I’ve been listening to “Du bist schön” for months. I finally decided to “study” it today so that I can understand it. (IE: Google translate, Wiktionary, etc. etc.)

…

Holy shit. I knew the words for mirror, beautiful, as well as Alligatoah makes it clear that this guy was talking to himself in the song. But the full understanding was lost until I studied now.

That’s a lot of self deprecating humor all at once. With a huge amount of social commentary.

I can highly recommend as a German language exercise, though maybe it’s a bit of a downer overall.

https://youtu.be/dlvStoOyEzE

I knew this was a sarcastic and “biting” song even without study. But wow.

Du bist schön, aber dafür kannst du nichts

Weder lesen, noch schreiben, noch was anderes

Du bist schön, aber dafür kannst du nichts

Du kannst nicht mal was dafür, dafür kannst du nichts

May is pretty soon. Are you going to try and attend the trade show this year? Curious if that was/is your goal.

Yeah. The goal was always to reach A2+ before May (meaning I had 6ish months staring in November when I decided to be really serious about my studying).

It’s an trade conference in English. But in Germany. So now I have some “fire” and a practical exercise. I basically want to be able to take the train, listen to airport announcements and overall enjoy Germany without pulling out Google Translate all the time.

I think I’m like A2- though, slightly behind schedule. I’m not convinced that I can pass an A2 exam right now. But I know all the theory of A2 subjects (weil vs dann and sentence structure, comparatives, subordinate clauses, perfekt vs präterium) and have substantial numbers of hours in grammar practice.

Just not quite enough practice yet to pass a certification exam.

Thanks. The card I had, as well as Wiktionary, are both missing the context for zureden.

DWDS has the contexts and examples, but I’m not strong enough in German yet to consistently read DWDS yet. https://www.dwds.de/wb/zureden

I’m getting there however. I can understand the gist but not the nuance of DWDS.

Thanks!

Ich bin seit zwei Monaten “Zwei Welten” gehört! “The Wise Guys” singen klar und deutlich. Ich empfehle auch!

The Wise Guys sing clearly and precisely. I do recommend them. I have been listening to their album “Zwei Welten” since ~2 months ago.

Maybe I need to make a new topic for my music / listening list?

English translation:

Sweet, I mostly got it! Without any help from Google Translate or Deepl (just Wiktionary for the two words I didn’t know).

Hmm. zureden is supposed to mean “to encourage”, according to some cards I bought. It seems like I messed something up with that.

“deine Worte machen mir Mut.”

Definitely seems like it works. Thanks!

I guess I’m now curious how to use zureden. Maybe “Du hast mir zugeredet.” ?? I see now that it’s a Dativ verb, so I messed that up earlier…

Ich verstehe… veilleicht? Deine Wörter sind fast alle in meinem Wortschatz. Ich muss nur “Anerkennung” und “durchgebiasen” in a dictionary lookup. (Aufsehen? I need more vocab…)

EDIT: im Wörterbuch aufsehen. (???) ins?? Hmmmmm

Es ist schwer, das “bin, lernen und zu müssen” wurden in nur ein Satz benutzt. Sondern ich verstehe veilleicht. Ich muss mehr Grammatik üben.

Danke! Deine Worte redet mich zu.

USA’s brand of capitalism has IP protections, such as patent, copyrights, and trademarks. None of which China actually follows.

China is well known to conduct significant corporate espionage. (IE: hackers targeting corporations like Microsoft or Sony, not really people with “critical national secrets” but instead software they’d rather keep secret). China also hacks for national-security purposes too I’m sure.

I mean, still better than the Russian hackers or North Korean ones that focus on randomware. China at least is trying to get economic benefits out of it, but… its clearly built up on a lot of stolen tech.