Do you know that feeling? You listen to a song on the radio. You find it absolutely terrible …. and yet, you can’t get the tune out of your head for the rest of the day!!!
Yes? Well, this happened to me this morning. Somebody posted a video in a facebook group, I listened to it and even 10 hours later, I can still hear the tune and remember some of the words!
BUT – and this is where it gets interesting – the song was designed to be silly, AND it’s for people learning German!
The tune is nice and easy and the text is silly, but it covers the nominative, accusative and dative in all three genders plus plural with adjectives. So, instead of learning charts like:
Nominative: der/ die/ das/ die
Accusative: den/ die/ das/ die
Dative: dem/ der/ dem/ den
plus ein/ eine/ ein etc… and the adjective endings (all boring stuff, if you only learn it as charts/ lists), all you have to do is
sing this song 🙂
So, next time, when you’re stuck and can’t remember whether it’s der netten Mann or der netter Mann or der nettem Mann or der nette Mann, just sing the song again and you’ll remember which one it is (it is der nette Mann).
I think, this is a useful song (thanks to Brad Yoder for writing it and to Herrn Wallace for adding the text and the translation to the video). What do you think?
EDIT: If you wish to learn more about the cases, check out my online course: German grammar – the four cases It takes you back to basics and will teach you everything you need to know about the German nominative, accusative, dative & genitive case. And if you use the coupon code BLOGPOST you’ll get 10% off.
“Give my good friends a fish” – I like that. Now I’m humming it…. 😉
He he, I’m STILL humming it, even 24 hrs later 😉
What a funny little song. 🙂 And what in the world does a small mouse do with a fish?
Good question, but if it helps learning the cases, who cares ;-)))
It’s catchy mnemonics like that which really help you learn stuff, much as they’re annoying because they stick in your brain like chewing gum to the heel of your shoe. Thanks for sharing…
Exactly, at first it’s just very annoying chewing gum, but one day you’ll desperately need something sticky, and remember that chewing gum on the heel of your shoe … oh, how handy it will be then 😉