Gib mir nur eine Minute
Just give me a minute – "Soziale Batterie" by SOPHIA
Bist du eher introvertiert oder extrovertiert? (Are you more introverted or extroverted?) Over the years, I’ve come to see myself as an extroverted introvert – I love people and connection, but also need time to myself to reflect and recharge. In a non-stop, always-on world, moments of quiet reflection can feel hard to come by – something I feel especially deeply as the mother of a three-year-old!
German pop singer SOPHIA beautifully expresses this need for eine Minute, um tief durchzuatmen (a minute to breathe deeply) in her 2024 song “Soziale Batterie”. Even if we love being around others, we can all likely relate to the idea of needing eine Pause to recharge our social battery.
Gib mir nur eine Minute, um tief durchzuatmen
Just give me a minute to take a deep breath
Muss mein System nur mal ganz kurz neu starten
Just need to quickly reboot my system
Eine Minute, bin gleich wieder da
One minute, I'll be right back
Brauch' ‘nen Moment, um mal runterzufahren
Need a moment to slow down
Eine Minute, um die Welt anzuhalten
One minute to stop the world
Und alles um mich rum auf lautlos zu schalten
And switch everything around me to silent
Gib mir eine Minute für mich
Give me a minute to myself
Sechzig Sekunden für nichts, einfach für mich
Sixty seconds for nothing, just for me
“Soziale Batterie” is filled with German vocabulary related to time:
die Stunde / die Stunden - the hour / the hours
die Zeit - the time
der Moment - the moment
Der Tag / die Tage - the day / the days
die Minute - the minute
die Sekunde / die Sekunden - the second / the seconds
Additionally, the song’s refrain gives us several examples of a very specific German grammar construction – the um + zu + infinitive clause featuring a separable verb. You may remember that the use of um + zu + an infinitive verb in German usually signals the meaning “in order to”, as elaborated upon in an earlier post featuring Dota Kehr’s “Für die Sterne”:
Ich bin nicht hier, um mich zu bemühen
I am not here in order to strive
Ich bin hier, um zu glühen
I’m here (in order) to glow
Ich bin hier, um zu blühen
I’m here (in order) to bloom
Ich bin nicht hier, um dir zu gefallen
I am not here in order to please you.- Dota Kehr, “Für die Sterne”
“Soziale Batterie” takes things one step further by illustrating how this construction works when the infinitive verb in question is one of German’s ever-present separable verbs. The preposition “zu” is inserted directly into the infinitive verb, right after the verb’s separable prefix:
Gib mir nur eine Minute, um tief durchzuatmen
Just give me a minute to take a deep breathBrauch' 'nen Moment, um mal runterzufahren
Need a moment to slow downEine Minute, um die Welt anzuhalten
One minute to stop the world
Here are a few additional words from “Soziale Batterie” to add to your vocabulary list:
die Leute - the people
sozial - social
die Batterie - the battery
aufladen - to charge
rauben - to rob
die Energie - the energy
die Sinne - the senses
geflutet - flooded
die Ruhe - the rest
durchatmen - to breathe deeply
runterfahren - to shut down
anhalten - to stop
lautlos - silent
isoliert - isolated
explodieren - to explode
überreagieren - to overreact
I hope this week you find the time you need to “separate” from others for a bit and recharge your social battery!
Liebe Grüße,
Jessica
P.S. – If you enjoyed this post, please consider clicking “like” and/or sharing it with someone else who may be interested in German music, language, and culture! Ganz lieben Dank!
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For more examples of infinitive clauses in German, check out “Für die Sterne” by Dota Kehr and “Alles ist Jetzt” by Bosse. And for more about separable verbs in German, check out “Für Immer Hier” by Bruckner.
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Check out Sprachmelodie's Spotify and Youtube accounts for playlists of all songs featured so far on the blog.