this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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So do people care about not being able to understand lyrics? (I can rarely understand English ones anyway.)
Personally, I prefer things I don’t understand because I don’t have to mentally deal with whatever bullshit they are saying. I can sing it a thousand times without ever thinking too much about it because I know the sounds and not the meaning of the words.
I can belt out a ton of Japanese or Russian music, because I started listening to help my language learning (classes, not self-guided), but I don’t actually understand the songs. I “know the words”, but that’s it.
I find the opposite works fine: I don't have to know the exact words, but I doo look up the translation to know what the song is actually about.
You just understand them in your own way.
When this first came out, we interpreted it as:
Who? Who has? Who has fish? Who has fish from France?
Works the other way around as well. When I was a teen, I though Rage Against The Machine's "Killing in the Name" was asking where their sneakers are.
"Dude, where is my sneaker (just one of the pair)"
That's brilliant! Are there any other songs which do similar?
As someone who has German as their second and English as their third language, I've never misunderstood that line like that. That's hella funny though.
Who has fish from France? it’s my uncle Matt
Do hats fit my frog?
They do his is Zog!
I like to be able to sing along to songs when I'm alone in the car, so even if I don't understand the meaning of the words, I like to know the words.
I also enjoy word play, and Du Hast has some of that. So knowing the bit of trivia about 'Hast' and 'Hasst' being homophones in German and meaning 'have' and 'hate' respectively, and the main portion of the lyrics being wedding vows adds a layer of enjoyment to the song for me.
I like to know the meaning but normally just sing the closest english words like "the genies in the food court" from one of gogol bordello's songs