Wed, Jul 09, 2008

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Tokio Hotel Causes Israeli Kids to Learn German

Israeli teen girls seen "oh mein Gott"-ing over German band
 

Tokio Hotel: wearing their hearts on their sleeves and their skulls on their t-shirtsTokio Hotel: wearing their hearts on their sleeves and their skulls on their t-shirtsEver feel like you just can’t fully appreciate the Song of Songs until you can read and understand it in Hebrew? Well, according to German-translating friend of Jewcy Jewlicious, an article that ran in the Jüdische Allgemeine recently reports that young Israeli girls feel the same way about their new favorite band, Tokio Hotel. Apparently, the teens are OMG-ing so much over the German emo-popsters and their trademark guyliner demand for German language instruction in Israeli schools has vastly increased.

Tokio Hotel first gained mega popularity in Israel last year, spending months at the top of the Israeli music charts. After the dedicated efforts of their young, Israeli fanbase (including extensive petition campaigns to the Israeli embassy in Berlin), Tokio Hotel played its first concert at the Israel Trade Fairs and Convention Center in October of last year.

“The fact that our Israeli fans are singing our German lyrics shows how music can connect people emotionally. There are no prejudices, no boundaries or barriers,” says the feathered-haired teen heartthrob lead singer Bill Kaulitz. And that’s great. Except we sort of agree with Jewlicious that Israeli teens might have rather found their great passion for German language and culture in something other than the High School Musical of German emo.



Jessica Miller is Jewcy's Editorial Intern. She currently studies religion and English at Barnard College in New York City, spending most of her time writing essays about the journeys of metaphorical Sufi birds and how tripped out the book of Daniel is.


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Anonymous


Yikes! Is this really a

Yikes! Is this really a reason to learn German? Tokio Hotel? I right now only remember the lyrics to one of their songs, but it doesn't make much sense - and I'm a native speaker.

Right now the age spectrum of those listening to Tokio Hotel in the German-speaking parts of this planet is rather small compared to pretty much every spectrum you can come up with for comparison.

There are so many classic novels that would be interesting to read in German, why not learn German for this? You might argue that quite some of those novels can be aquired in a translated version, true, but with a translation there are so many things that can be lost. The intention of the author, grammatical/rhetorical figures that were used to emphasize part of the text (metaphors, anaphoras etc.) to name only two...

Or you could learn German to travel the countries, to get to know people, etc.

I don't mean to say I'm against learning languages (I'd be a real hypocrite if I said that), it's just the reason stated above that makes me wonder...





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