Dreikönigstag

[muckefuck]

I try not to have too many regrets about what I haven't accomplished, but seeing snowy_owlet's New Year's resolutions reminded me how lax I've been about her German instruction. When she finally took me up on my suggestion that she post some Rilke and we work through it together, it turned out to be something of a ball-buster. It struck me that a popular song might be a better choice for such an endeavour than the work of a modernist poet. Given her love of carols, a traditional Weihnachtslied seemed a natural choice, but I never got around to selecting one and posting it before Christmas swept past me.

But all is not lost! This is still the eleventh day of Christmas, after all; tomorrow is Epiphany, the celebration of the arrival of the Magi in Bethlehem. (How that can occur eight days after the anniversary of Herod's slaughter of the Holy Innocents on December 28th when it was their arrival that tipped him off, I'll never know, but then the Roman liturgical calendar is not exactly a miracle of consistency.) The Germans don't seem to have a lot of songs for Epiphany (it's more a Southern European thing), I did turn up this suitable traditional song. Shall we start with the "money verse"?

Vom Morgenlande drei Könige kamen,
ein Stern führt sie nach Bethlehem.
Myrrhen, Weihrauch und auch Gold,
brachten sie, brachten sie,
brachten sie dem Kindlein hold.

Now, as Mark Twain pointed out, the first step to parsing a German sentence is to "go on a fishing expedition for the verb". That done, you use your knowledge of the noun cases to locate the subject (since every verb must have one, even if it's a "dummy subject" like the es in es regnet). Everything else should fall into place after that.

Comments

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

I think the slaughter of the holy innocents was the year after, actually. The wheels of government grind slowly, and 'twas ever thus.

[n-true.livejournal.com]

...since every verb must have one, even if it's a "dummy subject" like the es in es regnet...

What about Jetzt wird getanzt!?

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

My darling! You're so good to me. But at the moment, I'm writing on deadline, and I haven't got any brains left over for languages. I'll get back to this as soon as my story is in the mail.