Lena is a four letter word

Last year Germany won the Eurovision Song Contest, and they won it in style too. Lena with her song 'Satellite' was a huge success, just a shame that to all native English speakers her mangling of the English language was akin to nails being scraped down a blackboard, it wasn't that she couldn't speak the language just that she seemed to speak/sing with about three different accents (shudder) in one sentence.

Eurovision 2011 is quickly approaching, May 14th is only 90 days away* and most countries are busy finalising their entries; the Irish have announced "Jedward" will try to win for them, the UK have chosen the band "Blue" as their best hope, which is a bold move for the band because if they do badly** then any revitalising of their pop career is shot down in flames, Norway's entry was chosen on Saturday night and Azerbaijan have already chosen a duet.

Germany is understandably very keen to retain the Eurovision crown and got the jump on all the other competitor countries by declaring right from the get go that Lena would defend her title...oh goodie. Never mind, I thought, maybe a year is long enough to improve her accent - or at least consolidate it so that it doesn't meander from London to Edinburgh to New York, wishful thinking, and it's not as if I didn't try to do something about it - Lena's has a cousin who is a boy in Jasmine's class and I speak to his mom, so after the contest last year I made a point of congratulating her and telling her that she could improve her niece's English as her enunciation is so much better.***

The last two weeks have seen me sitting on my sofa of a Monday evening suffering 2 hours of the hell that is German TV. The German public might have had no say in who is representing their country at Eurovision but they do get to choose the song, six songs the first week and six the second, three go through from each week and then on Friday 18th there's another 150 minute TV show when the final song is chosen (talk about making a mountain out of a molehill).

My German teacher is forever telling me I should watch more (actually just any) German TV but my argument is that it's so shite I'd rather not watch any TV, so when I do find a programme that is vaguely interesting then I make a point of watching, hence me making a determined effort to watch Lena.

Unfortunately her accent hasn't improved at all over the last 12 months and unfortunately every single song she sang had English lyrics - you'd have thought that out of 12 songs there would be a token German one, but no. To make matters even worse it seemed as though every song had the word "day" in it, or rather, to give it the Lena enunciation 'dai - eeeee'. By the end of both evenings I'd developed a very nasty twitch and I swear blood was starting to come out of my ears.

Needless to say I shan't be watching the third and final instalment of Germany's search for their Eurovision song, I shall wait (with unbated breathe) for the show itself and in the meantime pray that the German voting public don't choose the song "A Good Day".

If you're at all interested in the songs/doubt that anyone can speak-sing English with such a variable accent then the evidence can be found here, here, and here**** - enjoy!


* have just realised that this is the day before my daughter's birthday and also coincides with the probable visit from the outlaws, I can see them cramping our Eurovision viewing somewhat as they are both very....theatrically inclined...I might need to watch the show in another room - or would that be rude?
** a stong possibility seeing as no-one, but no-one votes for the U.K., the only country within Europe that acts as though it's outside of Europe and then wonders why it's billy-no-mates).
*** now if you think this was rather blunt speaking, don't forget where I live - Deutschland, the land that invented the concept of being rude without actually being rude.
**** I'm being kind, only giving you three songs to listen to, there are 12 after all, if you want more let me know and I'll find you the links...