• lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    20 hours ago

    There is a German lullaby with the line “tomorrow morning, if God wants, you will wake up again” and quite a number of kids worried “what if He doesn’t?”

    • LordAmplifier@pawb.social
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      18 hours ago

      Isn’t that a thing in English, too?

      Now I lay me down to sleep and pray the Lord my soul to keep,
      And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

      Still pretty messed up.

      • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Used to say that as a kid. Catholicism is a fear thing. I don’t think much of it. I don’t think it’s particularly bad, just hey, if I choke on air tonight, bring me to the promised land! Unfortunately, this is it.

      • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        17 hours ago

        This is even darker! The one I quoted is arguably just a filler to get enough syllables for the line. Depending on your image of God, it’s just “of cause he does”. Your version elaborates on the idea much more

    • not a martian, honest@dice.camp
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      13 hours ago

      @lugal @EfreetSK child mortality rates were pretty fucking high in earlier times. Around the time the original poem was published 40-50% of children under 15 died.

      Only vaccines and modern medicine put this down to 4.2% globally in 2022, with the most developed countries reaching 0.3%

      That is to say… that poem had a point.

      Long-term Diagram of child mortality showing a sharp drop from 50% over most of hostory to close to 0-5% at current times

    • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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      20 hours ago

      That’s honestly a terrifying idea to put in a kid’s brain before they go to sleep.

    • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
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      15 hours ago

      This seems to be a mistranslation, because in German, “wenn” can mean both “if” and “when”, but it’s actually closer to “when”. If you really mean “if”, you use “falls” instead of “wenn”.

      So the intended meaning is in fact “tomorrow morning, when God wants it (ie. at the time God wants it), you will wake up again”

      • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 hours ago

        I honestly never thought about it that way. It wasn’t sung to me when I was little and I only know it from people who misunderstood it. But it’s not closer to “when”. It’s the default for both. You can disambiguate it to “falls” or “sobald” but “wenn” is in both contexts the most common word.

        • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
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          9 hours ago

          I can’t argue with that, because the German “wenn” is definitely more ambiguous than the English “when”, but since it’s a lullaby, you kinda have to assume that perhaps it’s leaning more on the positive side, because who on earth would want their baby to die in their sleep?

          If Germans really were this cruel, they would have been wiped off the face of the earth a long time ago.

          • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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            9 hours ago

            because who on earth would want their baby to die in their sleep?

            actually, this exact thought was really calming to me when i was a kid (yes, the song was sung to me too):

            if i die, at least i die in my sleep, where i wouldn’t really be aware of it anyways, so i don’t have to care about it. it’s like, every human has to die sometime, but at least it can be in your sleep. and there’s nothing you can do about it either, so you don’t have to worry about it.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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        9 hours ago

        i think “wenn” is indeed translated as if, while “wann” is translated as when

        or maybe people use the same word differently, i’m not sure

    • HowAbt2day@futurology.today
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      17 hours ago

      I grew up during the Cold War, close enough to NYC that if it was bombed, I’d be fried. So this sentiment definitely had real meaning as a kid.

  • HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    She doesn’t want a lot for Christmas.

    Except poor people to stop complaining about the economic crisis preventing them from buying Sephora bullshit and protesting capitalism.

  • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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    10 hours ago

    If she wants everyone hearing the song, and she thinks that’s not a lot, there might be no boundary to her greed

    • BambiDiego@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      M’ar’ia Careigh the Greedy, Patron goddess of Song and Pagan Gifting.

      Derives her power from retail worship, and every year becomes stronger and stronger.

      Soon her greed threatens to devour not just the Turkey, but All Hallows Eve

    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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      19 hours ago

      It’s also a humorous take if you have healthy self-esteem.

      Though you do make a good point.

    • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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      13 hours ago

      Yeah, I stopped caring for outside validation, funny enough. I just assume people want to undermine my mental health more, and that everything is rigged. So, I literally don’t care for any opinion except my own, and any progress except how much I follow my schedule.

  • ripcord@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    She thinks you are not many things. She just wants one thing.

    It is a comment on complexity+quantity of what she wants, not significance.

    Gosh!