Hip-Hop-Musik macht Schweizer Käse angeblich besser
B2 German listening practice · Swiss German · Curated for upper-intermediate learners
What does “beschallen” mean in German?
German has a single verb for piping music or sound at something: beschallen, formed from Schall (“sound”) plus the prefix be-. You can beschallen a hallway with announcements, a cow with classical music, or, in this clip, a wheel of cheese with hip-hop. English needs four or five words for the same idea: “to play music at,” “to expose to sound.”
This reel reports on a real Swiss experiment: a 2018-19 collaboration between Bern University of the Arts and a cheesemaker in Burgdorf aged Emmental wheels under different musical genres. The hip-hop wheel reportedly tasted better than the classical or rock ones. The German verb beschallen lets the bizarre experiment fit into a single tidy sentence.
Vocabulary frequency
How common is the vocabulary in this B2 German listening practice listening practice?
General German frequency
Spoken German frequency
Words above this video’s level
Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s B2 level.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-DE 2011 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.
- ▸In Swiss agricultural news (SRF, NZZ, Tages-Anzeiger)
- ▸In German-language popular-science content (Quarks, Galileo)
- ▸In German PA-system and concert technical writing
- ▸In German farming and animal-welfare debates
- ▸In Swiss tourism content about Emmental and alpine cheese