I find the phrase quoted in the post title (from the song Da Da Da by Trio) to be difficult to say quickly, even with some practice. It feels like a tongue twister.
My question is, is it a tongue twister for native German speakers?
I may not be a native, but I didn’;t find it all that hard to say. Sure, if you tried to say it three times fast it wouldn’t be too easy, but that’s not terribly unusual.
As a Dutchman, reasonably fluent in German, I do not find this phrase difficult at all.
For whatever reason, I don’t find most phrases difficult to say “three times fast,” but I do find this one difficult.
Cool, thanks, that’s what I was wondering.
If you want a tongue twister, try “Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid.” (Red cabbage stays red cabbage and wedding gown stays wedding gown) or the ever-popular “Fischers Fritze fischt frische Fische.” (Fisherman’s Fritz fishes fresh fish.)
I’m a native speaker, and it’s not particularly difficult for me to say, either. But now I’m gonna have Trio stuck in my head all day…
Yeah, thanks a lot, Frylock.
Maybe what’s tripping you up is all the “ch” sounds, that an Englsih-speaker isn’t used to making? For what it’s worth, as an American who took German in high school, I don’t find it all that tongue-twisty.
For what it’s worth, S. Epatha Merkerson says she got Arnold Schwarzenegger tongue-tied on “unique New York” when they were filming Terminator 2.
When I was in college, a friend made a mix tape for me. He ended side A with four songs, and began side B with homemade cover versions of the same four songs. One of them was Da Da Da. The song was very popular among my friends at the time, so at a party he hid a small tape recorder in his sweater and walked around trying to get people to quote lines from it. He had a Casio keyboard with the tempo, recorded himself singing (such as it was) the verses, and spliced in quotes from the party to form the chorus. It was a work of deranged genius. And one person does trip over the German part a couple times.
I only learned to sing in German (and don’t find this hard), but I don’t think we covered elisions (though you’d think we would.) Is lieb’ pronounced with a [p] or **?
[p].
I wouldn’t consider “ich lieb’ dich nicht, du libest mich nicht” a tongue twister.
Probably the most classic German tongue twister for Germans is:
Fischers Fritz isst frische Fische,
frische Fische isst Fischers Fritz.
(“Fischer’s Fritz eats fresh fish;
fresh fish eats Fischer’s Fritz.”)
It is sort of an German version of “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers…”