Die Lore-Ley

"Ich glaube, die Wellen veschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn,
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
die Lore-Ley getan..."

Lesson 11 in Perfectionnement Allemand was basically just the poem of the Lore-Ley by Heinrich Heine and a few exercises (as usual), with the goal being to memorise the poem. Lucky for me, I don't find memorising poems to be a great chore. I still remember, after almost 20 years, some poems I memorised from an old Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat (back when they occasionally produced a content rich book instead of now where they mainly seem to be non-threatening, but pointlessly dumbed down to the point of being completely useless):

Mala kucha kamena,
sa tri mala prozora,
zheleni im kapci,
i krov sav od plamena,
a na krovu, vrapci.

(Apologies to any Serbian or Croatian readers for any mistakes - it was 20 years ago!)

I can also still remember mostly what it means. This isn't an accident, poems are designed to stick in your head. They have an internal rhythm (and often rhyming endings in european literature) that mean the memory of one phrase supports another. Well-written music is often like this, although probably more for ballads than other types of song, or at least, I've found ballads and poetic-style lyrics to be the easiest to remember. I know it sounds crazy, but I really feel like Rammstein's lyrics are quite poetic, even in their harshest songs. I guess you just have to find something you like!

I found the time yesterday to do a couple of the kiddie word puzzles I posted about yesterday. I built up my confidence with foods and animals puzzles first. I did pretty well - just one or two things that I didn't know or remember. The puzzles were incredibly easy though :-) I'm now working on a simple crossword of the more traditional style with across and down clues and no pre-filled letters. I would really like to find more simple/kids crosswords, ones without too many references to German actors and sportstars from the 70's and 80's :-)

If any readers know of any good, free sources for a variety of levels of crosswords, please let us all know in the comments!
Now on to lesson 12.