What does 'um wenn' mean?

Moderator:kevin

xBlackHeartx
What does 'um wenn' mean?

Postby xBlackHeartx » 2018-08-25, 20:28

Its part of a line from the song Rad by Faun:

Dreh dich nicht
Um wenn du
Nicht willst das
Man dich sieht

I understand all the words, but I don't get what this 'um wenn' construction is. The parts I can make out translate as such:

Don't turn around
[unknown] you
don't want that
(some)one sees you

Note that this is a literal translation. The latter part would probably be better translated as: 'You don't want to be seen'.

I know what um and wenn mean. Um has several translations. It can be either a preposition or a conjunction (which I'm guessing is its use here). As a conjunction, it normally means 'in order to'. Wenn is the word for 'if' (though sometimes its used where in English we would use 'when'). I don't get why these two words would be next to each other like this. Why would you have two conjunctions in a row?

Also, I've tried to look for this on wordreference's dictionary. I didn't get a result for this specific construction. I'm at a loss as to where else to look.

kevin
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Re: What does 'um wenn' mean?

Postby kevin » 2018-08-25, 20:47

There is no "um wenn" construction, these words just happen to end up next to each other in this specific sentence.

The solution for your problem is that the verb in the sentence isn't "drehen", but "umdrehen", so this "um" is neither a conjunction nor a preposition, but simply a separable prefix.

xBlackHeartx

Re: What does 'um wenn' mean?

Postby xBlackHeartx » 2018-08-25, 21:13

kevin wrote:There is no "um wenn" construction, these words just happen to end up next to each other in this specific sentence.

The solution for your problem is that the verb in the sentence isn't "drehen", but "umdrehen", so this "um" is neither a conjunction nor a preposition, but simply a separable prefix.


Okay, that makes sense. The way the lyrics are split up into separate lines obviously threw me off. Why would 'um' be on the second line when its the ending of the sentence in the first line? Sigh..

So I guess my issue was the place I got the lyrics from... How annoying.

Thank you.


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