The year in books #11: Was ich noch zu sagen hätte

Rote memorization is simultaneously one of the most important tools in the kit of the language learner and one of the most boring activities known to mankind. My Japanese professor's first exposure to the language was as a missionary, where he was required to memorize the story of Joseph Smith in Japanese before he even spoke the language. Developing a catalog of memorized sequences of words that you can draw upon is an invaluable tool in gaining fluency in a foreign tongue, but imagine the boredom. I have a lot of respect for the man, but faced with the same task, I would be searching the room for sharp objects and toxic liquids within the hour. My solution, one that was and continues to be a very useful trick for memorizing vocabulary and syntax, is memorizing song lyrics.

The problem with song lyrics is this:

Police think they can see me lean
I'm tint so it ain't easy to be seen
When you see me ride by they can see the glean
And my shine on the deck and the TV screen
Ride with a new chick, she like hold up
Next to the playstation controller is a full clip and my pistola
Turn a jacker into a coma
(From "Ridin'", by Chamillionaire)

You could memorize that if you want - good luck on your TOEFL. Even without venturing into the specialized linguistic world of hip-hop, song lyrics tend to take a lot of liberties with the rules of language. When you're learning a new language, though, you need more than just a lyricist who writes language that sticks in your head - you need someone with the talent to write compelling lyrics using standard language. If you're learning German, there is no better lyricist for this purpose than the legendary singer/songwriter Reinhard Mey.

Mey released his first album, Ich wollte wie Orpheus singen (I wanted to sing like Orpheus), in 1967. Since then, he has released 24 studio albums in German, seven in French and four in Dutch, and according to a quote in Was ich noch zu sagen hätte, his back catalog sells more CDs every year in Germany than the Beatles'. He's written about 500 songs over that time, and every single one of them has something to teach a student of the language. Mey's German was the first indication I had, before I discovered Goethe and Heinz Erhardt, that the language was capable of incredible beauty, and it compelled and compels me in a way that few other artists can. I completely memorized several of his songs and could sing them perfectly from beginning to end before I could understand even a small fraction of what I was singing, and the first gift my future wife ever gave to me was to translate one of his most lovely songs, Ich bring' dich durch die Nacht (I'll bring you through the night) for me to read on Christmas morning.

I hope the above has made clear just how much respect I have for Reinhard Mey, and just how sad I am to have to say that Was ich noch zu sagen hätte (What remains for me to say - also the title of one of his best-known songs), a sort of autobiography written in the form of a long interview with credited co-author Bernd Schröder, is just crap. It seems to fly over everything of interest to a fan - Mey's creative process, his relationship to music - and focuses inordinate attention on his politics and his personal life. Schröder seems never to tire of trying to catch Mey in a philosophical contradiction of some sort, or of probing the lives of his three children, even interviewing them for a chapter that I found squirmingly uncomfortable for its intrusive nature and the fact that the questions and answers shed absolutely no light on Mey as an artist.

I've got to recommend that you skip this one. But listen to Mey. You won't find a better singer/songwriter in any language on the planet.