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MalteseGyrfalcon t1_jaujlzm wrote

You … you have … you have me. And that’s all I can do. Mein Deutsche ist scheise.

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troubadoursmith t1_jav292o wrote

I kind of love the way the joke builds from there, and it's somewhat unique to German grammar. Because to translate the next line "du hast mich gefragt" requires flipping the words around in most syntaxes I'm familiar with. In English it would be "you. You have. You have me. You have asked me." So the next word entirely takes the certainty out of the sentence in a pretty funny way.

For bonus pun points, the words for have and hate are very similar sounding in German, meaning that the "you have" turning in to "you have me" also grammatically makes hate/have much more clear.

All that meaning that to a native speaker, it would be really easy to hear it as "you. You hate. You have me. You have asked me."

To which the singer goes on to say he hasn't responded yet, then hesitating a second more, and then explicitly saying no. What a rollercoaster of emotions in the setup to the hook of a 90s industrial rock song

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CertainlyAmbivalent t1_javsghe wrote

In high school my friend was given the assignment to do a booth on German culture during a multicultural fair. He forgot to do it so at the last minute he just put a package of frozen bratwurst on a table and played this song on a loop.

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[deleted] OP t1_jawghts wrote

This was the first song I ever heard by Rammstein. I was hooked from the very first time I heard it. I know these guys have made a ton of songs since then. A lot of great stuff actually, but I don't think anything ever topped Du Hast for me.

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