My language class started yesterday, and it’s off to a good start. It’s an interesting mix of nationalities in the class: 3 Americans (including me), 2 Italians, and 1 person each from Cuba, Greece, Kosovo, Korea, Australia, and it’s fun practicing all our begining little dialogs with a bunch of people who are equally motivated to learn how to speak some German.
We’ve spent much of the last two days practicing “introducing” ourselves, i.e. “my name is X and I come from Y.” When I tried to apply that to a real world setting this morning, when I met one of our new neighbors, I realized that one lesson in German would only get me so far. After that, I needed to then to resort to, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak German, do you speak English?” And, in the interest of full disclosure after yesterday’s post, it turned out that our neighbor did. Go figure – the odds were not in my favor. 😉
Anyway, most of the lessons yesterday and today had sample dialogs which included the words I’ve put in the title of this post. The thing is, every time I heard those words in class, what immediately came to mind was a song from the Broadway musical Cabaret:
Link to clip of Joel Grey and the Muppets performing the song Willkommen
I hadn’t realized I’d known so many words in German as a result of knowing the lyrics to that song, but it turned out that many of the German words in the song were part of our first practice dialogs in class. The lyrics that are in German are marked in bold below:
Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!
Fremder, Etranger, Stranger,
Glücklich zu sehen, Je suis enchanté, Happy to see you,
Bleibe, reste, to stay.
Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!
Im Cabaret, Au Cabaret, To Cabaret!
Meine Damen und Herren- Mes dames et Messieurs-Ladies and Gentlemen,
Wie gehts? Comment ça va? Do you feel good?
Ich bin euer Conférencier! Je suis votre compere! I am your host!
Und sage [and say]
Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!
Im Cabaret, Au Cabaret, To Cabaret!
Just to be clear about this, the teacher never mentioned the song, and it was never mentioned in class. But hey, for once my love of crazy Broadway show tunes came in handy. 😉 Unfortunately, I’m having a hard time doing my homework now without that phrase running through my head each time I read the practice sentence that starts Willkommen. 😉
Good thing you weren’t remembering things from the musical Chicago! “He had it coming!” comes to mind! LOL (OK, so it was mostly in English, but…)
Uh-oh, Karen, your secret it is out – you know your share of crazy Broadway show tunes, too. Too funny. Same composers, but I don’t recall German lyrics in any of songs from Chicago, though, so I think I’m safe for the moment. 😉
So sing your song and think of another one from a musical for the next lesson. Maybe you should sing or play it in class for all to enjoy.
There has to be another song from Cabaret or some other musical. You’ll think of it.
Karen, I like your song from Chicago, maybe Linda could translate into German soon.:)
Here’s another clip of the same song with Grey, Alan Cummings and some dancers from Chicago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=8AxTKiVEadg
Thanks, Mom, for the link! It’s interesting to compare the two styles for the song, Alan Commings was in the revival back in the late 1990’s (I think), Joel Grey was the original “MC” in Cabaret in the 1960’s and in the movie version in the 1970s (he won a Tony and an Oscar, I believe, for his renditions).