What does “beschallen” mean in German?
Hip-Hop-Musik macht Schweizer Käse angeblich besser
B2 German listening practice · Swiss German · Curated for upper-intermediate learners
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.
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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