omg I’ve been looking for this forever but google never cooperated!
I’m going to butt in on this long post and say you guys are being incredibly disrespectful regarding German. You realize people speak this language today, right? Just because the only time you hear it is when straight-to-TV Nazis are spitting explicit hatred does not mean that it’s an ugly language; it just means you have a limited scope of what German sounds like. Saying that it’s an ugly language, or that it’s some accomplishment to make it sound cute, is similar to calling AAVE an uneducated, primal version of English that can’t be taken seriously.
In addition, Hitler and das Drittes Reich are not the defining characteristics of Germany’s political climate. The country has been democratic and (pretty much 90%) anti-fascist for what approaches 70 years, and their people and government continue to work tirelessly to escape the shadow of Nazism – this is part of the reason they’ve been taking in so many Middle-Eastern refugees. Invoking Hitler in regards to stuff like this is disrespectful and tactless.
I’m not a German, but I’m passionate about the culture they’ve created in the wake of authoritarianism, and I figured I’d throw in my two cents regarding how it’s been treated here. If any Germans or German-speaking followers believe I’ve said something wrong or overstepped a boundary, I’ll edit or delete this post.
German
over here, giving my two cents: I agree 100% with @phen01 and I don‘t
think that you crossed any boundary tbh, I‘m glad you said
something. I won‘t repeat your text as I completely agree with
them, I will just add mine:
Most of
the artists mentioned in this thread are people who were, in fact,
born and raised in Germany. Blumio grew up in the city next to my
hometown, Joy Denalane grew up in West Berlin. The learned German as
their first language. To them, it is not the ‚ugly language‘ that
suddenly sounds beautiful. It is their mother tongue. The language
they chose for their art, for their music. By saying that ‚Hitler
is rolling over in his grave‘ (why even is there always a comment
about Hitler?) you make the mere fact that they are PoC and yet using
the ugly lanuage of the evil nazis a political statement. And
that‘s not supporting PoC, that‘s the exact opposite. You could,
instead, learn something about their lyrics. Pay attention to what
they‘re singing about, or how they are engaging against racism.
Because yes, most of them are activists. Most of them have at least
one or two songs that center around racism, e.g. Blumios „Hey Mr.
Nazi!“. Celebrating these songs and their messages? Sounds like a
better idea to me.
And
please: Before you make jokes about Nazis, about the German language
(which is in fact, not only used by Germans) or about our culture:
Educate yourself a little bit. And by that, I mean something that
isn‘t a movie about WW2. Yes, our ancestors started a war. Yes, at
least 55 million people died in a horrible way, and in vain. Yes, we
should remember this event and learn from past mistakes – but I
think it‘s about time to get over the idea that everything German
is Nazi per se.
I‘m
tagging @allthingsgerman because they usually have very good ideas in
discussions like this. Maybe you already said something about this,
but I can‘t recall.
Also: I‘m white.
If any person of color living in Germany thinks that I said something
wrong, or crossed a line or am being offensive, please text me and
I‘ll take this post down, or edit it accordingly.
I said it in the tags in a previous reblog: Her pronunciation is 100% High German, i.e. the standard variety of German. Newscasters today sound like her. (The word choice isn’t terribly High German though, it’s imbued with hip hop slang as you’d expect, which btw is used by hip hop acts regardless of their or their (grand)parents’ ethnicity). She hasn’t applied some magical Blackness or whatever to German, she’s just singing in her mother tongue, because, yknow, she’s German.
(NB: Most German singers use Standard German in their songs, even if they speak with a more regional accent. I’ve searched for interviews with Ace Tee, and she speaks with a faint North German accent).
Standard German has changed a lot in the last 80 years, so when people hear pathé news from the 1930s, then this is not German how it’s spoken today. It wasn’t even that widely spoken back then, because more people were speaking dialects than today. And of course if you only ever heard German spoken in Nazi speeches, then this isn’t a terribly good example of spoken German in general. Basically if you listen to any politician giving a hateful speech it will not be representative of whatever language they’re speaking.
This isn’t cute because Afro-German magically makes an ugly language cute but because the song is just fucking cute. Nothing to do with the language (which is just bloody versatile and can be cute or aggressive when needed).
I’m half-convinced that many Germans regard it as a point of national pride to have words for every conceivable emotion, and every time anyone anywhere asks “is there a word for [obscure emotional state]?”, the entire nation of Germany collectively invents one, edits their dictionaries so that it’s retroactively always existed, and says “yes, yes there is”.
just moving along like everyone else 