As in: "He's already been dead a couple of hours, he's cold". But if you say "Mir ist kalt", it means you're *feeling* cold. 
:) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5434 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 3 of 7 11 February 2010 at 2:17am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
"Meine Hände" is the nominative case. The preposition "aus" requires the dative case.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Ocius Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5589 days ago 48 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English*, German, Ancient Greek Studies: French, Latin, Sanskrit | Message 4 of 7 11 February 2010 at 3:51am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
The weirdness, from an English speaker's perspective, is the lack of a possessive pronoun.
In English when we speak of doing something to/with body parts, we almost always qualify it with a possessive pronoun. In German, that isn't so typical. Honestly, this really is one of those things where you simply have to get used to a different way of expressing things (though what OlafP said about cases is important, too). German uses a reflexive pronoun where English would use a possessive. For example, where in English you'd say "I'm combing my hair" or "I'm brushing my teeth." -- the German equivalents of these would be, if I'm not mistaken, "Ich kämme mir die Haare" and "Ich putze mir die Zähne." The German sentences would "literally" mean "I'm combing to me the hair" and "I'm brushing to me the teeth." The two languages simply express these sentences in different ways. Edited by Ocius on 11 February 2010 at 3:59am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5584 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 5 of 7 11 February 2010 at 4:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
Mir is a reflexive, it's similar in Spanish.
Germans assume that the reflexive pronoun takes the object. Like saying "I wash my hands" They assume you're not washing somebody elses hands, so they figure that they are yours. Mir- To me, my. Ocius and Pyx are completely correct. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5555 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 6 of 7 11 February 2010 at 4:40am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
Here's the grammar bit for anyone interested...
When a verb acts on an object, we generally only indicate possession in English "internally" and within the same phrase, e.g. "I burned my hair". If we use "I burned the hair" instead, then it's generally understood that we're referring to something that's no longer an obvious part of us and most likely not connected to someone else either. However, there's no clear indication that this mysterious hair even belongs to us at all or ever did, and so the phrase remains ambiguous without some context. In German they don't let you get away with this, you need to be more specific. You get to choose from 2 different types of possessives - "internal" or "external" (sometimes also called "implicit"). I won't pretend to understand it all, but from what I can gather, you generally use explicit (e.g. "die" instead of "meine") for cases when it's a part of you (often accompanied with a dative like "mir"), and implicit when it's not. Taking the same bizarre hair example again as above, there's a subtle difference in meaning in German. In a sentence like... "Ich habe mir die Haare verbrannt" [I burned my hair] the subject is talking personally about the hair on his head, maybe an accident with a faulty hair-dryer or a drunken moment with his cigarette lighter in the club, whereas in the sentence... "Ich habe meine Haare verbrannt" this conveys a sense of the hair being separate from the guy somehow, that it may even be a long-lost wig or a lock of his hair kept in his ex-girlfriend's locket, but that it still belongs to him. The closest we get to "external" possessives in English is in pronoun + prepositional constructions like... "She grabbed him by the arm" vs "She grabbed his arm" "He kissed her on the cheek" vs "He kissed her cheek" where there's a very subtle sense that the arm or cheek is focussed on almost to the exclusion of the rest of the body, but not quite to the same extent as in German. Here's a heavy-going but comprehensive summary of it all in case you're a glutton for further punishment: http://www.db-thueringen.de/servlets/DerivateServlet/Derivat e-17307/König&Gast_ch7_poss.pdf "With external possessors, i.e. with constructions in which the possessor is encoded as a separate argument, the situation is construed as totally affecting the person in question. This implication is lacking in the construction with internal possessors, where body parts and extensions of the body are treated as separate parts which do not concern the possessor." and a much smaller and less scary related link, but in German (perhaps you can check it out with Google Translate): http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Pertinenzdativ Hope this all helps a bit, and I guess coming back to the original Rammstein lyrics, it's probably a good thing that the sun is actually coming out of hands still connected to a living body... ;) Edited by Teango on 11 February 2010 at 5:00am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6436 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 7 of 7 11 February 2010 at 7:12am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
Thanks everyone.
I figured it was probably some German-specific thing that doesn't translate literally. I just remember hearing that line and thinking "I know all those words... but I don't know what he's saying" so I had to look it up, and then I got even more confused. lol. I'm terrible with German cases. It's why I can understand much better than I can speak or write, but I haven't even studied German in the last 7 years anyway so I'm way out of practice. :) Edited by IronFist on 11 February 2010 at 7:14am 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
