Wer ist wieder da?
Who’s back again? – “NINA” by Nina Chuba
In April, German pop/rap superstar Nina Chuba released the self-titled track, “NINA”, in which she celebrates a triumphant return after a quiet few months out of the spotlight. The break was certainly a well-deserved one – after her single “Wildberry Lillet” reached the #1 spot on both German and Austrian charts in 2022, the 25-year-old singer experienced a dizzyingly fast rise to fame across the German-speaking world.
After the much-needed pause, she is now gut erholt und gefährlich (well-rested and dangerous) and very much back on the German music scene.
With her high-energy comeback song, Nina also gives us the chance to take a closer look at the German interrogative pronoun wer (who):
Wer ist wieder da? (Nina, Nina, Nina)
Who’s back again? (Nina, Nina, Nina)
Wer macht Träume wahr? (Nina, Nina, Nina)
Who makes dreams come true? (Nina, Nina, Nina)
Wer muss nicht mehr sparen? (Nina, Nina, Nina)
Who no longer needs to save money? (Nina, Nina, Nina)
Ich sag’s dir nicht nochmal, merk dir, merk dir meinen Namen
I won’t tell you again, remember, remember my name
Wer is an example of what’s often called a falscher Freund (false friend) for English speakers, as it looks and sounds suspiciously close to the English interrogative pronoun “where”. Making matters even worse, the German word for “where”, wo, is distressingly similar to the English word “who”, whose German translation is of course… wer. Who (wer?) thought up this vicious linguistic cycle (or Teufelskreis) anyway?
As mentioned in a previous post, questions in German are most often formed by reversing the word order of subject and verb, bringing the verb to the beginning of the sentence:
Nina ist wieder da.
Nina is back again.Ist Nina wieder da?
Is Nina back again?
However, as in English, a question can also begin with a Fragewort, or interrogative pronoun, which is then placed at the beginning of the sentence, followed by the verb:
Wo ist Nina?
Where is Nina?Wie geht es Nina?
How is Nina doing?Wer ist wieder da?
Who is back again?
German Fragewörter include wo (where), wie (how), warum (why), and wer (who). Wer is unique in the group as, in addition to being a false friend, the pronoun changes case according to how it is used in the sentence:
Wen seiht Nina?
Who does Nina see?
(“Wer” is used as the sentence’s direct object, calling for the accusative pronoun “wen”.)Wem gefällt die Musik von Nina?
Who likes Nina’s music?
The verb “gefällen” calls for the dative case, so “wer” becomes the dative pronoun “wem”.)
Thankfully, “NINA” doesn’t seek to overcomplicate things and gives us several examples of wer in standard nominative case form.
Here are a few additional words from “NINA” to add to your vocabulary list:
hochmotiviert – highly motivated
erholen – to recover
maßgeschneidert – custom-made
fertig – ready, finished
Massenpanik – mass panic
merken – to take notice, to memorize
zaubern – to conjure
knallen – to pop